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Archiving social practice: the management of transport boycotts

Miriam Green,
Senior Lecturer,
The Business School,
University of North London
e-mail: m.green@unl.ac.uk

Margaret Grieco,
Transport Research Institute,
Professor of Transport and Society,
Napier University
e-mail: m.grieco@napier.ac.uk

 and

Len Holmes,
Senior Lecturer,
The Business School.
University of North London
e-mail: l.holmes@unl.ac.uk

 Abstract:

 This paper explores the capability of the new information technology to 'archive' social practice through its global access and infinite storage capabilities. The new information communication technologies move knowledge management away from a depository or repository model and into a network mode. Communities can as a consequence of global access reintegrate their identities through recollecting materials on their existence which have become distributed through history. The paper examines the social archiving of transport boycotts and fuel tax protests and explores the implications of such archiving capabilities for the development of political negotiation and bargaining skills.

Introduction: Montgomery, the home of the civil rights movement.

 Exploring the history of transport boycotts and their role in civil protest, we made use of the Internet and the World Wide Web to enable our search for materials. We knew of the importance of the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama (1955/1956), of Rosa Parks and of the centrality of this bus boycott to the development of the United States Civil Rights movement. Our interests in and experience of Africa alerted us to the use of transport boycotts by African workers and communities to challenge their working and living conditions in colonial Africa in Salisbury, Rhodesia (1956) and Alexandra, South Africa (1957)- the Salisbury transport boycott was a key component of Miriam Green's Master's thesis at SOAS (Green, 1968;1983).

As we examined and explored the Web for materials and began to grapple with the question of whether the Montgomery boycott (http://socsci.colorado.edu/~jonesem/montgomery.html) informed the Salisbury boycott or vice versa or whether the two events were independent, we became aware of the capabilities contained within the new information technology for communities to assemble, collect and retrieve 'knowledge materials' which would better allow them to both continue with and recontextualise their past (note 1). As we used the web to put together the story of transport boycotts and their significance in civil rights movements - we discovered that we had been missing an important part of the puzzle, the 1957 transport boycott in Alexandra had its precursors in previous transport boycotts in the 1940s in Alexandra itself. These boycotts were located inside the general strategy of boycotts and non-violent struggle which emerged within the Gandhian frame of resistance to apartheid in South Africa.

The resources of the web could lend a new turn to the construction of event histories: event histories could now be constructed through multiple voicing where voices could remain distinct and separate rather than being submerged in the summary forms of experts and clerics whose job it was/is to record and preserve history.

At this point, we were exploring the capabilities and competencies of the new technology in assembling popular or grass roots' history. We had not thought forward to the role the technology could play in the organisation, maintenance and broadcasting of contemporary transport boycotts. But as we explored the range of materials available on the Internet and World Wide Web on transport boycotts and started to engage with the question of why transport boycotts are chosen as a form of civic protest and what makes them such an effective tool in developing solidarity and gaining attention, we realised that we were now looking at a whole host of contemporary transport boycotts or transport related boycotts where the Internet and the World Wide Web were being used in the organisation, maintenance and archiving of social disputes.

 Just as we begun to put our traditional transport boycott materials together with our new form IT transport boycott practices for development into an article, the fuel tax protests occurred in the United Kingdom. The fuel tax protests in the United Kingdom (http://www.oocities.org/the_odyssey_group/fueltaxcrisis/fueltaxcrisis.html) have made major use of the Internet and Web Sites - in taking this approach, they have followed on from the use of information technology in similar campaigns in the United States ( http://www.gasolineprotest.com/; http://madaboutgas.com).The new information technology has enabled a new form of distributed leadership (Brown and Hosking, 1986; Brown, 1992; http://www.oocities.org/dian_marie_hosking/ldrship.html) whereby the coordinated action of large numbers of people can be organised through an immediate, easily operated electronic forum. Indeed, Government action has focused upon destroying the credibility of these electronic forum in the public mind. The fuel tax protest web sites operate as contemporary chronicles of the action and interaction with Government and in this way parallel the role of the Montgomery bus boycott web site in chronicling the history of the civil rights movement.

There is an important difference: the current chronicling of the actions in respect of Government and the interactions with Government of the fuel tax protestors is aimed at increasing the immediate bargaining power of that lobby.

This paper explores the capability of the new information technology to 'archive' social practice through its global access and infinite storage capabilities. It argues that the new information communication technologies move knowledge management away from a depository or repository model and into a network mode. Communities can as a consequence of global access reintegrate their identities through recollecting materials on their existence which have become distributed through history. The paper examines the social archiving of transport boycotts from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the U.K. fuel tax protests and explores the implications of such archiving capabilities for the development of political negotiation and bargaining skills.

Repository, depository or knowledge network?

The new information technologies have an infinite capability for the archiving of social practice: the smallest of agencies can now hold detailed archives of its activities and indeed detailed archives of the activities of all relevant others (the reverse panopticon). In the next section, we will explore the consequences of these detailed archive capabilities and the consequent capacity for social archiving in respect of emergent identity. Here we want to move in the simpler ground of indicating that the virtual archiving of knowledge enables a movement out of the traditional repository or depository knowledge model into knowledge network mode.

Historically, archiving knowledge was the domain of the privileged and the secluded. Acquiring, reproducing, replicating and storing information and knowledge required special premises and special skills. Only the resource rich, or those endowed by the resource rich, could establish the special facilities necessary for the storage of precious knowledge. The physical constraints and limitations of knowledge acquisition and knowledge storage generated a repository or depository model of knowledge management.

 Accessing knowledge meant journeying to or inhabiting places of learning or having sufficient personal material resources to establish independent, private archives. The physical morphology of the distribution of learning, teaching or knowledge materials had consequences for power structures: the concentration of knowledge resources in urban locations advantaged those urban locations in respect of rural populations - the concentration of knowledge resources at the centre of colonial powers advantaged those colonial powers over colonised peoples. Distance from knowledge resources has consequences for the ability to bargain for social, political and economic resources. To give a concrete and current example of the implications of the geographical distribution and centralisation of knowledge before the advent of global information communication technologies, local researchers in countries such as Ghana were disadvanted in the development of their 'authority' and 'expertise' by the holding of a greater volume of recorded knowledge on Ghana outside Ghana by colonial powers (Note 2) and modern development agencies (Communication, Professor Nana Apt, 1996)

The development of a public library system, a universal education system and working class literacy movements and the associated enfranchisement of working people in developed countries adjusted some of the social distance which had grown between urban and national educated elites and the majority of citizens. But still the walls around specialist knowledge and its relationship to elite training remained relatively unchanged - and the depository/repository structure of knowledge holding maintained the conditions for the persistence of elites, experts and the self-evidence of the need for leadership.

The development of distributed technologies which are available in the domestic location and which enable individuals, groups and movements to cooperate over distance with the minimum of scheduling and coordinatory requirements permit a new relationship to knowledge. The creation of virtual libraries and the globalisation of virtual knowledge locations enable the most remote individual and most remote community to be involved not only in accessing knowledge but in shaping and creating its form and enabling the access of others to that viewpoint, paradigm or perspective. Indeed, African ngos and institutions in countries such as Ghana have begun to make use of the distributed technologies to 'mark up' their own contributions to debates in development rather than simply using technology to access the 'expert' views of other locations and cultures - whilst there are many difficulties remaining in the attempt to describe alternative views through the use of the new technologies, insitutions such as the Centre for Social Policy Studies in Ghana have begun the task - indeed, Professor Nana Apt of the University of Ghana has begun to pull together the materials produced by the Centre but 'broadcast' through other institutions onto the one site, csps_ghana. This re-collection of materials is accomplished through the essentially distributed or network character of the new technology.

 There are a number of dimensions in which new knowledge forms can be regarded as 'network' in character. Firstly, the ability of individuals or groups or organisations to construct knowledge sites which can link to one another in such a manner as to facilitate ready accesss to similar or contrasting sites whilst preserving independent editing and autonomy of publication is new: the on line 'linking' of knowledge sites is a relational knowledge form capable of distributing leadership. This first dimension can be thought of as a network of knowledge sites or a knowledge network. Network measures can be developed to explore the boundaries of such structures: reciprocal linking; overlapping contents; shared activities.

Secondly, the ability of individuals or groups to share a common cyber space or cyber desk allows for levels of iteration and incremental contribution to knowledge building not readily achievable in a physical environment - 'ten minute activism' is the label already used to describe small inputs made by individuals into campaigns through on line forms, electronic petitions and bulletin boards, 'ten minute contributions to knowledge development' would not be an essentially different concept. The second form of network we are talking about is then a network of knowledge contributors. Imagine for a moment, communities scattered around the sea-board of Scotland wanting to capture and record the history of the herring girls and their travels around the coastline of Scotland before the domestic presence of online technologies - it would have been a very difficult task. Imagine the same task with on-line technologies, family photographs and old letters readily scanned in and developed as personal pages with an 'index' location which groups and displays the total set of links. Indeed, such projects have already begun to develop - the Digital Clubhouse Network (http://www.digiclub.org/) in the United States creates cross generational linkages between older persons and youths where the older persons provide access to their memories and memorabilia of the second world war and the youths record the history for on-line videostreaming and display within a virtual museum.

 There are key features of the new knowledge environment which require registration: firstly, whereas historically identifying where knowledge was resourced and archived did not ensure ease of access - difficulties of accessibility and mobility were as great as difficulties of identifying the location of information 'holdings -, in the on line environment, access is relatively simple when the location of 'holding' is known but identifying the relevant locations can be a time consuming business given the proliferation of locations. The range of new information holding options and the healthy proliferation of distinct 'voices' in this on line environment is creating a higher round of network developments - the creation of meta data bases and search engines to sift and sort the environment. This 'indexing' function might be viewed as in some way similar to the boundary management function of discrete repository or depository holdings.

Secondly, globalised information communication technologies and structures enable a readier contact and exploration of the distinct and diverse. It is easier to penetrate the on-line cultural environment than the physical social environment: the normal barriers of social type and social adjacency in respect of exploring the social framework of an alternative view are reduced in their significance. Put in social network terms, reachabilities are transformed. Local action or protest has enriched reachibility characteristics as a consequence of the new information technologies. The cost of globally distributed but parallel protests or knowledge building being coordinated is greatly reduced through the use of web enabling a higher level of effectiveness.

Reintegrating and projecting identity: collective identity in an information age.

The new information technology enables a new relationship in the shaping and promoting of social identity: individual contributions can be converted into collective resources and collective tools with the minimum of coordination, correspondence or cooperation. For example, the simple indexing of on-line memoires or materials around specific events, institutions or processes can generate substantial resources for the reinforcement, development and display of collective memory.

 In exploring the materials available on the Montgomery bus boycott (1955/1956), we came across a range of sites that can be integrated into a collective virtual archive. For example, the account of Congressman Lewis, an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, of the significance of the Montogomery bus boycott for the Civil Rights Movement provides an insider view of the social practices and processes of that time and movement - A voice from the civil rights movement on the significance of the Montgomery bus boycott (http://www.state.gov/www/dept/openforum/proceedings/2000/000320_lewis.html)

 Although the Montgomery bus boycott preceded the African bus boycotts of Salisbury and Alexandra, the Civil Right Movement did indeed have its eyes on events in Africa. Lewis tells us:

Some of you may recall the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, when I spoke there at the age of 23. A few days before the March, I had been reading the New York Times and saw a photograph from what was Northern Rhodesia a group of black omen, in this part of Africa carrying a sign saying, "One Man, One Vote." For my March on Washington speech I said, "One man, one vote is Africa's cry, it is ours too, it must be ours." That became the slogan for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And as students in Nashville, in Atlanta and other places around the South there were people saying the whole of Africa would be free and liberated and we couldn't get a coke and hamburger at a lunch counter and we could not register to vote.

Sutherland suggested that the success of the bus boycotts in Alexandra, where thousands of people organized against a raise in the bus fare, demonstrated that a strategy which combines economic leverage with self-respect can mobilize and maintain a large scale uprising." From the Geography of NonViolent Struggles - (http://data.fas.harvard.edu/cfia/pnscs/DOCS/Struggle/geography.htm#Southern Africa)

Bus boycotts were carried out by the African people as early as 1945 in Alexandra township and 1949 in New Brighton; both were successful in preventing the imposition of increased transportation costs. In Chapter 5 we have described in detail the historic Alexandra bus boycott of 195 7 where the combined might of the masses succeeded in halting the state in its attempt to place the burden of increased transportation costs on. the backs of the poorly-paid African workers. Other campaigns include the boycott of beer-halls and dipping tanks, initiated by the militant women of Natal and documented in Chapter 9.
(Luckhardt and Wall, 1980; cited from online version, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/congress/sactu/organsta10.html )

The overcrowding of the townships (and the complete lack of new houses) erupted into the shanty towns movement started by Sofosonko Mpanza; the problems of transport led to the first great bus boycott in Alexandra; the new Political awareness was expressed by the formation of the African National Congress Youth League under Lembedi, the starvation wages led to the series of illegal strikes among the VFP (power) workers, the milling workers, the coal distributive workers, the timber workers, and the building of the Powerful Non-European council of Trade Unions under Makabeni, Tlooma, Marks and others. These wage struggles culminated in the great Mineworkers' strike in 1946 and tentative plans for a general strike in sympathy.
(From http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/supplem/Hirson/Sthome1.html ) (Note 3)

 At present, the web materials around the Montgomery bus boycott experience and events are the richest in terms of available personal accounts and consequent multiplicity of perspectives. This is to be expected in a context where US levels of access to in-home communication technologies are higher, where community history initiatives are more common and more developed, where ensuring the availability of Afro-American history is a social priority. But there is nothing to prevent the use of low cost, hand held information communication tools being used to promote, protect and project community identities in Africa. Technology can power and empower identity. The power of identity takes on new significance in a world of distributed technology, distributed leadership and distributed social definition. At present, Gauteng province ( http://www.gauteng.net/) in South Africa, in which Alexandra is situated, has developed a web site which broadcasts Alexandra as the home of past boycotts and struggles and invites inhabitants to make their contributions to its living history pages: the necessary index for collecting together experience and recognising identity is now present in this African location.

 The bus boycotts were an important device for black South African leaders in their efforts to achieve solidarity and reference to the bus boycotts and their role in the independence struggle is now to be found in the obituaries of these past leaders:

The obituary of John Pule published in Sechaba, 1989 and reproduced on the Web:
During the Alexandra bus boycott in 1957, at the time of the historic Treason Trial, it became John Pule's main task to coordinate with other areas in conducting a solidarity boycott in Soweto. Political activist, organiser and fighter, he was in the centre of the whirlwind.
( http://www.sacp.org.za/biographies/jpmotshabi.html)

Nzo has a long and distinguished career as a leader in the liberation struggle, he was behind the 1957 Alexandra bus boycott and was a key figure in the ANC delegation that was (sic) participated in talks with the apartheid government in the negotiations leading up to the 1994 elections.

 Holding the front of the stage: distributed technology, knowledge building and the maintenance of dispute.

 The earlier sections of this paper indicated that the importance of the new technology is not simply in its infinite archive capability nor is it located simply in the ability to access knowledge from remote locations rather the importance of the new technology may very well lie in its ability to knowledge build from remote locations. Knowledge building has been neglected in the context where the focus has fallen upon access to 'expert' knowledge - knowledge which may be impaired by the lack of adequate feedback.

Here, we will explore some of the on line tools and protocols that transport activists have used in knowledge building in recent consumer/electorate versus government/international business disputes but before moving to this bustling and thriving sector of on-line politics in the developed world, we want to return to South Africa.

The bus boycotts formed very important tools for the development of solidarity in the liberation movements of Africa and of Afro-Americans in the United States. With the emergence of black African leadership in Africa and improved equity arrangements in the United States, the strength of the transport boycott tool for manifesting civic protest does not disappear. Boycotts provide visible public outcomes, remain within the law and often have readily actionable enforcement dynamics: it is easy to see who breaks the boycott and uses public transport rather than walk - they are visible for the duration of their journey. Shunning the offending party is a dynamic which communities can and do enact. The new South Africa aware of its own history on transport boycotts has built into its policy documents devices and procedures for combatting unauthorised transport boycotts (http://www.transport.gov.za/docs/annual/section5.html): a quick review of the tasks of the Road Task Inspectorate is instructive:

Road task inspectorate:......Combatting unauthorised road transport, bus boycotts and taxi violence.

The archiving of social practice is a political activity and the archiving of local political voice represents a challenge which is already visible on the web.

Fuel charge and tax protests have now taken place in the United States, Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom. There is clearly global learning going on in respect of social and political practice. A key strategy is of knowledge building detailed information on the variations in fuel prices across the whole geography of any particular country. 'Eye on the pump' campaigns (http://www.oocities.org/the_odyssey_group/fueltaxcrisis/fueltaxcrisis.html) are to be found from Scotland across the Atlantic to Wisconsin. Each individual simply enters the local details on a common on-line form and the information aggregates to a collective national picture automatically: the information search costs are dramatically reduced and political campaigns effectively informed and able to enhance their bargaining stance.

Comparable with the aggregated information arrangements, transport activists have been making use of electronic petitioning technology (http://http://www.lowerpricedfuel.co.uk/) - a technology which enables the transport activist lobbies to demonstrate the scale of their support both before government and in front of the general public.

The updating or daily chronicling of activities is another function performed effectively by the distributed, globalised technology.  The technology provides an ability to counter the claims of government and international business with on line real time streamed images of action  - a consistent UK site in this respect was http://www.fuelprotest.com/ . Characterising peaceful protest as overly aggressive or criminal is more difficult when web-cam technology (Note 4) is in use.

These are but a few of the features of the new world of transport boycotts and protests: taken together, they demonstrate an ability to maintain global presence, knowledge building and the context for the enhancement of popular bargaining and politics.  'Ten minute' activism on a network model can generate information and personnel resources which match those of the very large agencies in society.  It is a new landscape with an old history of collective action: the dimensions of restricting of mobility and overcoming difficulties of accessibility are old political tools.  The prospect of virtual mobility and accessibility has consequences for the political terrrain of the physical: tele-assembly, an association tool which was inconceivable is now a reality. Tolpuddle martyrs to tele-assembly: it is a transport journey worth considering.

Conclusion: archiving social practice, a future for community information technology.

The time dimension of political action and of framing that action has developed a critical significance within the politics afforded by the new technologies: through archiving, action can be recontextualised. Agents and agencies which at the point of initiation of political action seemed doomed to lose can readily broadcast their triumph and request of others a more careful reconsideration of prospects for collective action in the future - consider the Liverpool dockers (http://www.labournet.net/docks2/other/update.htm#Liverpool).

Within the new time relationships and political relationships of electronic adjacency, the phenomenon of collective memory is heightened (Grieco, 1996). Protests can now be linked across time as well as space. Technology developers, grass root organisations and government agencies have all become aware of the potential of the new technologies to 'join up' communities which are in disrepair and which have become fragmented by the severance of urban design and modern scheduling pressures: 'ten minute' link ups to social activities in a technology which offers both 'real time' and asynchronous modes will increasingly be on offer.

In such a frame, ten minute activism is likely find a significant place: organising boycotts in such a context is, as we have seen here, a relatively simple business. Historically, campaigns and political activities required a high degree of coordination and administration: through new technology effective campaigns can be pursued with a lesser requirement for continuous and constant coordination.

On-line consumer campaigns to pressure industry and government are the order of the day; similarly, on-line community campaigns to promote and protect neighbourhoods have begun to emerge (see, for example, the case of the Craigmillar estate in Edinburgh, http://www.ccis.org.uk/; http://www.partnerships.org.uk/articles/ccis1.html). The development and refinement of community information technologies which enable the indexing, broadcasting and strategising of community experience and preferences are clearly not far away. The Digital Clubhouse Network, with its heavy involvement of technology developers, opens the door on what the future might look like: imagine the Montgomery bus boycott and the Civil Right movement streamed on-line, real-time globally.

Notes

1. 'Recontextualisation' is here taken to mean the reframing of the context of past action in the light of knowledge of outcomes. Argyris and Schon (1974, 1978) use the term 'double loop learning', broadly similar in meaning to Bateson's notion of 'deuterolearning' (Bateson, 1972) in respect of managerial and organisational learning. The issue we wish to call attention to here is the archiving and retrieval potential of the web for hitherto poorly resourced and subordinated groups to challenge the dominant modes of framing of the contexts in which they engaged (Grieco and Holmes, 1990; Holmes and Grieco, 1991).

2. See also Law (1986) on methods of long-distance control, which are central to the dominance of the West since the sixteenth century, also Latour (1987) on 'centres of calculation' (chapter 6)

3. See the ANC's archive of historical documents for the webpage on the Miners' Strike of 1946 (http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/misc/miners.html)

4. Web-cam technology provides live streaming of digital images from a camera connected to a PC, linked to the internet. Such technology is now robust and inexpensive, often bundled with entry-level personal computer systems.

References:

Brown, H. (1992) Women Organising, London: Routledge

Brown, H. and Hosking, D. M. (1986) 'Distributed leadership and skilled performance as successful organisation in social movements', Human Relations, 1

Congressman John Lewis (D-5, GA) Chief Deputy Democratic Whip, U.S. House of Representatives "Winds of Change: Civil Rights and Democratic Progress" Secretary's Open Forum March 20, 2000

Green, M. (1968 )The Bus Boycott, Salisbury, 1956. Unpublished M.A. Dissertation SOAS, London

Green, M. (1983) The Salisbury Bus Boycott, 1956. History in Zambia,  Journal of the Historical Association of Zambia, no.13

Grieco, M. (1996) Workers' Dilemmas, London: Routledge

Grieco, M. and Holmes, L. (1990) 'Radical beginnings, conventional ends? Organizational transformation - a problem in the development of radical organizations', in G. Jenkins and M. Poole (1990) New Forms of Ownership, London: Routledge

Holmes, L. and Grieco, M. (1991) 'Overt Funding, Buried Goals, and Moral Turnover: The Organizational Transformation of Radical Experiments', Human Relations, vol 44, no.7 1991

Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action, Milton Keynes: Open University Press

Law, J. (1986) On the methods of long-distance control: vessels, navigation and the Portuguese route to India, in J. Law (ed) Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Little, S., Holmes, L. and Grieco, M. (2000) Calling up culture: information spaces and information flows as the virtual dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, paper presented at IFIP WG9.4 Conference: Information Flows, Local Improvisations and Work Practices, Cape Town, May 2000

Luckhardt and Wall (1980) Organize ...or starve!: The History of the South African Congress of Trade Unions, London: Lawrence and Wishart (online version at http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/congress/sactu/organsta00.html)

Mokonyane, D. The Bus Boycott in South Africa: Lessons of Azikwelwa [2nd Edition] (Nakong Ya Rena, POB 3671, London, E1 2DX, UK, 1994) 119pp. £5.00 paper.

Living links:

Archiving social practice (http://www.oocities.org/the_odyssey_group/boycotts.html)

Calling up culture:information spaces and information flows as the virtual dynamics of inclusion and exclusion,
by Len Holmes, Steve Little and Margaret Grieco delivered in Cape Town, SA at IFIP 2000, (http://www.oocities.org/stephen_e_little/callup.html)

Digital Clubhouse Network (http://www.digiclub.org/)

event histories: multiple voicing (http://www.oocities.org/unionsonline/eventhistory.html)

Fuel tax protests 2000 (http://www.oocities.org/the_odyssey_group/fueltaxcrisis/fueltaxcrisis.html)

Montgomery boycott (http://socsci.colorado.edu/~jonesem/montgomery.html)

Transport and Society Network (http://www.oocities.org/transport_and_society)