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and mobilized unprecedented solidarity closely the processes by which these are
when their cause was relayed by supporters created.
onto the Internet (see Schulz, 1998, 2001b,
2001c for more detailed discussions). Less
known is the case of the Unión Regional de
Ejidos y Comunidades de la Costa Chica THE SOCIAL SHAPING OF THE
(Regional Union of Communal Landowners INTERNET
and Communities of the Costa Chica, the
URECHH), a regional association of indige- The theoretical perspective employed here
nous communities on the Costa Chica in rejects not only the resilient assumptions of
Oaxaca. The URECHH was able to over- technological determinism but also one-sided
come its problems with the intermediary political-economic structuralism and outright
buyer of its members’ agricultural products voluntarism. To be sure, one-sided perspec-
after it located a fair trade buyer in Canada tives can have the heuristic merit of recog-
on the Internet with the help of Servicios nizing through exaggeration the significance
Profesionales de Apoyo al Desarollo Integral of underappreciated factors. For example,
Indígena (Professional Support Services White (1966) made the famous technologi-
for Integrated Indigenous Development cal-determinist argument that feudal society
[SEPRADI]), a Mexico City-based NGO. In was the result of the invention of the stirrup.
both cases, access to global means of infor- In her view, the stirrup led to a dramatic
mation and communication meant gaining increase in military power because it made
political and economic strength, without fighting on horseback more effective.
which the prospect for an upgrading of Mounted combat then required a new econ-
conditions might not have improved in the omy that could produce new weapons and
same way. specially trained fighters and war horses.
The social distribution of formal and effec- This led in turn to a social reorganization and
tive NICT access is largely the product of the rise of an aristocratic elite of mounted
pronounced socio-economic inequality and at warriors. This historical reading has been
the same time a cause for further inequality. criticized (Hilton and Sawyer, 1963). White’s
An elite of the well-connected and best con- account is an innovative way of showing how
nected is emerging vis-à-vis a majority that technology can matter, but it is overly sim-
has only insufficient access or no access at plistic. The stirrup had come into use in many
all. Those who are excluded from access are other places without causing a reorgani-
at a disadvantage relative to those who are zation of society in the Frankian way. Innis
connected. This is true both economically, (1951), and later McLuhan (1964), pointed
because they cannot access profitable knowl- out that all societies are profoundly shaped
edge and useful contacts, and politically, by the particular propensities of specific
because they cannot use these media for gen- communication technologies. Ellul (1964)
erating communicative power. Digital argued that in modernity, technology had
inequality, thus, is not an irrelevant ‘luxury’ taken over and turned humans into its servants.
kind of inequality. It is not only an addi- These types of arguments are enormously
tional dimension of social inequality but it important not only for scientific discourse
increases the existing inequalities. The but also for the normative debate about
already marginalized parts of the population what kinds of media technologies might
are exposed to the acute danger that digital have more preferable social implications.
marginalization will marginalize them However, the problem with technological
even further. Having pointed to the stakes determinism, especially in its popular
involved in the formation of the new global varieties, is that it lets technological change
mediascape, I will now examine more appear as a quasi-natural process that is