** apologies for cross posting **
Dear all,
Here is a quick neatline sketch http://testing.elotroalex.com/dhorgs/of the digital humanities organizations I can see around the world today. The map is quick and dirty, and misrepresents much. It would be nice to get a representation of memberships from each org by city or state, that would help localize trans-nationality more accurately. In lieu of that I'm hoping this can spark a conversation about representation, language and location. If you have private suggestions, feel free to send me a line. I welcome all public suggestions.
As I say in the about page:
LIES THIS MAP TELLS:
This map does not represent the trans-national membership of these
organizations. A heat map from member tallies would be more accurate. CenterNet is absent. Humanistica and ACH have a much wider reach than the map gives them credit for. My rationale for doing it was to show the territoriality of the largest number of members in each of these orgs, OR the regions they de facto represent. I find my lies point in the direction of a tension between language vs. region, representation vs. proportional membership. The lies are meant to spark a conversation about how we can move forward organizationally at the global level, through and around ADHO. I would favor moves in the direction of clearly defined meso-level regional/national organizations—open to global membership, of course, but clearly based somewhere—for the support of semi-local communities. The key here is support and representation for semi-local communities. To be clear, I am not against co-existence and collaboration with language-based trans-regional organizations that stretch the planet, and do believe we can achieve local support and representation if we work together carefully at the intersections of language/region/representation, as long as we foster local growth and agency. On that note, I should point out that many organizations represented here are already both language-region, like the RedHD or the DHD. In addition to these regional/language chapters, I imagine a union that can organize a global conference and foster collaboration. What ADHO is trying to do now.