Efforts to investigate
and understand the world around us are invariably dependent upon the
information that is made available about this reality. Such dependence
has led some to collect and distribute information and others to scoff
at such an effort being fundamentally biased, naive or limited in
nature. Much of the criticisms from the latter group revolve around
the fact that only certain individuals seem to get their story told;
history is censored or is told from the position of the victors. If
true, this information could undermine our efforts to understand,
to predict, and to act - leading to biased causal inferences and misguided
efforts at reform/social change.
This webpage is dedicated to providing information about and from
this "censored" or "neglected" reality. The
information contained here represents the outcome of numerous data
collection efforts undertaken by those who are interested in understanding
what takes place outside of the mainstream. Most of the information
concerns what Sidney Tarrow has labeled "contentious politics"
(i.e., those relations between members of society that extend outside
of the parameters of normal, routinized, institutionalized, political
interactions). Additionally, most of the information concerns groups
that are largely neglected within other collections of contentious
political behavior (e.g., African-Americans, Native-Americans, Women).
The "Radical Information Project" is currently composed
of five research projects of my own and several others from scholars
that are identified under the "projects" category. Across
all three of my projects I maintain that part of the difficulty
with assessing causes for contentious political relations is influenced
by the type of information that we utilize within our analyses.
Specifically, we are not very good at selecting between alternative
accounts of historical records (e.g., newspapers) and we are not
very good at tracking dissidents/repressors or dissent/repression
through space as well as time.
The other projects housed at this cite also share in the belief
that our current understanding of contentious politics is limited
due to the data that we rely upon. Each project is directed toward
improving this situation - albeit with different substantive interests
and across different temporal-spatial domains. Enjoy and feel free
to communicate any suggestions.
