Mapping Civil Society in the Digital Age: Critical Reflections From a Project Based in the Global South

Abstract

Initiatives to map nonprofit organizations encompass efforts to define the boundaries of the sector and understand its scope and scale. As new technologies make it possible to digitize and analyze information in new ways, further questions about mapping civil society emerge. We integrate nonprofit scholarship, critical work on computational methods, and reflection on our experiences using machine learning to map nongovernmental organizations in Ghana, to develop a critical framework for mapping civil society in the digital age. The issues we raise about computational methods are embedded within greater concerns about the taken-for-granted assumptions in mapping civil society, and mapping as a tool to control, manage, and manipulate civil society. We are particularly attentive to the power within mapping as a mode of knowledge production.

NVSQ Symposium on Critical Nonprofit Studies

“…We categorize work as “Category C” within our article when it pays explicit attention to power and knowledge in research. We see this in the articles by Seth Meyer, Elizabeth Dale, and Kareem Willis (2022) and the article by Megan LePere-Schloop, Peter Adjei-Bamfo, Justice Bawole, Susanne Appe, and Sandy Zook (2022). Drawing on the key tenets of queer theory that eschew binary notions of gender and sexuality, Meyer et al review the nonprofit literature for its coverage of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning) people and issues.…”

A Research Agenda for Civil Society

“…They found twice as many housing and shelter nonprofits than were coded in the NTEE. They used computational methods to map civil society in new ways to better capture organizations in the housing and shelter policy field, in this case in the state of Washington (for more about computational methods and mapping civil society, see LePere-Schloop et al, 2022). Fyall et al's (2018) study effectively illustrates that findings are divergent and dependent on the data that are produced and used.…”

“…That is, by counting and classifying organized civil society, mapping civil society as a metaphor and practice places definitions and boundaries around the subject or subjects being mapped. I am informed by scholars in political anthropology and political science (namely, James Scott) whose work helps to capture the role of statecraft in mapping (Appe, 2013;LePere-Schloop et al, 2022). I have also approached mapping as a potential regulatory transparency mechanism (Appe, 2015) and as a policy tool which shapes institutional and policy contexts (Appe, 2019).…”

Reflexivity in nonprofit management research: A reflection on the role of self as researcher

“…The collaborative relationship creates a distinctive researcher role permitting “new avenues, pathways and lines of interpretations” that would remain hidden using conventional research methods (Alvesson et al in Janssens & Steyaert, 2009, 144). Although previously limited in its use (Harris, 2001; Mowles et al, 2008), reflexivity is increasingly evident in scholarly studies (Beaton, 2021; Coule et al, 2020; Girei, 2017; LePere‐Schloop et al, 2021).…”