From Social Movement to Moral Market by McInerney Paul-Brian;

Author:McInerney, Paul-Brian; [McInerney, Paul-Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

THE CIRCUIT RIDERS RESPOND

Conventions of Coordination as Movements React to Markets

The Circuit Rider movement began in 1997 through the efforts of Gavin Clabaugh, Rob Stuart, and countless organizers. Within three years, the movement had grown from a handful of Circuit Riders to a legion reportedly almost 10,000 strong. Yet, by 2002, NPower had come to dominate nonprofit technology assistance, moving a grassroots movement of largely independent activists toward a market for consulting services consisting largely of formal organizations. The proliferation of hybrid organizations created a diverse organizational field. Yet the rise of NPower and its model of technology assistance had largely transformed the activism around which the Circuit Riders had organized. The value of technology was no longer measured by its contribution to social justice and the environment. Rather, NPower had developed explicit performance metrics that expressed the value of technology by its contribution to cost savings and administrative efficiency at nonprofit agencies. Technology was no longer offered to nonprofit and grassroots organizations based purely on need. Rather, access to technology was effectively based on an organization’s ability to pay. Circuit Riders no longer traveled across the country evangelizing for information technology. Rather, NTAPs operated in geographically constrained markets, often cities and regions, though sometimes entire states. It seemed the Circuit Riders’ technology revolution was over.

However, the activism of the Circuit Riders lived on in the hybrid models of the NTAP field. Technology assistance never became a pure market. Their social values were integrated into the organizational DNA of NTAPs. For example, NPower NY was awarded a grant from SBC Global to fund a Circuit Rider program of its own. They hired a young woman to travel throughout parts of the country to provide technology assistance at no cost to agencies enrolled in the program. Furthermore, many of the social values expressed in the business plans of NPower affiliates derived from the activism of the Circuit Riders. In this chapter I explain the ongoing influence of the Circuit Rider movement on the market for technology assistance services in the nonprofit sector. I contend that the Circuit Rider movement’s counteractivism shaped the market for technology assistance in profound ways, away from a pure market and toward a hybrid market consisting of economic and social values—a moral market for technology. I use the term “counteractivism,” a play on the verb “counteract,” to describe how the Circuit Riders mobilized new meanings for technology and deployed new tactics to challenge market principles, and to reassert the social values they considered important to maintain in the nonprofit sector.

Circuit Riders responded in various ways to the dominance of NPower and the transformation of a movement toward a market. Many engaged with the market. Of these, some capitulated, forming organizations and either adopting the NPower model or, like Technology Works for Good in Washington, D.C., becoming NPower affiliates themselves. Others developed hybrid models on the movement side of the movement-market spectrum. For example, Media Jumpstart in New York City organized a collective to provide technology services for

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