The Practice of Receiving

The Practice of Receiving

  I am actually a huge proponent of sharing, and I believe deeply in the words I have heard from OER researcher, David Wiley: "Knowledge worth knowing is worth sharing."  In a recent article by Stephen Downes (2022), he writes about the "Seven Habits of Highly Connected People."  One of these is to "Share."  He advises readers not to pull back from sharing because they might be worried about someone else benefitting from their hard work.  "The way to function in a connected world is to share without thinking about what you will get in return. It is to share without worrying about so-called “free-riders” or people taking advantage of your work."  Your good work in sharing will come back around to benefit you, according to Downes.  But I am just a little bit hesitant.  

Many of my higher education colleagues come from ethnic and cultural groups that have been marginalized.  "Erasure" is a real thing.  The "free-riders" sometimes position themselves in the driver's seat.  In our society that is more connected than ever before, there is potential for marginalized peoples to share their stories and voices and research, but it is not uncommon for those voices to be erased by other louder voices.  Really, I am not positioned well as a white woman in higher education to write this, but I can call what I see.  What if you have had the title of your research paper shared in a casual conversation show up on the title of your colleague's publication?  What if you have had the cultural knowledge you shared reshared in an inappropriate manner?  What if getting your ideas out there has been so traditionally difficult for people from your demographic that giving an idea over to sharing feels more like your ideas are being subsumed into a colonial void?  In every share, there is a sharer and a recipient.  If we talk about the practice of sharing, we should probably talk about the practice of receiving.  How do we respect what is shared?  How do we hold it without appropriating or remodeling it inappropriate ways?  Where are those lines, when it comes to cultural and indigenous knowledge?

I believe in sharing, in growing the hive mind, in tearing down paywalls through open scholarship, and in putting knowledge on the open shelf.  However, I need to practice respectfully receiving and benefitting from, but not owning, the ideas that come by way of connection and sharing. I need to know when remixing and revising is not respectful.  Until respectful receiving is a consistent practice, there are probably times when information should not and will not be shared. 

There is one branch of Creative Commons that is working to clarify some of these lines and use creative commons licensing to allow indegenous people to choose what is or isn’t in the public domain.  This is one visual way to let recipients know how to receive respectfully.