One of the significant advances generated by the last ten years of discourse on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Society has been the conceptualization of relationships between GIS and Information Technology (IT) and processes of marginalization.  This discourse has sought to understand the oppressive uses and implications of technology while simultaneously working to harness its usefulness for empowering marginalized communities, locales, and groups (Pickles 1995).   

 A practical outcome of the GIS and Society research focus has been the development, implementation, and assessment of a proliferation of GIS-related partnership programs, more generally described as Public Participation GIS or PPGIS.  However, Schroeder (1997a and 1997b) observes that inconsistent conceptualization and language of  participatory GIS can obscure a more fundamental project of  understanding community information frameworks.  Moreover, not only has there been a lack of research about the transformative role that PPGIS projects can play within communities, as Harris and Weiner suggest (1998a and 1998b), there is also a lack of research about the power relations within PPGIS partnerships themselves.  Finally, there is a lack of analysis of community experiences and frameworks for developing and using spatial information and GIS as well as with IT in general.  It is suggested  here that these issues call into question the viability of using information technology to transform social relations towards empowerment of the marginalized.  By questioning the viability of this aim, I hope to more fundamentally explore what is meant by empowerment through a focus not on partnerships related to shared technology development but on technology and information use contexts.   

 Towards this end, it will also be necessary to explore some implicit notions of PPGIS.  I argue that one aspect of PPGIS which is assumed in many presentations of PPGIS models is that it is a means of transferring the use of GIS and IT to communities through partnerships between institutions with experience and expertise in the development and use of spatial information and GIS technology to marginalized communities (which are seen as not having appropriate technology).  An implicit goal of PPGIS from this vantage point is that through the use of GIS, marginalized communities can increase their empowerment through more effective participation in formal or mainstream decision making processes such as planning and environmental management.  Partnership programs with communities that constitute this idea of PPGIS typically link universities, government agencies (often through universities as agents), and foundations to community based organizations (CBOs),  non-governmental organizations (NGOs), grassroots organizations(GROs), and poor peoples organizations (PPOs) through the development of GIS projects that ostensibly  forward the objective of community participation in formal decision making processes.  Given that this partnership-technology relationship is fundamental to PPGIS, at what point do we recognize empowerment outcomes from the perspective of the community?  More importantly, is it ethical for us to position ourselves to recognize empowerment outcomes of marginalized communities?   

 In this chapter, I will examine the dynamics of partnerships related to GIS and IT, including the relationships between technologies and organizational structure, drawing on the example of the use and development of information technologies by a well known Brazilian environmental NGO, Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica,  and the network of Brazilian NGOs that form Rede Mata Atlântica.  My focus will be on the differential power relations represented by the possible notions from within technologically privileged settings of the role of technology and partnerships in traversing isolation and marginalization "of" less privileged community organizations.   

 Building on Perritt's application of the use social learning as a basis for social action (1998), I will address the simple question of whose marginalization is being traversed in partnership programs, and how the idea of multiple frameworks for identifying goals of partnerships might alter the discourse around participatory models.  While the transformative role that partnerships can play is a central preoccupation from within privileged technology settings, without better depiction of the technology use framework from the margins, even defining transformation processes and transformative outcomes is an illusive task.  This examination permits a contextualized understanding of relationships between information technology use, including participatory GIS and IT, and organizational actions.  It aims to contribute to a more textured notion of empowerment that in turn challenges and reconsiders the basis for constructing social relationships around this objective through technology partnerships.  

 GIS and Society research has provided a framework from which to broaden the examination of the social implications of GIS.  One of the changes in how social implications have been addressed during the past 10 years is that more perspectives are considered important to the discussion of society's information needs (Obermeyer 1995, Onsrud and Rushton 1995, Sheppard 1995).  In large part, what had previously comprised social concern related to research on the development and implementation of GIS was how to overcome barriers to using GIS as a tool for accomplishing tasks on behalf of society, such as planning, developing government information systems, environmental monitoring, and disaster response. GIS and Society research has also resulted in (and reflected) efforts and investments in partnerships between institutions, the development of new approaches for using GIS, reconsideration of the relationships between information and representation, and analysis of ethical dilemmas created through technology use.   

 The task of applying GIS to increase community participation in decision making   continues to be an important theme and agenda for GIS and Society research, but also incorporated is an analysis of technology from the vantage point of social theory.  Drawing upon the perspectives of social theorists has permitted a deconstruction of what were once privileged assumptions about the positive advantages of GIS for resolving spatial information management problems on behalf of society.  It has also permitted an examination of the notion that access to GIS is equated with community empowerment.  In Ground Truth, Pickles (p.10, 1995) challenges the assumption that technology is neutral or even positive in its impacts to marginalized communities struggling to achieve participatory roles in their own governance.  Yet he holds out the hopefulness that GIS technology in the hands of marginalized communities might produce a democratization in decision making through the creation of electronic networks and virtual spaces for counter-hegemonic dialog.  Curry (1995, p. 72) also describes an  inherent relationship between technology and power, noting that GIS was developed purposefully as an "instrument of policy making."  Harris et al. (1995, pp. 202-203) assert a transformative relationship between technology and accessibility more directly, stating that since access to information forms a critical element of social power relations, access to GIS represents empowerment.  Moreover, they describe the conditions in which a lack of access to technology in fact signifies social and political marginalization.   

 This construction of a relationship between access to spatial information and GIS and empowerment has had a profound influence upon the subsequent articulation of GIS and Society research themes. Accessibility has come to be seen as a means by which community empowerment is measured.  To be sure, the notion of accessibility as empowerment holds legitimacy for many issues and is well represented in the development of participatory and community GIS models, reflected in the PPGIS case study literature.  However, one of the limitations of this notion is that it leads to an analysis in which knowledge about how to structure spatial information and on the use and development of GIS technology  becomes the focus of participatory work with communities. This approach is reflected not only in participatory and community GIS models, but also in more mainstream planning efforts such as the development of data sharing infrastructure built upon government information gathered as related  to public decision making (Lopez 1998, Masser 1998, Onsrud and Rushton 1995, Rhind 1997).   

 The formulation of the GIS and Society Initiative (I-19) of The National Center for Geographic Information Analysis (NCGIA)  in 1996 represented a coming of age of the mounting concerns about the paradox of widespread dissemination of GIS technology along side of significant disparities in the use of and access to GIS that were identified in Ground Truth.  One of the impacts of formulating a formal initiative of NCGIA on GIS and Society was to draw out different conceptualizations of social implications, to include both negative and positive implications of GIS and IT for society at multiple scales and for multiple communities.  While the technology was becoming easier to obtain because of cost reductions, questions about the use of technology for social control and continued concerned about differential accessibility to technology were raised  (Curry 1998, Harris and Weiner 1998a and 1998b, McHaffie 1995).  Perhaps more significantly, the outcomes of GIS development and implementation became the subject of critical assessment from the perspectives of multiple communities and localities at multiple scales, both within the GIS and Society research framework (Harris et al. 1995) and beyond  (e.g. Downey 1998, Gray, 1995, Haraway 1997).   

 Along side of the critiques of the subversive tendencies of GIS and IT and its failure to produce empowerment for marginalized peoples, PPGIS programs have been developed as alternative approaches for shared technology use (Harris and Weiner 1998a and 1998b, Sheppard 1995). Participatory and community GIS programs develop and use GIS technology and information on behalf of and conjunction with the public.  Harris and Weiner  (1998a and 1998b) note that the goals of PPGIS are often framed as: the democratization of participation in decision making as a result of developing and using GIS, and alternately, the development of GIS that reflects the demand and context for specific communities.  While they ague that these differently conceptualized notions of PPGIS are related to sharply contrasting ideas about what constitutes community empowerment, PPGIS remains useful as a strategy to overcome the obstacles that exist to utilizing technology by underpowered groups.  

 As currently constructed,  PPGIS is inherently inter-institutional, following an evolution of the idea of technology and information transfer from more to less privileged organizational and community settings.  Herein lies an important limitation of PPGIS to actually achieve empowerment.  The focus of PPGIS is on transference of knowledge about how to develop GIS, as opposed to how community identity might be represented within a GIS and related to true empowerment.  Because of this, the actual work being done through PPGIS  partnership arrangements is embedded with differential power among the partners vis a vis the larger aim of the marginalized to gain legitimacy within the hegemonic power structure.   

 In fact, the basis of PPGIS is that one partner is more privileged in terms of knowledge about the technology, even as the ideal nature of these partnerships might be participatory and reflexive.  The PPGIS objective becomes to empower marginalized communities within a broader social structure by virtue of initiating and improving effective use of GIS for either accessing information of the hegemonic knowledge structure or for representing the knowledge structure and identity of the community to the hegemonic social and power structure.  But even in this schema, to develop an analysis of the barriers to true empowerment of marginalized communities we must also critically examine privileged institutions and their frameworks for participatory technology development.   

 The critique that GIS and IT have not helped to consistently overcome the barriers to empowerment that marginalized groups experience is partially explained by the technical and conceptual difficulties faced in integrating  multiple knowledge frameworks into system design.  This problem  has led to a great deal of progress on analyzing the limitations of GIS to represent information, and of the limitations of information to represent worlds of knowledge (Curry 1995 and1998). Curry translates this problem into a discussion of the ethical dilemmas that arise as the unquestioned structures of knowledge become the management task of GIS, as the task of GIS extends beyond the knowledge framework of any one individual, and as individual rights diminish through participation in the knowledge-information structure of the GIS "black box" (Curry 1995 and 1998).  Curry's concern is of a technology that drives future structures of knowledge, information and ultimately individual identity.  His work underscores a central theme in the GIS and Society discourse – that depending upon the experience of knowing of an individual or community of people, a system can simultaneously provide representation of a world of knowledge for some and pervert the empowerment in terms of a knowledge and information framework for others.   

 This theme of the importance of understanding cultural praxis in relationship to contestation is addressed from within the social movements literature, in which creating and representing identity is seen as an essential component of traversing barriers to empowerment (Pulido 1998).  However, the social movements literature has taken only a cursory look at the interrelationships between technology use and contesting oppressive hegemonies.  The underpinnings for the work of integrating these two perspectives lie partially in the intersection of the GIS and Society concern with empowerment through access to technology and in the work of many examinations of identity now being explored through ethnographies that depict the meanings of information technology and transformative relationships between virtual and human world realms. Exploring partnerships, particularly the power relations held in them, from both of these perspectives is perhaps one way of getting at what empowerment means and how GIS and IT accomplish or represent empowerment for the marginalized.   

 The remainder of this paper aims to expand on the depiction of empowerment through consideration of the experience of information and technology use from the perspective of community entities, focusing specifically on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but applying to community based organizations (CBOs), grass roots organizations (GROs), and poor peoples organizations (PPOs) as well.  To the extent that NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs experience limitations in access to technology, data, software, and training, the necessity to seek support from other technical partners in order to meet technology use and information management objectives places them in a low resource category.  Enormous gaps continue to exist between high and low resource settings in GIS, and much of the PPGIS focus is to create mechanisms for bringing technology resources to low resource settings. As examples of low-resource technology use settings, NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs  provide a vantage point from which to consider how empowerment of marginalized communities might be reconceptualized, and ultimately what constitutes PPGIS and implied institutional arrangements.   

 Depicting the framework of information technology and GIS use from the perspective of the community context marks a strong contrast with the way in which issues about technology use have been addressed.  Concepts such as technology transfer, organizational capacity building, and training have become standard to a discussion of how to improve the use of technology within organizations, particularly those which fall outside of the resource flow and organizational structure typically associated by technology developers with the need for information and information management tools.  Even in discourse that seeks to push this relationship past traditional technology transfer approaches, the idea of a non-top down GIS partnership is illusive.  By shifting the attention to the actual technology use context we can begin to address the persistent concerns of  accessibility, technology impacts on organizations, and empowerment (or lack of empowerment) as related to  technology use.   

 In the real world of GIS adoption, and particularly within low-resource settings, there are many reasons that systems are developed that move beyond the intended uses of these technologies as they were designed, or as they are conceived of in partnership arrangements (Masucci 1996).  For example, many use desktop GIS for automated mapping purposes, not for database driven mapping purpose, even though desktop applications often provide more sophisticated tools for analyzing and querying databases and for displaying results. Alternatively, some institutions use the development of GIS to demonstrate their analytical capabilities, without necessarily linking the analytical results to the decision making processes that GIS has the potential to support.   Another scenario of GIS development that would seem to have little to do with the actual capabilities of the software and hardware is that many settings have technically skilled individuals as members of their staff, who seek applications for specific projects, and are adept at utilizing some tools from the application bundles that become available with the development of GIS capabilities in that setting.   

 These scenarios of use and development of GIS from the standpoint of different organization objectives, institutional resources, and human resources capabilities represent an important area of research in GIS adoption.  Much effort in recent years has been spent on identifying and assessing organizational approaches to GIS adoption, with an emphasis on depicting GIS use in planning settings  (Calkins 1991; Campbell and Masser 1995; Masser and Blakemore 1991; Masucci 1994 and 1995; Obermeyer and Pinto 1994; Worrall 1991).   However, information about NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs contexts as settings for the use of information technologies is all too often embedded within PPGIS case study descriptions, even as the theoretical basis for linking an understanding of NGO, CBO, GRO, and PPO actors is critical to an understanding of how social movements create discourse space and contest oppressive circumstances (Escobar and Alvarez, 1992, Perritt 1998, Pulido 1998).   

 PPGIS in part relies on alliances between mainstream organizations and alternative organizational structures - ones that lie beyond the realm of the public sector and government support. Moreover, in specific contexts, NGOs, GROs, CBOs, and PPOs often provide leadership to develop a role for citizen and community input where one does not exist.  Formed  linkages between these organizations and mainstream organizations, such as government organizations and the private sector entities, can cast NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs as unresponsive to communities they represent or from which they arose.  However, I argue here that because many community organizations operate from the goal of community representation and identity building, they merit consideration as a unique category of organizations from which to examine the use and development of GIS and IT.  

 Perritt and Masucci (1997) depict NGO (and CBO, GRO, and PPO) actions as outcomes of the efforts to construct a public awareness of interests not represented in mainstream decision making structures.  This depiction suggests that NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs provide organization structure for marginal social interests, and that they strategize how to impact upon mainstream interests on behalf of marginal ones.  In contrast  to public sector planning and environmental management agencies, NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs  often address the environmental concerns and communities which were neglected by government environmental protection and monitoring programs, thereby providing the impetus for the mainstream organizations to create new strategies and approaches from which to address advocated concerns.   

 As we begin to explore the differences within the environmental movements represented through collective action (represented by NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs), we notice yet more advanced frameworks for action.  Pulido (1998) describes a disjuncture between "mainstream" environmentalism and "subaltern" environmentalism, and notes that in contesting the hegemonic order, subaltern environmental movements, which are comprised of the marginalized, must be linked to the struggle for identity.  She states that these "movements are simultaneously about both material concerns and systems of meaning, thereby challenging the notion that identity issues are not of concern to those struggling to survive.  The reality of many contemporary movements and struggles is that they are not simply about a search for identity or improved quality of life – needs upon which those who are financially and physically secure can focus" (p. 13).  She argues (after Escobar) that environmental struggles of the subaltern are about a combination of factors - economic, social, political and cultural struggle.   

 If we accept the argument that social movements are at there essence creating and representing identities as part of interrelated struggles, then NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs are agents in this struggle.   From a social movement perspective, using technology can position the environment, for example, as worthy of public concern, and mastery of technology to document environmental quality can provide a point of entrance into the public policy making arena.  Moreover, we can also examine how NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs use technology to construct identity.  We can alternatively consider how NGOs, CBOs, GROs, and PPOs construct an understanding of the meaning of information technologies, which may include PPGIS but perhaps unrecognizable from the standpoint of technological privilege.  

 Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica (SOS) is a Brazilian NGO based in São Paulo that was established in 1986 with the objective of raising environmental awareness in the assessment of problems associated with deforestation of the Atlantic Rainforest.  The organization has evolved from one mainly concerned with developing a scientific understanding of the geographic extent of deforestation into an organization which spearheads environmental policy formation at the state and national level. SOS now is an organization which assists other grassroots organizations and community efforts in environmental problem solving and empowerment.  The organization has evolved to include improving citizen involvement in environmental problem solving as a central focus.   

 Part of its strategy has been to construct widely recognized visual metaphors that have helped to create and to raise environmental consciousness in the state of São Paulo during the past ten years.  A simple example is found in the interpretation of the organizational logo, which appears from a distance to look like the Brazilian Flag.  The flag of Brazil is green with a large yellow diamond in the center bearing a blue celestial globe with 27 five-pointed stars (one for each state and the Federal District). The globe has a white equatorial band with the motto ORDEM E PROGRESSO, which means "Order and Progress" written within it.  In the place of the green background found on the Brazilian Flag, the SOS logo creates a half white and green background – symbolizing the proportionate deforestation that has occurred in Brazil since the European colonial arrival.  In the place of "Ordem and Progresso" is written "SOS Mata Atlântica."  And beneath the image is written the motto most associated with the foundation: Estão tirando o verde da nossa terra " - "[We] are throwing away the green of our earth." The powerful image of SOS is well known in São Paulo and beyond, and marks every SOS activity, location, product, and action.  It has recently been commercialized, with a percent of the revenues of the sale of SOS –  endorsed items supporting its environmentalist actions.   

 In Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica, the use of GIS has been an important component of creating public awareness of environmental problems, including but not limited to deforestation of the Atlantic Rainforest.  Other concerns include water quality, which is inextricably linked to meeting the survival needs of the urban poor in São Paulo; air quality; and social action through community organization and volunteerism around neighborhood environmental quality problems.   

 Initially, SOS collaborated primarily  with national and international non-governmental organizations, industry, government and scientists to establish baseline data depicting the original domain and remaining fragments of the Atlantic Rainforest using remote sensing and GIS techniques.  It delimited remaining forest areas that are at risk of deforestation from on encroaching land uses.  SOS has used these outcomes to develop an information-based argument for the establishment of public policy that would protect some of the remaining forest areas.   The use of GIS and remote sensing has evolved from this initial task of depicting the domain of the Atlantic Rainforest to analyzing deforestation of remaining forest fragments in five year periods.  The most recent example of this was the 1998 publication of an Atlas (Atlas da Evolução dos Remanescentes Florestais e Ecossistemas Associados do Domínio da Mata Atlântica entre 1990-1995) depicting change in land use from 1990-1995.   

 The technical role of SOS is critical to its identity in that it strategically positioned the organization to construct an as of then unvisualized reality - the domain of a 93% degraded eco-system now known as the Atlantic Rainforest, or alternatively as the ecosystems of the Atlantic Rainforest Domain.  By using this "scientifically" constructed understanding to promote its role in defending remaining ecosystem fragments of the Atlantic Rainforest, SOS also legitimized its role in the promotion of other social-environmental concerns.   

 This approach to environmental advocacy has been continued in the use and development of GIS and IT by other programs at SOS, most notably in the Núcleo União Pró-Tietê project and in the Respira São Paulo projects.  Núcleo União Pró-Tietê was established as a water quality monitoring project in which 5000 volunteers through about 50 water watch groups which conduct simple tests of water quality. The main goal of the project is educating citizens about basic water quality and environmental protection along the Tietê River in the State of São Paulo.  Núcleo União Pró-Tietê developed a GIS approach for representing citizen and key decision maker perceptions about environmental problems (Barreto 1995).  Relying primarily upon the volunteer-collected water quality data and interviews of local environmental managers to determine at-risk local environments, Núcleo União Pró-Tietê sought to accomplish two objectives in its systems's development.  One objective was to develop a working map of environmental quality in the whole basin; a second objective was to use map outputs to raise awareness among citizens about where the most at-risk locations were.  This GIS system also showed  perceived problems throughout the basin by various water and key environmental decision makers.  By involving citizens in ownership of the actual environmental risk map, Núcleo União Pró-Tietê hoped to further stimulate grass roots organizing around locally defined water quality problems.   

 Respira São Paulo (Breath São Paulo) is a similar public education program that seeks to raise environmental awareness through a focus on air quality in São Paulo.  The program distributes treated flags to residents and schools throughout the city of São Paulo.  These flags capture particulate matter in the air and darken in relationship to air pollution. Program participants measure the "color" of the darkened flags against a key that translates the color into categories of air quality.  Participants then mail the keys back to SOS, which uses them to demonstrate the fact of community participation in monitoring air quality.  All who view the flag gain the multiple images and awarenesses (and meanings): the magnitude of the problem of air pollution in greater São Paulo; the significance of social action to promote awareness to all who view the flag; the foundation as the vanguard of the public interest in demanding air quality and in promoting social activism around this issue.  Within SOS, the locations where air quality was "measured," as well as the volunteer-determined categories of air quality, are collected and mapped.  Maps are used in public education materials and promotions of SOS actions.   

 As with the Núcleo União Pró-Tietê program, the multifaceted objectives of this Respira São Paulo monitoring program is as focused on making participants and the public aware of air quality as a problem as with building a grassroots environmental movement in which learning is related to social action. While air quality is a highly visible fact of life in São Paulo, as the municipal and state car rotation policies reflect, the task of measuring quality and recording the reading as part of creating a larger information data base is part of the overall educational objective of SOS.   In giving citizens a connection to the relationship between monitoring, information gathering, identifying baseline knowledge about the problem (albeit constructed by SOS), and using information, SOS again stimulates a place and consciousness building from which communities enter into the broader social discourse around improving community conditions.   

 Mãos à Obra! (Hands to Work!) is the Foundation's community building program, in which grassroots groups, primarily at the neighborhood level, organize around issues of concern to their communities.  Issues include water quality, public health, trash disposal and recycling, and environmental education.  SOS provides leadership training and organizational building resources, including sponsoring workshops, lectures, and enlisting members as volunteers for other SOS actions.  Many of the Mãos à Obra! groups are also involved in Núcleo União Pró-Tietê; and this cross-purpose activism is an aimed for outcome of the social organizing efforts of SOS.  

 The use of data from volunteers in the Núcleo União Pró-Tietê and Respira São Paulo projects to develop GIS tools represents a very different conceptualization of GIS as a decision making tool compared, for example, to how government agencies or researchers involved in environmental monitoring proceed, providing an innovative point of departure for subsequent use of the developed information sets.  Even the approach to making the atlas of the Atlantic Rainforest, which relied upon partnerships with researchers and government agencies as opposed to citizen volunteers, is an equally alternative framework for environmental quality monitoring as normally assessed and developed by government planning efforts.  These examples of alternative approaches for selecting databases to be included subsequently within the GIS, and ultimately represented in the virtual realm, because it provides a mechanism for prioritizing environmental problems followed by the selection of data to fit those priorities.   

 Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica's GIS approach is to link scientific results with environmental awareness campaigns.  This style of information handling contrasts sharply with approaches in other types of institutions.  Government, for instance, is often developing databases as archives, that is records of transactions of business and the public.  Because much government GIS development is centered on these objectives, a primary objective of GIS use is often to manage large data sets. Research driven GIS activities, when independent from overtly social objectives, are alternatively focused on providing accuracy in the location of interrelated phenomenon for specified purposes.  GIS technology, however, can be used to map phenomenon which are not actually geographically referenced, as in the Núcleo União Pró-Tietê project.  This mapping project involved the identification of environmental "hot" spots through perceptions of interviewed environmental managers and activists at local levels throughout the Tietê River Basin.  The result was a GIS system that illustrated at risk locations based on the perceptions and local knowledge of interviewed environmentalists.  The significance of this approach is that such results were later used in efforts to raise public awareness about local problems, and to garner additional donor support for such campaigns.  Again, this role of GIS is an important one to understand, as the results compel because of their widespread distribution through publicity forums, such as popular magazines and newspaper articles.   

 Equally important to understanding the role and participatory nature of GIS development through SOS program is its role in the formation and leadership role for  Rede de ONGs da Mata (Network of NGOs of the [Atlantic Rain-] Forest), or "Rede."  Embedded in the SOS Website is brief description of the Rede.  It was was formed in 1992 in anticipation of the World Conference Concerning Development and Environment - UNCED 92, better known as ECO 92, which was held in June 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.   Approximately 170 governmental, 50 inter-governmental (FMI, OIT, UNESCO) and 500 non-governmental entities, including about 100,000 participants were involved in Eco 92. Large Brazilian NGOs, such as SOS, saw this as an opportunity to expand resources and networks around their agendas.  The Rede was formed in this context.  It consists of 100 environmental organizations focused on building an interchange and political action defending the Atlantic Rainforest.  The Rede edits and distributes weekly newsletters and publishes the Journal of the Atlantic Rainforest.  Initially led by SOS, the current leadership for the Rede is provided by GAMBA, an NGO located in Salvador, Bahia which primarily works on environmental education and awareness efforts.   

 While the SOS website could provide a comprehensive presentation of its activities, programs, and GIS maps, instead it simply occupies a virtual location providing just elemental information about the organization.  The main graphics found in the site are the SOS logo and logos for its programs.  The Rede has no web presence, other than the one paragraph description of it located on the SOS page.  How is it that an organization and organizational network which has been constructed based on its  development of particular information relying on GIS and IT has a website in which its most important product - The Atlas - is not represented?   

 The paradox of the disjuncture between the strategizing of SOS through GIS and IT development and its simplistic virtual presence lies in a reassessment of the meaning of information to the organization.  For SOS, providing leadership to the Rede is empowerment because it brings other organizations into the network of resources and environmental identities created through massive public education campaigns.  That information technology was and remains central to this effort provides an important point of contact between SOS and the Rede with mainstream organizations, even as the approaches used fall far outside of how mainstream organizations would develop and manage information.  Because the legitimacy of SOS to the environmental movement in Brazil is tied to it remaining on the margins, the approach to developing GIS and IT cannot too closely parallel other formats.   

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