Information and Communications Technologies ICTs and Development

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Lecture 8

• Information and Communications Technologies
  (ICTs) and Development

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Review of Lecture 7 Knowledge, the Environment
Sustainable Development

• What is sustainable development?
• How might an understanding of culture help us
  appreciate the complex relationship between
  people and the environment?
• How do environments shape the lives of people who
  live in them?
• How do people shape the environments
  in which they live?
• Case studies Malaysia, Guinea

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Lecture 7 Questions to consider

• How do people read or understand the
  environment?
• To what extent do people shape the environment
  around them, and to what extent are they shaped
  by their environment(s)?
• How does power and knowledge work in these
  circumstances? Whose interpretations
  predominate?
• If the environment needs saving, whose knowledge
  should be used to save it?

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Lecture 7 Key points

• Conflicts over sustainable development are not
  only conflicts over resources, but conflicts over
  knowledge and competing visions of development.
• Environmental destruction is often blamed on
  local people, but by paying attention to the
  way the relationship between culture, the
  environment, and development is construed has
  allowed anthropologists to challenge received
  wisdoms.

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Week 8 ICTs and Development

• How do ICTs relate to peoples
  experiences of development?
• Do ICTs have a homogenising effect on global
  culture, or they adopted and used differently in
  diverse social, cultural, and economic contexts?
• What is the digital divide or the technology
  gap and are bridging these a way to combat
  poverty?
• Case studies low-income mobile phone use

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Information Communications Technologies (ICTs)

• The Internet (including email, instant messaging,
  Web browsing)
• Digital capture, storage, and
  sharing of information
• Communications networks mobile, phone,
  satellite, etc.
• Increased bandwith
• What about older technologiesprint media,
  radio, and television?

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What is the digital divide?

• Differences in access (in sustained and
  affordable form) to a range of ICTs (phones,
  radio, TV, Internet, mobiles, etc.)
• Different levels of development of the underlying
  infrastructure that enables access to and
  networking of ICTs
• Different levels of capacity to meaningfully use
  ICTs and digital content.
• (Kerry S. McNamara,
  ICTs, Poverty, and
  Development 200324)

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ICT-for-Development

• Seeks to bridge the digital divide by improving
  poor peoples access to ICTs
• Promotes to use of ICTs for poverty reduction and
  sustainable development
• Includes wide-ranging partnerships between NGOs,
  the private sector (businesses), and national
  governments to coordinate strategies for
  improving access to ICTs
• Most large, multilateral and bilateral
  development agencies have developed extensive
  programmes of ICT-for-development

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The Promise of the Mobile Phone 1

• By investing in mobile networks rather than
  conventional landlines, developing nations can
  skip a phase of telephony development
• Mobile phones can be used in a variety of
  development interventions e.g., health
  promotion programmes

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The Promise of the Mobile Phone 2

• Mobile phones can be used by poor people for
  local, income-generating activities
• Used and unwanted mobile phones from
  industrialised countries can be recycled and
  re-used in developing countries

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Corporate Section Investment Areas Learners
Section Contact Us
Corporate Section gt Home Our dream is to
empower selected communities through ICT this
involves amongst other things the provision of
new and innovative technology such as multimedia
and broadband services where applicable. Through
this technology it is hoped that communities will
be able to effectively address their social,
educational, technological and economical needs.
Prelene SchmidtActing CEO Telkom Foundation

• Executive Summary
• The past year has seen the Telkom Foundation
  continuing its important work in disadvantaged
  communities across South Africa - making a
  difference in big and small ways by providing
  Information and Communication Technologies (ICT),
  education, infrastructure and community projects
  and support to those that need it most.
• Since its establishment in 2002, these continuous
  efforts towards community upliftment have made
  the Telkom Foundation one of the country's
  foremost corporate social investment
  organisations - something that could never have
  been achieved without the dedicated team who make
  our social investment vision a reality.
• In the past year we continued with our flagship
  projects - our 12 ICT villages across South
  Africa, the Beacon of Hope initiative and the
  Giving from the Heart programme. We also added a
  new project - the "Train-the Trainer" programme -
  to ensure that IT skills are developed and remain
  within the communities we serve.
• As always, we continued our sponsorship of
  Childline and Lifeline. In addition we held the
  annual Tellkom Teacher of the year award that
  recognise and reward the sterling teachers who
  dedicate their time and energy to nurturing
  tomorrow's leaders. You will be able to read more
  about these worthy initiatives and our year's

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ICTs-for-Development 3 Assumptions

• ICTscan be used as tools of poverty reduction
  and sustainable development
• ICTswill be continually adapted by people in
  poor and developing countries, as they find ways
  of using them to combat their own poverty
• ICTscan be used to create opportunities for
  social and economic development amongst the
  poorest

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Labour-saving devices?

• Electric iron (1903), toaster (1912), electric
  vacuum cleaner (1907).
• Time that housewives spent on housework did not
  decline.
• Why? Because of the dramatic rise in standards
  of cleanliness.

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Impact of technology on housework, 1930s

• Because we housewives of today
  have the tools to reach it, we dig every day
  after the dust that grandmother left to spring
  cataclysm. If few of us have nine children for a
  weekly bath, we have two or three for a daily
  immersion. If our consciences don't prick us over
  vacant pie shelves or empty cookie jars, they do
  over meals in which a vitamin may be omitted or a
  calorie lacking.
• from Ladies Home Journal, c.1930

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Technology and social change Three points from
the Hoover example

• Technological innovations alone do not
  necessarily improve wider social arrangements
  (e.g. patterns of domestic labour allocation).
• What eventually changed the amount of time women
  devoted to their housekeeping was economic
  transformation, changing gender roles, and new
  domestic arrangements, such as
• - Men doing more housework,
• - Women working outside the home, and
• - Hiring other women (cleaners) to do housework.

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Cultural Appropriation of TechnologyThe Kayapo
(Brazil)
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On the Kayapo

• The technical objectification of their
  own culture
  through use of Western
  video technology has become an
  
  important means by which the Kayapo
  
  are constructing this traditional
  culture and ethnic
  identity. In addition
  to the uses of video
  self-documentation
  for education and as a repository
  of cultural knowledge against losses from death
  or acculturation, many Kayapo see video as a
  means of reaching out to non-Kayapo, presenting
  their culture and way of life in a form that
  others can understand, respect and support. They
  see this as an essential part of their struggle
  to sustain and defend their society and
  environment.
• (Terrence Turner)

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Lessons from the Kayapo

• When indigenous groups use adopt and use
  technological innovations, it does not meant that
  they have lost their culture ICTs may be used
  to protect culture or advocate self-determination.
  
• Instead, we have to look at the multiple uses of
  different technologies, and ask
• For what purpose is technology being used?
• By whom?
• Who is allowed and not allowed to participate?
  Who decides?
• What are the outcomes/effects of technology use,
  and how do these differ for different categories
  of actors (men, women, young, old, etc.)

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Readings for Week 8

• Hahn, Hans Peter and Ludovic Kibora. (2008) The
  Domestication of the Mobile Phone Oral Society
  and New ICT in Burkina Faso. The Journal of
  Modern African Studies 46(1)87-109.
• Horst, Heather and Daniel Miller. (2005) From
  Kinship to Link-up Cell Phones and Social
  Networking in Jamaica. Current Anthropology
  46(5)755-78.

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Questions for this weeks readings

• How, and for what purpose do poor people (in
  Jamaica and Burkina Faso) use mobile phones?
• Is there a conflict between economic and social
  goals in using the mobile phones?
• How are mobile phones used to deepen or extend
  social networks and what role might these
  networks play in times of economic vulnerability?
• Can the distribution and use of mobile phones
  reduce poverty in low-income countries? Why or
  why not?

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Critiques of ICT-for-Development?

• The poor dont need ICTs. Development should
  focus on basic needs.
• The symptom (the digital divide) is mistaken for
  the cause (poverty).
• Public-private partnerships enrich large telecom
  companies who promote themselves as agents of
  sustainable development.
• Too much focus on new technologies!

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Conclusions

• The case of ICTs in development
  opens broader questions about the
  relationship between technology, culture, and
  development as progress.
• New technologies often have unintended effects
  (e.g., Hoover, or mobile phone use).
• People use technologies in all sorts of ways,
  reflecting their diverse interests, concerns, and
  cultures.
• When people embrace and use technology, it does
  not mean that they relinquish their culture
  (e.g., Kayapo, or mobile phone use in Jamaica).