Dear everyone,
Please find below our call for papers for a panel at the CAS at 50
conference next summer:
Technology as an Agent of Economic and Social Change in Africa?
Connecting Historical and Contemporary Debates
CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives,
Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh
6th June 2012 09:00 – 8th June 2012
This panel aims to address some of the ahistoricity of the Information
and Communication Technologies for Development field (ICT4D). It does
so by focusing on experienced, enacted, and imagined changes in
African economic relationships and positionalities due to technologies
of connectivity in a contemporary and historical perspective.
ICT4D is a term used to denote a collection of activities that have
framed electronic technologies as being useful for socio-economic
development. Such technologies (and technologically mediated
practices) may incorporate computers, mobile phones and the Internet,
and may be used for a variety of developmental ends including health,
education and economic activities. Much of the ICT4D literature tends
to depict these technologies as 'revolutionary' and frames the changes
that they engender as unique to our current age. This outlook neglects
the longer history of the notion that economies in Africa can be
'revolutionised' through technologies – ideas which have been seminal
both to the 'civilising missions' of the European colonial empires and
in the development programmes of colonial and post-colonial states.
This dialogue between historical and contemporary perspectives has a
number of approaches and theories to draw upon, including among others
Kapil Raj's ideas about 'Relocating Modern Science', Helen Tilley's
notion of 'Africa as a Living Laboratory', David Edgerton's use
orientated approach to technological development and Timothy
Mitchell's contributions to post-colonial theory. What these
approaches have in common is that they forcefully challenge any
simplistic notion of technological diffusion and economic development.
As Timothy Mitchell writes, "the practices that form the economy
operate, in part, to establish equivalences, contain circulations,
identify social actors or agents, make quantities and performances
measurable, and designate relations of control and command". This
panel will use these theories as building blocks on which to
understand how technological change reshapes our understandings about
how the economy operates, the way in which the economy is measured and
the way in which economic space is territorialised, both socially and
spatially. It will therefore look critically at how contemporary ICT
diffusion compare with earlier technological and economic
'revolutions'.
Themes may include:
● past and current aspects of control over and use of new technologies
● the relations between newly introduced technologies and existing
technologies and material culture
● shifting perceptions of the benefits and beneficiaries of new technologies
● patterns of communication and imagined social, economic and
political identities within, between and beyond African border
● changing ideas and conceptualisations of technology as a driver of
economic change and development
● comparative studies of different forms of technologies in relation
to economic development and economic theory
● the role of technologies in the territorialization and
de-territorialization of economic space
● shifting roles of state and non-state agents in contemporary ICT4D
and its historical predecessors
● the diffusion of technology as a justification of wider political or
social projects
In order to best provoke discussion, we would like participants to
prepare short papers (4-5000 words) that will be circulated ahead of
time and to prepare short presentations (5-10 minutes) so as to
maximize discussion and debate during the roundtable. We ultimately
hope for participants to expand their papers into contributions for an
edited volume.
Panel Organizers:
Casper Andersen, Department of Culture and Society/Aarhus University,
Laura Mann and Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute/University of
Oxford
If you are interested in taking part, please send abstracts to Laura
Mann (lauramann82@gmail.com) by February 31st, 2012.
Thanks!
Laura Mann
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
Please find below our call for papers for a panel at the CAS at 50
conference next summer:
Technology as an Agent of Economic and Social Change in Africa?
Connecting Historical and Contemporary Debates
CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives,
Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh
6th June 2012 09:00 – 8th June 2012
This panel aims to address some of the ahistoricity of the Information
and Communication Technologies for Development field (ICT4D). It does
so by focusing on experienced, enacted, and imagined changes in
African economic relationships and positionalities due to technologies
of connectivity in a contemporary and historical perspective.
ICT4D is a term used to denote a collection of activities that have
framed electronic technologies as being useful for socio-economic
development. Such technologies (and technologically mediated
practices) may incorporate computers, mobile phones and the Internet,
and may be used for a variety of developmental ends including health,
education and economic activities. Much of the ICT4D literature tends
to depict these technologies as 'revolutionary' and frames the changes
that they engender as unique to our current age. This outlook neglects
the longer history of the notion that economies in Africa can be
'revolutionised' through technologies – ideas which have been seminal
both to the 'civilising missions' of the European colonial empires and
in the development programmes of colonial and post-colonial states.
This dialogue between historical and contemporary perspectives has a
number of approaches and theories to draw upon, including among others
Kapil Raj's ideas about 'Relocating Modern Science', Helen Tilley's
notion of 'Africa as a Living Laboratory', David Edgerton's use
orientated approach to technological development and Timothy
Mitchell's contributions to post-colonial theory. What these
approaches have in common is that they forcefully challenge any
simplistic notion of technological diffusion and economic development.
As Timothy Mitchell writes, "the practices that form the economy
operate, in part, to establish equivalences, contain circulations,
identify social actors or agents, make quantities and performances
measurable, and designate relations of control and command". This
panel will use these theories as building blocks on which to
understand how technological change reshapes our understandings about
how the economy operates, the way in which the economy is measured and
the way in which economic space is territorialised, both socially and
spatially. It will therefore look critically at how contemporary ICT
diffusion compare with earlier technological and economic
'revolutions'.
Themes may include:
● past and current aspects of control over and use of new technologies
● the relations between newly introduced technologies and existing
technologies and material culture
● shifting perceptions of the benefits and beneficiaries of new technologies
● patterns of communication and imagined social, economic and
political identities within, between and beyond African border
● changing ideas and conceptualisations of technology as a driver of
economic change and development
● comparative studies of different forms of technologies in relation
to economic development and economic theory
● the role of technologies in the territorialization and
de-territorialization of economic space
● shifting roles of state and non-state agents in contemporary ICT4D
and its historical predecessors
● the diffusion of technology as a justification of wider political or
social projects
In order to best provoke discussion, we would like participants to
prepare short papers (4-5000 words) that will be circulated ahead of
time and to prepare short presentations (5-10 minutes) so as to
maximize discussion and debate during the roundtable. We ultimately
hope for participants to expand their papers into contributions for an
edited volume.
Panel Organizers:
Casper Andersen, Department of Culture and Society/Aarhus University,
Laura Mann and Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute/University of
Oxford
If you are interested in taking part, please send abstracts to Laura
Mann (lauramann82@gmail.com) by February 31st, 2012.
Thanks!
Laura Mann
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
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