Transcript Document

ICT for Development
ICT4D: Theoretical Contexts
ICT4D Lecture 2
Tim Unwin
Outline
• The value of theory
 And its relevance to Geography
• Theoretical contexts:
 Globalisation and space-time
 Technology
 Partnerships
 IPR and the digital commons
• Setting annotated bibliographies
Lecture 2
The Value of Theory (i)
• This is primarily an academic course
 Thus differs somewhat from others (such as Fillip’s
http://www.knowledgefordevelopment.com/)
 But the course also has clear practical relevance
• But what makes it ‘academic’?
 Critical approach to enquiry
 Engagement with literatures to shape your own ideas
 Situated within the disciplinary framework of
Geography
 Designed to shape new ‘knowledges’
 The key role of intellectual enquiry
 Thus closely integrated with theory
Lecture 2
The Value of Theory (ii)
• Different kinds of theory for different purposes
 Theory acts as context and shapes the limits of our
intellectual exploration
• Habermas’s theory of cognitive interests
 Different types of science
 Each with its own cognitive interest
 Highly pertinent to our ‘interests’ on ICT4D
 Concerns with technical interest
 How we communicate (his later theory of communicative
action)
Lecture 2
Habermas (1978)
Form of
Science
Purpose
Knowledge
constitutive
interests
Social
medium
Expressed
through
Empiricalanalytic logical
Explanation
Technical
Work
Material
production
Understanding
Practical
Language
Communication
Emancipation
Emancipatory
Power
Relations of
dominance and
constraint
positivism
Historicalhermeneutic
phenomenology
Critical
Marx and Freud
Lecture 2
Summary of implications for
ICT4D
• Technical solutions usually allied with empiricalanalytic science
 Serving the dominant and powerful
• Historical-hermeneutic science concerned with
language and how we communicate
 Shared communicative competence
• Critical theory concerned with emancipation
 Helping people to make the world a better place
• But are there really three totally different kinds of
science, or can we combine elements from all of
them?
Lecture 2
ICT4D: theoretical contexts
• Four particularly pertinent theoretical
contexts for the course
 Globalisation and space-time
 Technology
 Partnerships
 IPR and the Digital Commons
Lecture 2
Globalisation
• ‘Globalisation’ as product:
 An account of ‘what’ is there?
 The world has become globalised
• ‘Globalisation’ as ‘process’
 Concerned with questions of how?
 Processes of ‘space-time’ compression
• But why?
 In whose interests?
 Global capital’s needs to increase market and to reduce
production costs
Lecture 2
Globalisation and ICT
• ICT as an enabler of globalisation
 Spreading cultural traits
 Television and radio
 Internet
 ICTs themselves as commodities
 Labour, raw materials, markets
 The dot-com economic bubble in 2000
• But ICTs also enabling local identities
 The local becoming more visible
 The ‘anarchic’ dimensions of the Web
• ICTs as process and products
Lecture 2
Technologies
• Science and technology in support of those in
power (building on Habermas)
 ICTs transforming financial markets
 role of GIS in military hardware and software
• But there are also those who see technological
change as having led to an entirely new kind of
society
 Castell’s (1996) The Information Age
 Three stages in the use of technology in the late 20th century:
(i) The automation of tasks, (ii) an experimentation of uses,
(iii) reconfiguration of applications
Lecture 2
Technologies: Castells
“What characterizes the current technological revolution is not the centrality
of knowledge and information, but the application of such knowledge and
information to knowledge generation and information
processing/communication devices, in a cumulative feedback loop between
innovation and the uses of innovation” (Castells, 2000, p.31)
“Diffusion of technology endlessly amplifies the power of technology, as it
becomes appropriated and redefined by its users” (Castells, 2000, p.31)
“… an over-arching conclusion: as an historical trend, dominant functions
and processes in the Information Age are increasingly organized around
networks” (Castells, 2000, p.500)
“…information is the key ingredient in our social organization and … flows of
messages and images between networks constitute the basic thread of our
social structure’ (Castells, 2000, p.508)
Lecture 2
Technologies
• Castells’ work provides a theoretical framework
for thinking about technology and information,
but
 Is technological change as significant a shift as he
suggests?
 Are we really in a new paradigm?
 Is the network society really a qualitative change?
 Can technologies still be used to the benefit of the
poor and marginalised?
 If so, how?
 Has humankind really found its liberation from natural
forces, as Castells suggests?
Lecture 2
Partnerships
• Global geopolitical changes at the end of the
1980s fundamentally restructured our ways of
understanding societies
 Collapse of the Soviet Union
 Apparent victory of global capitalism
• Calls for a Third Way (e.g. Giddens, 1998)
 Combining public and private sectors
 But, negative commentary on much public-private partnership
for example in the UK
 Seen as the renewal of social democracy
Lecture 2
Partnerships
• Partnerships now dominant also in development
rhetorics
 Especially since the late 1990s, and the role of the
Development Assistance Committee (DAC)
 Multi-stakeholder partnerships seen as the optimal
way for delivering ICT programmes
 Partnerships between governments
 New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD)
• But these ‘partnerships’ are often not well
thought through
Lecture 2
IPR and the digital commons
• Enclosure in 17th Century England
 Converted communal land to individual private
property
 Thereby enabling private profit to replace common
shared risk and benefit
 At the origins of capitalism
• A tension between private and public benefit and
responsibility
 At the heart of 21st century debate
 What should be the relationships between the ‘private’
and the ‘public’?
 “Reclaiming the Commons” campaigns
Lecture 2
IPR and the digital commons
• Application to knowledge and education
 In early modern times, education was a privilege and
had to be paid for
 Knowledge enabled profit during 16th and 17th century
‘explorations’
 Second half of the 20th century emergence of free
state education systems
 Knowledge as a free common good
 For the benefit of society
 Universities were thus state funded, and generated
knowledge that was then made ‘freely’ available
• Late 20th century, the privatisation of knowledge
Lecture 2
IPR and the digital commons
• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
 Long tradition of patents, permitting inventors to
benefit from their ideas
 Long heritage of concern over intellectual rights
 Hence issues over plagiarism
 But now IPR is increasingly hotly contested
 Universities claim to own the IPR of staff and students
 IPR of indigenous peoples
• Tensions
 Universities pay the salaries of staff, and want to gain
the benefits for recruitment of students
 Many staff believe that knowledge should be free
Lecture 2
IPR and the Digital Commons
• Of particular interest in field of ICT4D
 Internet permits ready access to much information
rapidly across the world
 Who owns or has rights in such information?
 Possibility of creation of shared knowledges in new
ways
 Who controls access to information
 Hence concerns about Microsoft’s dominance
 Digital Commons
 Open Source alternatives to proprietary software
 Need to differentiate between software and content
Lecture 2
Annotated Bibliography
assignment
• The task
 Produce an annotated bibliography on a subject of
your choice in both digital format and hard copy
 Title to be confirmed with me by 26th October 2005
 Containing at least 30 references with c.100 word
annotation
 At least half of references should not be mentioned
on course handouts
 Should do a few every week
 To be submitted by 7th December 2005
 Do keep a copy for your own revision!
Lecture 2
Annotated Bibliography
assignment
• The purpose




To encourage you to read around the course
To enhance your skills at discriminating resources
To develop your powers of critical thinking
To encourage you to share information amongst the
group
• The outcome
 All bibliographies graded at 2(i) or above will be
disseminated via www.ict4d.org.uk for use by people all
over the world
 Sharing of information amongst the group should lead
to enhanced knowledge
Lecture 2
Conclusion
• The importance of theory
• Four key theoretical contexts:
 Globalisation and space-time
 Technology
 Partnerships
 IPR and the digital commons
• These provide the context for our
explorations of ICT4D
Lecture 2
Opportunity for Questions
and discussion of seminars and
timings