Consider submitting a paper to our panel at the Development Studies Association conference in Oxford (Sept 12-14).
Power, politics and digital development
Convenors
Richard Heeks (University of Manchester)
Mark Graham (University of Oxford)
Ben Ramalingam (Institute of Development Studies)
Short Abstract
Covers the broad intersection of power, politics and digital development including both directionalities – the impact of power and politics on design, diffusion, implementation and outcomes of ICT application; and the impact of ICT application on power and politics – and their mutual interaction.
Long Abstract
Digital Dividends” – the 2016 World Development Report – finds the benefits of digital development to be unevenly distributed, and identifies emergent “digital ills”. The cause in both cases is inequalities of power in economic and political arenas including vested interests, digital monopolies, lack of citizen voice vis-a-vis the state, and other factors.
This panel invites papers at the broad intersection of power, politics and digital development including both directionalities – the impact of power and politics on design, diffusion, implementation and outcomes of ICT application; and the impact of ICT application on power and politics – and their mutual interaction.
We welcome work anywhere along the spectrum from the micro-exercise of power within individual ICT4D initiatives through the politics of national ICT-using organisations and institutions to global Internet governance. Other topics for papers might include but are not limited to:
– The organisational politics of ICT4D
– Digital resources as foundations of power in development
– Reproduction and transformation of power and inequality through digital development
– Digital development discourse as a source and reflection of power
– The institutional logics that conflict and contest to shape digital development
– How national and international ICT policies address and express issues of power
