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WG 9.4: Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries
13th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries
Track 10: A Critical Understanding of ICT4D
Chairs: Brian Nicholson, University of Manchester, UK
Niall Hayes, Lancaster University, UK
Sharon Morgan, University of Manchester, UK
Research on ICT and development is commonly based on assumptions about the nature of ICT and the way ICT contributes to
development. More often than not, the potential of ICT is taken for granted, and the focus is on providing management and
technological solutions and policy developments to the pressing concerns facing development such as health, education and
poverty. Perhaps understandably, this positivistic focus has taken precedence over interpretive, critical and contextualised social
theoretical positions.
Despite the pressing need for action and solutions in the field of ICT4D there is also a need to question and critically review how
ICT innovation happens in relation to developing countries and how it influences development. This includes contesting the very
nature of development in itself, processes typically entangled with conflicting interests and power relations too.
We need to develop new insights to highlight the hidden and less obvious aspects of ICTs in development to understand how
innovation processes unfolds, the role of power, how development is supported or not by ICT in a sustainable fashion, how new
knowledge is created etc. With a critical perspective, we can challenge current assumptions and discourses on development, and
push the Information Systems field to create new knowledge and understanding and facilitate change.
We encourage papers drawing on social theoretical ideas that explicitly adopt a critical conceptual focus and literatures by for
example drawing on subaltern (postcolonial), critical development studies and gender-feminist approaches. While not exclusive,
we anticipate that papers may draw on the concepts and theoretical insights of scholars such as Habermas, Foucault, Bourdieu
and Nussbaum, but may also adopt theory from critical perspectives from the South (e.g. Freire, Escobar) or more radical
perspectives such as Gramsci or Chomsky. Exemplar topics looked-for include: Social media for dissent, gender and ICT4D,
e-government, critical views on openness discourses, actors in the development sector, neo-liberalism and managerialist ideas
and technologies etc. What we require is that the paper concludes with a discussion on how you see critical ICT4D developing
in the future.
For more information, please contact brian.nicholson[at]manchester.ac.uk.
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Track 10: A Critical Understanding of ICT4D
