Mobilizing ICT for development: the significance of culture and politics

1. Mobilizing ICT for development: the significance of culture and politics Chrisanthi Avgerou London School of Economics

2. My argument Call for a shift of attention: from ICT as an instrument for a generally desirable ‘development’ to ICT as part of an inherently political process of change of the way people live their lives

3. The instrumental view of ICT and development • ICT innovation geared towards a universal viewof development as economic growth through • competitive enterprises and • good government (democratic and lean state that provides effective institutions for the market) • ICT contributes to these objectives by means of its physical properties, already harnessed in applications of generic functionality in other societies’ contexts

4. Three frequently manifested problems • Scalability • Sustainability • Developmental effects often attributed to ‘interfering’ political and cultural factors that should be blocked out, and not allowed to inhibit the technical/rational process of innovation for development

5. From a socio-technical perspective: • Development objectives cannot be assumed uncontroversial and generally desirable • ICT-mediated development objectives need to make sense within the culture of a social context and require political engagement • ICT-mediated development as a negotiation of visions for a better life – both at macro (policy) and micro (work place) arenas of action Example: setback of the flexible specialization policy in Cyprus in the 1990s

6. ICT-mediated development as a process of • Sense-making and hospitality • Continuous negotiation of visions, interests and experiences

7. ICT innovation as sense-making and hospitality • An IS project introduces strangers (artefacts, engineers, consultants, managers) that need to be accommodated in the practices of an organization or a community • Initial strategic declarations and agreed upon specifications of objectives can only be tentative – need to be accommodated in real lives, to be tried and judged in the practice of lived experience.

8. ICT innovation as continuous negotiation • Technology innovation involves the formation of alliances of various actors and institutions • It takes negotiations of interests, compromises, and requires the formation of powerful networks of actors to change existing practices and life conditions

9. My suggestion: Abandon the myth of ICT-mediated development as a technical/rational process and recognise the need for sense-making and the political nature of socio-technical change In the spirit of the dominant ideology of development that promotes democracy, let’s view ICT innovation as the outcome of sustained negotiations of diverse interests, visions and life experiences.

10. Towards a dynamic concept of culture as ever changing values and traditions; the fusion of historically established traditions, values and knowledges with ‘imported’ visions of modernity, development, and the beliefs of ‘others’. • Towards a positive view of politics as negotiation of meanings and interests and the formation of adequately powerful networks of actors to enact socio-economic change.

11. Consequences for practice Consider ICT development and use as part of the socio-political development process, not as a technical mechanism to achieve uncontroversial development objectives

12. Adopt professional practices that allow for hospitality, sense-making, and negotiation • Flexible project organization, aiming at locally meaningful needs • Initiate incremental and long-term ICT uses, with open-ended, rather than strictly pre-determined objectives