Burrell, Jennifer
(2012)
Producing the internet and development: an ethnography of internet café use in Accra, Ghana.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
The United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), that took place
between 2003 and 2005, elevated the 'information society' to the level of 'gender equality'
'environmental sustainability' and 'human rights' as one of the central Development tropes
of our time. The concept of the network has come to figure heavily in the political
discourse of both developed and developing nations and transnational agencies. These
organizations employ statistics, academic theories, popular wisdom, and utopian visions
shaped by Western experiences to extrapolate an expected impact of new technologies on
the developing world. However, to date there has been very little on-the-ground research
on the diffusion and appropriation of these technologies as it is taking place in developing
nations and how this might challenge and reorient the expectations of traditional
Development perspectives.
This thesis seeks to provide such a response drawing on the experiences of Internet café
users in Accra, the capital city of Ghana where an estimated 500 to 1000 of these small
businesses were in operation. Departing from the categories and hierarchies favoured
within Development circles, my approach is to look holistically at the way the Internet
was produced as a meaningful and useful tool through the practices of users. The
practices that defined the Internet in Accra encompassed not only individual activities at
the computer interface, but also other formal and informal, collective and everyday rituals
such as story-telling, religious practices, and play and socializing among youth. A similar
production process was observable in the activities of the Development experts and
government officials who arrived in Accra in February 2005 to discuss the role of
networking technologies in socio-economic development at the WSIS Africa regional
conference. The activities of both groups reconstituted the Internet, Development and the
relationship between the two, but along very divergent pathways.
Actions (login required)
 |
Record administration - authorised staff only |
Download statistics
Download statistics