Third-world critiques of cyberfeminism

… Literature and Culture, 2010

Domain Errors, 2002

2016

Technologies are the result of an engineering that harvests scientific knowledge and understanding to be applied to design, development and use of materials, systems and processes for specific purposes. These means of technology production are commonly regarded as clinical, apolitical and neutral. But are they? This address questions the positionality of dominant knowledge and understanding that inform technology production. It unveils an implicit practice of 'othering', sustained through Orientalism. Fromthe review of narratives in 'technology for development', this addressshows how many contemporary technologies link in with thought and workpositioned in the Global North. This positionality of appliedknowledge through technologies deployed in Africa, the address argues, indicates epistemic violence. As a result, dominant technologies –also for development – tend to empower academic and business interestsoutside of the African continent. From the position that all professionals are personally responsible for their collective and individual, partial perspectives – a locatedview, based somewhere – this address infers that sustainabledevelopment and their technological artefacts necessitate input fromAfrican research, addressing issues through African epistemologies and local practices. Solidly embedded in African values and epistemologies, an African academy and engineering can contribute and participate as an equal partner in the global society.

feministtechnoscience.se

In putting together this collection of papers we have become aware of two things. First, each of the cases is historically unique and interesting; they can all stand on their own without need for further interpretation. Second, these cases contain important clues and guidelines which point to a more general theory of technology and sociocultural change. They do not go far enough to allow us to frame up such a theory, but they provide the inductive impetus for relating these examples to the wider system of theory building in anthropology. In the first edition of this book we were not yet ready to elaborate even the outlines of such a theory, but the ensuing 15 years have given us plenty of new materials, as well as general growth in various aspects of theoretical social science. We can now offer a theoretical synthesis, and show how this synthesis can lead directly to the testing of specific hypotheses.