http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/25384/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38286/ 2012-10-12T00:00:00Z Abstract Social network sites are the new urban parks where people congregate, socialize and exercise leisure. Its web architectures however are being walled in, dictated by market systems and State ideologies. These cyber-enclosures are justified along the lines of privacy that garners protection, efficiency and functionality. There is significant concern for the potential irrevocable loss of the ‘public’ and ‘open’ character intended of internet infrastructures, fearing the fostering of social segregation, homogenization and corporatization of leisure and a loss of civic sense. This paper addresses these concerns by looking at contemporary material architectures that are shaping public social and leisure space, particularly gardens within gated communities and malls. It argues that for a comprehensive understanding on privacy and public leisure architectures, we need to recognize the parallels between these virtual and material spheres as social norms, values and laws permeate these boundaries. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/35040/ 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z Development investigations focus on synergies of institutional cultures for policy and practice. International non-governmental organisations (INGOs) currently enjoy a privileged position as harbingers of world culture unity. While there is contestation on INGOs as monolithic entities, few studies delve into the voices of actors within INGOs to provide for a more pluralistic perspective. This paper separates the actors from their institution by examining their different socio-cultural takes that drive them. This emphasises that as projects and visions come and go, institutional actors draw on their own philosophy that does not necessarily mirror their institution's stance. Here, the focus is on one of the most important current development initiatives - microfinance - revealing individual understandings of what is sustainability, the role of external actors, indicators of success, exit strategies, and ethical action. In spite of situating this in the microfinance area, what is revealed is that actors are motivated by their own constructed ideology, often alluding peripherally to the specifics of microfinance. This opens another avenue of enquiry as to why organisational ideologies and popular development visions such as microfinance take on such diversity of forms and outcomes. Contrary to the world culture unity model, such communication disjunctures can be useful in understanding diverse development outcomes. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38284/ 2012-09-01T00:00:00Z It has taken the past decade to commonly acknowledge that online space is tethered to real place. From euphoric conceptualizations of social media spaces as a novel, unprecedented and revolutionary entity, the dust has settled, allowing for talk of boundaries and ties to real-world settings. Metaphors have been instrumental in this pursuit, shaping perceptions and affecting actions within this extended structural realm. Specifically, they have been harnessed to architect Web 2.0 spaces, be it chatrooms, electronic frontiers, homepages, or information highways for policy and practice. While metaphors are pervasive in addressing and normalizing new media spaces, there is less effort channeled into organizing these digital domains along cultural lines to systematize and deepen understandings of its histories, agencies and communities. Hence, this article proposes a framework that reveals dominant cultural dimensions of Web 2.0 spaces through a five-fold typology: (1) utilitarian-driven, (2) aesthetic-driven, (3) context-driven, (4) play-driven and (5) value-driven. This effort capitalizes and transfers mappings of actors and networks from real to virtual space to capture and organize diverse cultural (re)productions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/35033/ 2012-08-01T00:00:00Z In designing digital literacy content for marginalized demographics, we need to garner local resources to structure engaging and meaningful media experiences. This paper examines the socio-cognitive implications of a novel edutainment product in rural India on learning, stemming from an e-development initiative funded by Hewlett-Packard. This product encapsulates a multiplicity of media forms: text, audio and visual, with social-awareness folk themes endemic to the locality. It uses the karaoke 'same language subtitling' feature that won the World Bank Development Marketplace Award in 2002 due to its simple yet innovative application that has proven to have an impact on reading skills. The product strives to combine cultural regeneration, value-based education, incidental literacy and language practice through entertainment. The paper investigates how this product addresses engagement and empowerment simultaneously, based on elements such as emotional appeal, multimodal stimulation, interactivity, contextual content and local representation. This is useful for practitioners and scholars interested in the design of novel edutainment content for international, underrepresented demographics. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/35022/ 2012-05-01T00:00:00Z As billions of dollars are invested in mitigating the digital divide, stakes are raised to gain validity for these cost-intensive endeavors, focusing more on online activities that have clear socio-economic outcomes. Hence, farmers in rural India are watched closely to see how they access crop prices online, while their Orkuting gets sidelined as anecdotal. This paper argues that this is a fundamental problem as it treats users in emerging markets as somehow inherently different from those in the West. After all, it is now commonly accepted that much of what users do online in developed nations is leisure-oriented. This perspective does not crossover as easily into the Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) world, where the utilitarian angle reigns. This paper argues that much insight can be gained in bridging worlds of ICT4D and New Media studies. By negating online leisure in 'Third World' settings, our understandings on this new user market can be critically flawed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37267/ 2012-04-01T00:00:00Z The Indian healthcare sector provides ripe ground for development as access to high-quality and timely medical diagnosis remains unrequited among its vast rural populace. With an acute shortage of doctors in rural areas, medical diagnostic software has been created as a surrogate, propelling non-physician workers to step in. For diagnostic software to function effectively, it is paramount to identify the user. Using an intended pilot programme of RightChoice software in the central Himalayas, the present article focuses on the political and economic complexities involved in identifying users of such software. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38287/ 2012-02-14T00:00:00Z The conventional ‘village’ is being digitalized. In the last decade, India has proudly embraced its new image as the world’s Silicon Valley and back-office (and arguably front office) for global business. This momentum is being driven by information and communication technologies (ICTs); subsequently government policies ambitiously live up to this new found reputation by promising digital change across all sectors, particularly in the rural domain (Aggarwal, 2002). After all, India continues to be an agrarian country despite its new found Silicon Valley status. Central to this effort entails connecting India’s 600,000 villages with computers and the net, signaling one of the biggest rural investments for socio-economic mobility. The net is heralded as the new intermediary to knowledge for the villager. Underlying this is the belief that rural poverty has chronically persisted due to information poverty. For instance, farmers are perceived as being poor due to their limited access to critical knowledge on food prices, fertilizers and market demands for agricultural goods; rural healthcare practitioners are looked upon as lagging behind in the latest knowledge on diagnostics and treatment; and rural students are seen as digital non-natives in this virtual and information economy. This paper critically assesses this premise on the information gap being the key barrier to transformative and positive change in villages in India. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Almora in the Central Himalayas, this paper investigates the role of information through new media technologies in the rural 1) agricultural 2) healthcare and 3) education sector. What is revealed is that there is an urgent need to critique the causal relationship between information and rural poverty and reframe the role of digital technologies in village life. It is seen that the issue of poverty is less about the dearth of information but rather the lack of trust in the intermediaries in existence. Further, it becomes apparent that information that has utility is far less pursued online compared to knowledge that is more social and leisure oriented. Also, we need to problematize what constitutes as local, indigenous and rural knowledge as its boundaries are more porous and cosmopolitan in nature. Lastly, digital mediums and its information does not necessarily replace older resources but adds to the rural techno-social ecology and sometimes even strengthens current agents, agencies and institutions. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34968/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/35035/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z In this digital age, declarations surface on the death of the expert and the democratization of information. Crowd wisdom is seen as the new guide in constructing and evaluating knowledge. In the context of the art world, this tension between the amateurs and the experts becomes particularly pronounced as popular meets high culture. Questions arise such as what is the role of the expert in the evaluation of art in current times? Do social media dismantle age-old hierarchies and established priesthoods in the art world? And can we assume that mass participation in valuation result in better judgments? This paper addresses such popular notions on participation and expertise concerning social media in the art world through a historical lens by re-examining and positioning art experts from past to present. Particularly, characteristics of intermediaries in the art market are looked at closely and their strategies in knowledge production and establishment of expertise. This historical situatedness enables us to move beyond the hype of new media expectations, generating more appropriate avenues of investigation to better grasp possible changes amongst actors within the contemporary art world. This examination is not just theoretically relevant but practically so, given current pressures on art institutions to embrace and reach out to new audiences online. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/40028/ 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z The battle between educators and entertainers continue when it comes to gaming. While this is so, the edutainment battleground has expanded to include actors outside formal schooling agencies, namely International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs). These actors employ digital games with the aim to educate and activate towards specific social causes. These serious games are viewed to have tremendous potential for behavioral change through their interactive and persuasive aspects. This paper examines serious games deployed by certain prominent INGOs and analyzes the educative aspects of such new media platforms. What is revealed at the design, audience, and content level compel us to examine what constitutes as education through serious games. Here, education is seen as social marketing employing sensationalism, morality, and emotional capital to stimulate activism. Such games sustain the converted rather than create new understandings of complex social issues. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38290/ 2011-04-21T00:00:00Z At a cybercafé in rural India, a man gossips with his friend while his government form downloads; two teenagers sit side by side working on a school project while surreptitiously orkuting one another; the owner during downtime photoshops himself with Angelina Jolie and makes it his screensaver. In fact, India is currently implementing one of the most ambitious computerization projects of linking 600,000 of its villages through cybercafés or “knowledge centers” on the premise that access to computers will significantly enhance productivity for socio-economic mobility. In this paper, I address busyness that stems from computer usage in cybercafés in rural India, and through this, recontextualize and readdress the relationship of new technology with socio-cultural practice of labor and leisure. Drawing from my extensive fieldwork in India since 2004, I bring to the fore certain issues worth examining, namely how 1) the time lost in dealing with online bureaucracy can be the time gained for offline leisure 2) online busyness can provide a legitimate and safe grounds for offline dating in a public space, otherwise considered taboo, and 3) busyness at work can indeed be play. This discussion can enhance our sociotechnical understandings of busyness and its range of opportunities for transcultural practice. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34969/ 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z Currently, there is much excitement about Web 2.0 as a novel platform for experiencing, producing, and consuming leisure, particularly through social network sites. Conversely, there are skeptics who sound the alarm on these spaces, viewing them as diluting of human relations. The perspective that guides this article is invested in neither a utopian nor a dystopian posture, but sees historical continuity, pointing out that performing leisure is a basic human impulse that has found expression over the centuries.With regard to the online sites used for leisure, it makes the case that the history of the development of the public park, the product of a complex interplay of interests and agendas of different stakeholders, provides a particularly rich resource for gaining insights into the evolution of social networking sites. To illustrate this heuristic potential, it draws on experiences ranging from the democratization of Beijing's parks in early twentieth century to the movement of flâneurs across Parisian public spaces to comment on the architecture of and activities on social network sites. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34978/ 2010-12-01T00:00:00Z This paper plays with education through the analogy of karaoke to tease out the instructions of a situated educational practice. Here, Cremin's conceptualization of education as a deliberate, systematic and sustained effort is employed as a starting point to enable an understanding of educational practice between members elicited by karaoke. Using Garfinkel's ethnomethodological framework, the paper investigates modes of education through karaoke practice as part of the "live" narrative, that of instructing and being instructed with the "curriculum" of the event at hand. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20849/ 2010-09-01T00:00:00Z Hole-in-the-Wall as a concept has attracted worldwide attention. It involves providing unconditional access to computer-equipped kiosks in playgrounds and out-of-school settings, children taking ownership of their learning and learning driven by the children's natural curiosity. It is posited that this approach, which is being used in India, Cambodia and several countries in Africa, can pave the way for a new education paradigm and be the key to providing literacy and basic education and bridging the digital divide in remote and disadvantaged regions. This paper seeks to establish why two such open access, self-directed and collaborative learning systems failed to take root in the Central Himalaya communities of Almora and Hawalbagh. The purpose of this study is not to deny the achievements and potential of such an approach in other settings, but to examine the tenets and sustainability of such initiatives. It is argued that there is a need to distinguish between Hole-in-the-Wall as an idea and as an institution and to reflect on the key suppositions on how unsupervised access, informal, public, self-guided and collaborative work can help in children's learning. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/25814/ 2010-09-01T00:00:00Z Writers Sugata Mitra and Payal Arora were invited to provide some afterthoughts having read each other's papers. As Arora observes, the Hole-in-the-Wall approach has shown that the absence of a teacher can sometimes encourage children to explore more bravely than they would in their presence. However, as she again observes, institutional indifference may result in abdication of responsibility and lack of sustainability. It sells its products to schools and hence locates its kiosks on school playgrounds. She also wonders whether placing of computers in playgrounds may not only breed collaboration but competition and discrimination. Payal Arora likes to focus on just two aspects of the Kalikuppam experiment. The design of the experiment itself and the role of the mediator. It is important to bear in mind that the children coming to these learning kiosks also continued to be taught in the formal classroom. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34970/ 2010-09-01T00:00:00Z Billions of dollars are being spent nationally and globally on providing computing access to digitally disadvantaged groups and cultures with an expectation that computers and the Internet can lead to higher socio-economic mobility. This ethnographic study of social computing in the Central Himalayas, India, investigates alternative social practices with new technologies and media amongst a population that is for the most part undocumented. In doing so, this book offers fresh and critical perspectives on issues of contemporary debate: free learning with computers, relevant and global information, the range and role of actors as intermediaries of digital information, impact of direct versus indirect access on social computing, gender and technology and transnational consumption and production of knowledge. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/25813/ 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z The chronic shortage of doctors in rural India seriously impacts the quality of health care available to villagers. In recent years, there has been considerable excitement in digital diagnostics as a possible answer to this situation by allowing non-doctors to diagnose and treat patients. In this article, the author focuses on one such diagnostic tool that has gained serious traction among transnational health foundations and state governments alike. The focus is on the customization and localization of this software through a pilot study in central Himalayas. A baseline survey and extensive interviews are conducted for categorization and population of health data content. This entailed analyzing the segmentation and transfer of health information on disease history and symptoms from the patient to the software as well as situating this study in the larger understanding of the healthcare system in this community. In doing so, the author argues that much of such health information is difficult to categorize and sufficiently vague to not provide for a confident diagnosis. Further, the data population of the treatment segment is deeply political and sociocultural. This article thereby problematizes the innate assumption underlying the design of such software, that it is possible to diagnose and treat patients based on pure information. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34971/ 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z Playing the role of mediator between Islam and the West is one that is particularly fraught with danger. Mediators often find themselves in a critical dilemma of placement of the self within larger contesting discourses. Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born Islamic scholar, is one such appointed mediator between Dutch statehood and its multiethnic Islamic population. He was invited by the Rotterdam City Council to serve as an integration advisor for its multicultural population. However, his affiliation with an Iranian TV station sponsored by the regime caused considerable consternation, with his credibility being questioned by the Council. The post-Iranian election and uprising triggered a wave of reactions culminating in the dismissal of this prominent scholar, recently named by Time magazine as one of the world’s top one hundred scientists and thinkers. This chapter focuses on the nature of media discourses and ideological leanings among key actors to explain how these issues can escalate, often with severe consequences to those involved. The authors use this event as a springboard to analyze the role of public mediators in complex political and cultural environments, using the lens of mediation and dialogue. By attending to issues of language and the framing of perspectives in the media, this chapter proposes a nuanced and novel approach to mediation and discourse construction in arenas of chronic dispute. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37259/ 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z Education, and the knowledge it generates, is seen as a means to effective participation in societies and economies that are affected by globalization (UNESCO). The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2015) was declared by a Resolution of the General Assembly, in December 2002, with a goal to re-focus on education and learning as central to the common pursuit and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations General Assembly has stated that education for all is essential for achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality, and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy. Education is viewed as key to participation in the global economy as well as critical to local prosperity. What marks this debate as unique to the 21st century is its deep relationship to information technology. Intrinsically combining education and information technology is viewed as endemic in preparing the global youth to face the challenges of the knowledge economy (Monahan, 2005). The Internet promises a novel and cost effective means of transmitting knowledge, allowing for the rhetoric of global learning to become a genuine possibility. The hope is that education leverages on the current phenomena of transnational connectivity and cross-cultural sociality, leading to the birthing of new knowledge. In fact, much of this effort is structured to move away from the chronic center-periphery flow of information of prior decades, focusing on a more global diffusion model. In 2004 alone, governments of the world invested 1.97 trillion U.S. dollars or 4.4% of global GDP in PPP (purchasing power parities) on education (UNESCO). Further, the Information Technology in Education Study revealed that developed countries had succeeded in establishing connectivity across its schools in the 70-90 percent range in 1999 with full connectivity by 2001. Amongst developing countries, there has been a strong financial and political commitment to bridge the digital divide in education with a goal to achieve 100% e-literacy (Norris, 2001). Yet, despite the trillions of dollars spent on education and technological connectivity for global education, a 2005 article in ScienceDirect reports a rapid decline in worldwide innovation. Recent studies by bi-partisan panels have concluded that we cannot achieve change by “patching the system,” but only “by changing the system itself.” (National Center on Education and Economy. 2008). In other words, access to technologies and people alone does not shape global education. Much effort is needed to pioneer an international model of knowledge formation and sharing that does full justice to transnational social and technological participation amongst youth, teachers, administrators, curriculum experts, policy makers and other actors in pursuit of a new global education. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37258/ 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z This case study highlights practices of a rarely documented group of neo-users of the Internet or newbies from Central Himalayas, serving as a catalyst for delving deeply into the act of ‘plagiarism’ in online learning By looking at such ‘learning’ practices away from schools, namely at cybercafés in Almora, a ‘rur-town’ in the Himalayas, much is revealed of its educational system and learning in the broadest sense. There is an urgent need in educational environments to move beyond the punitive approach to ‘plagiarism’ through computer usage and instead pay attention to the actual learning and teaching that goes on through these processes with online resources. In doing so, contemplation of the relationship between information, ownership and originality in online learning and its role in how we enact ‘schooling’ through online-offline spaces becomes central to this study. This case study aims to provoke innovative educational approaches where current practices with new tools can be capitalized strategically for genuine learning to transpire. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37257/ 2008-03-01T00:00:00Z In this article, story (re)productions by children in rural India are seen as a potential tool for addressing current 'participatory' issues facing development practitioners. A project was implemented to involve children from a rural village in South India in e-literary storybook productions. The intention was to foster online representations of the rural voice through the lens of the child. Drawing on the material of children's stories, multiple subjectivities are revealed that compel us to reconsider relations of the 'rural' with technology and current social contexts. An analysis of these narratives highlights children's appropriation capabilities as they weave the 'urbanness' and 'global' with the 'rural' fabric, moving beyond the traditional discourse of the urban-rural dichotomy. This effort capitalizes on current theorizations of territory as scapes, making the case to harness children's stories to enlighten the adult, well-intentioned development practitioner who seeks genuine understanding of territory and practice. Copyright http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34980/ 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Abstract: This paper explores evaluation strategies to gauge the impact of a novel instructional design on international community participation online. This is done by conceptualizing and devising indicators for measuring “engagement” online amongst marginalized adult communities worldwide. In doing so, a review of online evaluation literature is conducted. In comparing dialogue sessions based on an ongoing traditional model to the new instructional approach, various challenges are faced in “measuring” asynchronous discussion. While the initial findings of marginal increase in engagement with the adapted instructional approach is not sufficient to prove that the new model works, this paper demonstrates various strategies/ challenges in evaluating dialectic engagement. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34974/ 2006-12-01T00:00:00Z A folksongs karaoke product has been created to increase usage of subtitled media to enhance literacy and technology use, particularly among girls in rural India. This entails generating and proliferating popular local folksongs with social and cultural themes of interest to girls, accompanied by the award-winning Same Language Subtitling (SLS) feature. In this paper, the prime goal is to discuss possible implications of this novel technology content on girls' socialization, education, and activism. Based on initial findings from a pilot test of this product in schools, private and public in rural India, I propose that this product has the potential to raise literacy among girls through musical enculturation and entertainment in rural India. By linking folksongs to computers, I argue that this association can shape, transform and/or (re)configure spaces for/by girls in rural India through interaction with technology in ways meaningful to them. Thereby, I problematize the transposition of "western" perspectives of gender and technology onto the rural terrain as understood within a development discourse. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34975/ 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z This account demonstrates the key challenges faced in producing engaging educational content for information and communication technologies (ICT) deployed in rural India. The 'Stills in Sync' (SIS) project aims to enhance literacy through the revival and proliferation of popular regional folksongs with social awareness themes in rural India. This product entails the use of the Same Language Subtitling (SLS) karaoke feature that won the Worldbank Development Marketplace award in 2002 and the 'Tech Laureate' honor from the Technology Museum of Innovation in 2003. This case study highlights the struggles faced in the production process as we sought to negotiate localism with scalability. The paper is meant to stimulate discussion and further research on the process of digitalizing cultural and educational content in muliple languages for literacy gains and empowerment. I attempt to give three-dimensionality to current buzzwords in education content creation using ICT: localism, relevance and engagement. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34977/ 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z Introduction: As international aid agencies increasingly embrace microfinance, the darling of international development, questions are beginning to surface. Who benefits from this savings and lending system that claims to target the poor? Does an increase in social capital of the poor lead to an enhancement of human capital in terms of socialization and education; does that in turn contribute to the fostering of microfinance practices? What kinds of linkages do these institutions need to sustain and replicate their practices? While these are pertinent avenues to investigate, in this essay I seek to address that which is of basic concern in terms of the perceived capacity and capability of the poor: can the poorest of the poor build on their existing social capital through microfinance? To address these questions, this article will examine the growing trend of microfinance practices in Bolivia, drawing out some of its pluralities and complexities as it intersects with the poor. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/34972/ 2005-12-31T00:00:00Z ABSTRACT: The Stills in Sync (SIS) project is a joint initiative of the nonprofit organization PlanetRead and the global information and communication technology (ICT) company Hewlett Packard (HP). The SIS project entails creating a multimedia product designed to enhance literacy in rural India through the revival of regional folksongs on relevant social issues. This product utilizes the Same Language Subtitling (SLS) feature that won the World Bank Development Marketplace Award in 2002 and the Tech Laureate in education honor from the Technology Museum of Innovation (San Jose) in 2003. This paper explores the dissemination avenues of the SLS folksongs product and its effects within the Inclusive Community (icommunity) of HP in Kuppam, India. This community has functioned as a social and economic laboratory in which HP tested new technologies. Analyzing this test environment makes apparent the dichotomy between corporate responsibility and community development. Keeping the balance between profitable goals of the ICT business and development goals towards sustainable social and economic reforms has been illustrated by the survey results in this paper.