Abstract
This paper explores the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in rural, marginalised communities. We explore Feenberg’s concept of technical agency in order to understand the ways in which technological capacity might contribute to community development. We discuss three conditions of technical agency as outlined by Feenberg: power, knowledge and appropriate occasion. We consider how this framework might enable an approach to understanding the role of ICTS in the particular socio–spatial contexts in marginalised communities. In order to test Feenberg’s approach, we discuss a case study of a village in rural Brazil: Noiva do Cordeiro. The community is recognised regionally as a pioneer in the way that it has mobilised a range of ICTs for the benefit of the community. We will conclude by discussing how ICTs can reinforce existing or introduce technical agency in a Feenberg framework and how this might contribute to community development.
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By doing so, they expect to avoid misunderstandings. As one inhabitant explains, ‘after being recorded, there is no way words can be undone’. The community has recently experienced problems with the way they were portrayed in international newspaper articles. In 2009 Marie Claire Brazil (Cerenza 2009) ran a story about the village and that was picked up on by the UK press in 2014 (Bowater 2014; Roper 2014) with a series of sensational stories that characterised Noiva as a 'Brazilian all-woman village desperate for men'. In only a few hours, this story was reproduced by other worldwide newspaper and websites. Many even appropriated photos taken out of its professional context showing the women in provocative outfits, thus presenting an entirely false view of the community.
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There is one aspect of the way the community acts that we do not deal with directly; that of gender. With the men of the village absent for much of the week, the community is organised and run primarily by the female inhabitants. Although we consider this to be a significant factor in how the community has developed a capacity to act, we do not deal with this directly here.
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Acknowledgments
The empirical work in the village of Noiva do Cordeiro was undertaken during 2012 and 2013 as part of the work of the research groups MOM-UFMG and Lagear-UFMG and the research Museu Tempo at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, funded by FAPEMIG, FINEP, CAPES and CNPq. Lorena Melgaço’s Ph.D. research is funded by CAPES/REUNI scholarship. The research is part of the Digital Neighbourhoods research project at Plymouth University, UK, funded by an EU Marie Cure grant. We would like to acknowledge the contribution of the researchers Ana Paula Baltazar, Silke Kapp and Viviane Zerlotini from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. We would also like to thank the residents of Noiva do Cordeiro, for their participation in the interviews and data gathering.
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Melgaço, L., Willis, K.S. (2015). ICTs and Technical Agency: A Case Study of a Rural Brazilian Community. In: Foth, M., Brynskov, M., Ojala, T. (eds) Citizen’s Right to the Digital City. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-919-6_6
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