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Digital Citizenship in the Global South: “Cool Stuff for Other People”?

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Book cover The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Citizenship in the Global South

Abstract

Technology, and information and communication technology (ICT) in particular, holds out great hope for disabled people in the Global South. The role of ICTs in solving complex problems of exclusion and scarcity has been touted as central to the transformation of people’s lives. We agree that ICTs hold great promise in this context, but we show in this chapter how structures of exclusion still operate but may be invisibilised through the hype associated with new technologies. Digital citizenships may still be constrained by realities of inequitable access, but rhetorics of inclusion may obscure, and hence exacerbate, inequity.

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Acknowledgements

Gerard Goggin gratefully acknowledges the support of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship project on Disability and Digital Technology (grant number FT130100097) for his research on this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Disability Studies, Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Brian Watermeyer

  2. Media and Communications, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Gerard Goggin

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  1. Brian Watermeyer
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  2. Gerard Goggin
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Correspondence to Brian Watermeyer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Disability Studies Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Brian Watermeyer  & Judith McKenzie  & 

  2. Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Leslie Swartz

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Watermeyer, B., Goggin, G. (2019). Digital Citizenship in the Global South: “Cool Stuff for Other People”?. In: Watermeyer, B., McKenzie, J., Swartz, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Citizenship in the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74675-3_12

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