Health Dimensions of COVID-19 in India and Beyond

This open access book addresses the multiple health dimensions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in India and other countries including nine in Asia, five in Sub-Saharan Africa, and New Zealand. It explores the impact of the pandemic on mental health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, health financing, self-care, and vaccine development and distribution. The contributing authors discuss its impact on vulnerable populations, including interstate migrants and female sex workers. The significant role of media and communications, rapid dissemination of information in social media, and its impact during the COVID-19 pandemic era are discussed. It closes with lessons learned from the experiences of countries that have contained the pandemic. With contributions from experts from around the world, this book presents solutions of problems that relate to COVID-19. It is a valuable resource appealing to a wide readership across the social sciences and the humanities. Readers include governments, academicians, researchers, policy-makers, program implementers, as well as lay persons

Digital colonialism: South Africa’s education transformation in the shadow of Silicon Valley

This dissertation investigates the social implications of technology choices for the emerging education transformation of the South African basic education sector. In October 2015, then President Jacob Zuma launched Operation Phakisa Education (OPE), an initiative designed behind closed doors to fast-track digital education into all South African public schools. This study identifies and analyses policy choices and perspectives regarding the technology considered and deployed for the national education rollout. It documents the OPE proposal, and examines how e-education policy choices relate to humanitarian objectives. Theoretically, this study draws upon libertarian socialist theory (anarchism) to examine the sociology of education technology policy. Using anarchist theory, it assesses the perspective, aims, and choices of e-education policy at the national level. It also draws on the Free Software philosophy for society as articulated by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. Finally, it compares classic colonialism with global power in the digital era, and posits a theory of digital colonialism. Synthesizing anarchism and the Free Software philosophy into a single theoretical framework – placed into the context of colonial relations – it is the first work to apply anarchist sociological theory to education technology policy, and the first doctoral study on digital colonialism. For its methodology, this dissertation utilizes two qualitative methods: document analysis and semi-structured interviews. Interview subjects include high-level e-education policymakers and administrators in government, key stakeholders, and experts at the intersection of technology innovation and human rights. These methods were used to both identify and interrogate e-education policy as it relates to the humanitarian objectives of education policy at the national level. The findings demonstrate that South African education policy is beholden to largely United States-based corporations and models for e-education. The study found that the types of technologies for consideration in education are rooted in surveillance capitalism, which is spreading across the world. It contends that current e-education policy choices will entrench the power and exploitation of US state-corporate power in South African education, economy, and society. It argues that an alternative set of choices, People’s Technology for People’s Power, is consistent with the spirit of South African technology policy, and should be chosen for South African schools in order to counter the power of foreign power and resist surveillance capitalism. This dissertation is the first publication to document and analyze what the new government education policy is about and how it relates to equality and human rights. It argues that present South African e-education policy constitutes a new form of digitally-driven technocratic neoliberalism which ultimately favors ruling class interests in the United States and South Africa. It also argues that OPE violates South Africa’s Free and Open Source policy and the spirit of democracy outlined in the Phakisa methodology and the Batho Pele principles. This study found that OPE replicates the latest trends in e-education implementation popular in Silicon Valley. Tech multinationals are providing both the products and models for use in South Africa. The dissertation concludes that US technological and conceptual dominance in South African education constitutes digital colonialism. It emphasizes the need for public inclusion in the policy process, and proposes alternative policies and technologies for e-education based on the idea of People’s Technology for People’s Power. It also argues that current scholarship on education technology neglects the political and sociological importance of People’s Technology to education, economy, and society, as well as the global significance of Big Tech dominance vis-a-vis digital colonialism, and that subsequent literature would be enriched by addressing these issues

The politics of internet infrastructure: communication policy, governmentality and subjectivation in Chhattisgarh, India

This thesis examines the role of internet infrastructure and its associated discourses in processes of governmentality and subject formation in low and middle-income countries of the global South. Using data collected in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh as its core case, it asks questions about the interrelationship between policy and political discourse, new information and communications infrastructure, private capital, and how citizens come to know and/or experience internet infrastructure in their everyday lives. Since 2014, The National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN, which began in 2011 under the then UPA government) has been reshaped and rebranded as part of ‘Digital India’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his far-right Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Alongside the cables and connectivity, the BJP and allied Hindu extremist organisations have targeted minorities and women through mob violence and (on and offline) hate speech, while a small number of crony capitalist corporations have seen immense profits. Unpicking the links between these processes, the thesis argues that internet infrastructure has become crucial to expanding a particular unregulated brand of capitalism and to narrowing civic subjectivities. Infrastructures constellate and circulate material and symbolic goods in an institutionalised manner to produce collectivities. Using discourse analysis shows that since the late 1980s, in a context of increasing neoliberalism, internet infrastructure emerged within a discursive regime marked by the fetishisation of systems rationality, enumeration, scientism and economism to produce what can be called digital governmentality. Digital governmentality enables and reinforces a centralised Hindu nationalism mediated by digital technologies and networks. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation in the city of Ambikapur, and close to 50 villages in Surguja district of Chhattisgarh, data chapters describe a wide range of ‘infrastructural practices.’ The analysis centres on how subjects imagine, frame and experience these practices. Dominant caste groups in Ambikapur seek to subvert governmentality in practice but also uphold and reproduce the rationalities that drive governmental authority – such as efficiency and transparency. Adivasis (indigenous groups) who reside in surrounding rural areas are subject to a political economic regime overdetermined by coal mining and destruction of their land, forests and water resources. Internet infrastructure is non-existent or broken, along with other missing infrastructural substrates such as electricity and water. Adivasis face infrastructural control as a specific mode of governmentality where power is exerted not from the top in directly coercive ways but rather through mundane infrastructural practices, thereby exerting authority in procedural ways. In other instances, Adivasis’ processes of subject formation are entangled with (the reality and promise of) internet infrastructure in complex ways – ranging from cruel optimism to social haunting. The thesis makes an original contribution to the emerging sub-field of infrastructure studies by providing a new way of studying communicative infrastructures involving: a renewed emphasis on relationality (infrastructures, governmentality and subjectivation as relational processes and practices); situating internet infrastructures within broader infrastructures; and a historical analysis of how infrastructure is caught up in exercise of power relations. With significant emphasis on the concerns and interests of indigenous peoples in India, the final chapters of the thesis also contribute to a decolonisation of media and communications as a field, and to avoiding orientalist essentialism

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on ASEAN (IC-ASEAN) "Towards a better ASEAN", September 5-6, 2019; Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia

Since the establishment of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as a regional organization in 1967, it has played a significant role most importantly related to regional affairs and has also given notable contribution to the international arena. Undisputedly, ASEAN has been successfully fostering good relations among its members since its foundation. After completing the first period of its vision of an integrated regional community (ASEAN Community 2015), ASEAN is now preparing for the launch of ASEAN Community Vision 2025, supported by ASEAN Connectivity 2025. As a study center focusing primarily and solely on ASEAN, in collaboration with the Directorate General of ASEAN Cooperation, Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Center of ASEAN Studies Andalas University, will be hosting the International Conference on ASEAN (IC-ASEAN) as a platform to evaluate past actions, to discuss present issues, and to provide an outlook for the future of ASEAN. Aims and Scope The International Conference on ASEAN (IC-ASEAN) is a multidisciplinary conference which covers a broad range of area. The sub theme will be divided into two large categories focusing on ASEAN Community 2015 and 2025 also ASEAN Connectivity 2025. The sub theme related to ASEAN Community will cover issues related to the three pillars (Political-security Community, Economic Community and Social-cultural Community). Meanwhile the ASEAN Connectivity sub theme will include issues within the key areas (Physical Connectivity, Institutional Connectivity and People-to-people Connectivity