Theorising the design-reality gap in ICTD: matters of care in mobile learning for Kenyan community health workers

This thesis examines the sociomaterial relations of “design practice” in order to advance new perspectives on success and failure in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD). I conduct an ethnographic case study of an academic research intervention and update the widely-cited theory of design-reality gaps (Heeks, 2002). Using methods from classic actor-network theory and post-structural material-semiotic tools, the analysis: 1) disentangles the entwined sociomaterial practices around design, production, and use of technology; and 2) integrates these insights into more elaborate conceptualisations of gaps, sustainability, scalability, and project failure. In doing so, my study answers the research question: What are the sociomaterial relations of “design practice” in a globally-distributed, multi-stakeholder, and technologicallymediated ICTD project for poverty alleviation? My research narrative describes how an array of humans and non-humans participated as designers in a transnational, interdisciplinary Participatory Action Research project to train Kenyan health workers using mobile phones. At least six different patterns of sociomaterial relations operated through a given set of people and things, enacting the material-discursive apparatuses (Barad, 1998) of educational research, healthcare, the market, the state, and the local community. I assert that in this Participatory Action Research project for mobile learning, the design-reality gap was not so much a matter of geographic or socio-cultural divides, but was instead constituted as fluid space (Mol, 2002) separating the educational researchers’ designerly practices from the multiplicity of ways in which health workers, mobile phones, and other actors lived in relation to one another. I conclude that these ontological politics enacted design as an empirical matter of care – an affective and morally-charged sociomaterial practice with an ethico-political commitment to the marginalised (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011). I therefore present a conceptual model of success and failure in participatory ICTD projects that explicitly incorporates the affective and material dimensions of care, and conceptualises social justice – not solely in terms of universal claims or global standards – but as embodied, sociomaterial enactments

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

Storytelling: global perspectives on narrative

This book is a collection of papers from an international inter-disciplinary conference focusing on storytelling and human life. The chapters in this volume provide unique accounts of how stories shape the narratives and discourses of people’s lives and work; and those of their families and broader social networks. From making sense of history; to documenting biographies and current pedagogical approaches; to exploring current and emerging spatial and media trends; this book explores the possibilities of narrative approaches as a theoretical scaffold across numerous disciplines and in diverse contexts. Central to all the chapters is the idea of stories being a creative and reflexive means to make sense of people’s past, current realities and future possibilities

The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies

This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today

Human Security and Sustainable Development in East Africa

This book investigates contemporary human security issues in East Africa, setting forth policy recommendations and a research agenda for future studies. Human security takes a people-centered rather than state-centered approach to security issues, focusing on whether people feel safe, free from fear, want and indignity. This book investigates human security in East Africa, encompassing issues as diverse as migration, housing, climate change, displacement, food security, aflatoxins, land rights, and peace and conflict resolution. In particular, the book showcases innovative original research from African scholars based on the continent and abroad, and together the contributors provide policy recommendations and set forth a human security research agenda for East Africa, which encompasses Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. As well as being useful for policy makers and practitioners, this book will interest researchers across African Studies, Security Studies, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Global Governance, International Relations, and Human Geography

Human Security and Sustainable Development in East Africa

This book investigates contemporary human security issues in East Africa, setting forth policy recommendations and a research agenda for future studies. Human security takes a people-centered rather than state-centered approach to security issues, focusing on whether people feel safe, free from fear, want and indignity. This book investigates human security in East Africa, encompassing issues as diverse as migration, housing, climate change, displacement, food security, aflatoxins, land rights, and peace and conflict resolution. In particular, the book showcases innovative original research from African scholars based on the continent and abroad, and together the contributors provide policy recommendations and set forth a human security research agenda for East Africa, which encompasses Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. As well as being useful for policy makers and practitioners, this book will interest researchers across African Studies, Security Studies, Environmental Studies, Political Science, Global Governance, International Relations, and Human Geography

Crosspoints: Toward an Integrative Framework for Actor training, Rehearsal and Performance

The range of actor training methods used in most conservatoire-style curricula are derived from dramatic text analysis methods pioneered by Constsntin Stanislavski. Predominant shifts in aesthetics such as those ushered forth by postmodernism, new technologies, hybrid arts and cross-cultural collaboration present new problems for the contemporary actor. The broadening of the field of performance suggests that dramatic acting techniques are not universally suited to the expanding horizon of practices. This research extends a tributary of actor training that is generally related to Jerzy Grotowski's work. It uses the term "source" in a way that evokes Grotowski's Theatre of Sources but is not directly connected to it. This research also incorporates pedagogical and sociological theory to outline issues such as symbolic control and "legitimate" versus "avant-garde" cultural production. This work is an exegesis describing the development of the Crosspoints, exaining how it was inspired by the Viewpoints. It documents the process of creating the method through stages of ideation, the invention of exercises and the design of an instructional model (the "pedagogising") of the approach. Through situated practice-based research across multiple sites, exercises were imagined, metaphors and illustrations were created, workshops were taught, and a handbook was written (and illustrated). Accompanying this paper is a handbook intended for actors, directors and teachers. It is the artistic artifact of the process and instructs the reader on ways to incorporate Crosspoints with current acting pedagogy. It also suggests future investigations to extend the system

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationIn this dissertation, I argue that although the Gothic sensibility in the U.S. cultural tradition is often associated with the regional spaces of the South and the Northeast, we should also be willing to imagine the U.S. West in Gothic terms. Stories of ghosts, haunting, and trauma help us to come to terms not only with the historical legacy of the Western frontier, but can also help us grapple with the West in today's period of global capital flows, inequality, frayed social ties, and the deterioration of meaningful metanarratives. Toward this end of reconsidering the West as a haunted space of trauma (past and present), I examine cultural texts that help illuminate the fraught, "out of joint" qualities of the post-1989 West: Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo, Sherman Alexie's Flight, Walter Kirn's Up in the Air, Richard Rodriguez's Brown, Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, and Charles Bowden's Murder City

A multi-state political process analysis of the anti-testing movement.

I applied McAdam's political process model for social movement analysis to examine the level of collective resistance to high stakes testing in California, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Texas from 1985 to 2005. Data on protest occurrences in those states were gathered from online news reports, anti-testing organization websites, and electronic interviews from individuals associated with the anti-testing movement. Variables used in the analysis included each state's key educational accountability legislation, political affiliations of state political leaders, state political leaders' support of accountability issues, student ethnicity profiles, poverty indicators, dropout rates, and collective bargaining laws. I examined the relationship between those variables and protest development in terms of the political process model's three components: framing processes, mobilizing structures, and political opportunity. I concluded California and Massachusetts, with their strong networks of anti-testing organizations, showed more instances of protest than any other state. Slightly fewer protests occurred in New York. Texas showed few instances of anti-testing protests and there were no reports of protests in South Carolina. There was evidence of framing efforts from both proponents and opponents of high-stakes testing, with proponents' framing efforts tending to be more covert. I found that anti-testing protests were primarily initiated by middle-class and affluent groups of citizens, who demonstrated greater political access but whose major concerns differed by state. Evidence showed that although all five states have Republican governors, protests emerged more readily in the three states whose legislatures had a Democratic majority. I found that protest efforts were inhibited when protesters faced serious consequences as a result of their actions. In addition, state political leaders began to take part in the anti-testing protest movement once the state became subject to sanctions under the strict performance requirements imposed by No Child Left Behind. Overall, the political process model proved to be a highly efficient analytical tool in this context