From community to assemblage? : ICT provides a site for inclusion and exclusion in the global south

The role of information and communication technology (ICT) in development has been discussed from two distinctly different perspectives: some view it as a means for opening new alleys for the facilitation of development and democracy, while others assess it as counterproductive. Furthermore, it has been emphasised that people in cities and rural areas utilise ICT in different ways, as do people with wealth and education compared to poor people. In Africa, Kenya has declared itself an ICT hub. The state has emphasised ICT in promoting services, much less freedom of expression. This article discusses ICT and development via the filter of assemblage, a key concept developed by Deleuze and Guattari (2004/1980. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.). They emphasised fluidity as well as micro- and macro-level dichotomies. When communities based on sharing and consistent social order meet new technology, the change goes deeper than that of improved services. The basic difference might be the fact that a community is constructed on cultural ties developed over time, which strengthens immobility and stability, while an assemblage is characterised by mobility and fluidity. Thus, a system of values, hierarchies, and inherited traditions is challenged, mixed with ‘new’ problems brought about by individualised behaviour.Peer reviewe

Price and income policies

Discussion and objective debate is an important and necessary ingredient of social decision-making in a democracy. Only thus can the public, legislators, administrators and special interest groups inventory and understand the complete range of phenomena relevant for public decision. Discussion and analysis is a method of measurement, for a more complete inventory of goals and sub-goals of public policy and for expression of hypotheses and predictions in respect to outcomes of various policy means. Discussion is the most ancient and universal process for reasoned calculation in social policy, whether this be at the program committee of the 4-H Club or in presidential elections.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/card_reports/1006/thumbnail.jp

Doctors under the microscope: the birth of medical audit

In 1989 a UK government White Paper introduced medical audit as a comprehensive and statutory system of assessment and improvement in quality of care in hospitals. A considerable body of research has described the evolution of medical audit in terms of a struggle between doctors and National Health Service managers over control of quality assurance. In this paper we examine the emergence of medical audit from 1910 to the early 1950s, with a particular focus on the pioneering work of the American surgeons Codman, MacEachern and Ponton. It is contended that medical professionals initially created medical audit in order to articulate a suitable methodology for assessing individual and organisational performance. Rather than a means of protecting the medical profession from public scrutiny, medical auditing was conceived and operationalised as a managerial tool for fostering the active engagement of senior hospital managers and discharging public accountability. These early debates reveal how accounting was implicated in the development of a system for monitoring and improving the work of medical professionals, advancing the quality of hospital care, and was advocated in ways, which included rather than excluded managers