Arora, Payal

Rangaswamy, N

English

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From the Guest Editors ARORA, RANGASWAMYFrom the Guest EditorsICTs for Leisure in Development:A Case for Motivation, Exploration, and Play in the Global SouthPayal AroraNimmi RangaswamyPhotoshopping the newlyweds’ pictures, downloading the latest movies, teenagers chatting on socialnetwork sites, and virtual gaming may seem like typical behavior in the West; yet in the context of a vil-lage in Mali or a slum in Mumbai, it is seen as unusual and perhaps an anomaly in their new media prac-tices. In recent years, some scholars including the guest editors (Arora, 2014; Arora & Rangaswamy,2013; Rangaswamy & Cutrell, 2012) have encountered these leisure-oriented behaviors and argued forthe need to emphasize and reposition user practices within larger and contemporary discourses of mediaconsumption. Yet for the most part, studies in information and communication technologies for develop-ment (ICTD) have duly relegated such enactments as anecdotal. This is partly due to the fact that muchof this research is driven by development agendas with a strong historical bias toward the socioeconomicrealms.The ICTD domain has evolved to include a range of technology artifacts, their affordances, and a vari-ety of speciªc geospaces of usage, collaborating with scientists across disciplines from computer scienceto interface design to anthropology. However, we aim to re-focus the ICTD gaze on the so-called non-instrumental, non-utilitarian uses and impacts on communities, groups, and individuals from disadvan-taged socioeconomic backgrounds that are not yet a subject of singular, sustained investigation. Wehope to establish the relationship between discreet technology practices such as those for livelihoodsand those for leisure (entertainment, pleasure, play) as legitimate components of an integrated technol-ogy experience.Speciªcally, we explore how experience with technologies could potentially contribute to “develop-ment-friendly” skillsets, life chances, and opportunities. We call for a renewed examination of the pre-mises of ICT use in resource-constrained environments, particularly those which valorize and equatevTo cite this article: Arora, P., & Rangaswamy, N. (Eds.). (2014). ICTs for leisure in development: A case for motivation, ex-ploration, and play in the Global South [ICTs for Leisure in Development Special Issue]. Information Technologies & Inter-national Development, 10(3), v–vii.© 2014 USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unportedlicense. All rights not granted thereunder to the public are reserved to the publisher and may not be exercised without its express written permission.Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2014, v–viidevelopment as utilitarian. We hope to provoke a reimagining of the ICTD community’s core presump-tions and values to problematize the notion of developmental well-being.Adopting a narrow development lens can miss the actual engagements and ingenious strategies mar-ginal populations use to instate technologies into their everyday. Here, seeking entertainment and plea-sure as sustainable engagements becomes a key behavioral tool to strategically use, emotively connectto, and play with technology. Indeed, this may require us to broaden our view of how we think aboutwhat underlies a good ICTD research project and how we view a range of human behaviors as incremen-tal to development.The motivating question for this special issue is: What are the implications, impacts, and pivotal rolesof ICTs as leisure (entertainment/pleasure/play) artifacts in the context of emerging economies? Webelieve this line of inquiry is timely, largely unexplored, and valuable to the ICTD domain. Despite studiesyielding insightful commentaries on ICTs in this arena, we believe resource-constrained environmentsgenerating rich usages that are not overtly utilitarian have remained hitherto unexplored.In this special issue, we put together various original research studies that reconceptualize ICT mobili-zation and serviceability to extend beyond a conservative understanding of developmental value. Thiswill help us focus on the heterogeneous and life-enhancing aspects of technological use encompassingboth experiential and purposive elements of ICT adoption.We strive to drive home the following points, namely:• Leisure is a critical area of technology infusion that leads to discovery and magniªcation of digitalliteracies. Moreover, leisure offers an experimental space to informally diffuse learnings and impartsocial impacts that bind people and technologies.• As mobile technologies move beyond urban areas and the upper classes who can afford them, it isessential to bring together stories about crafting technologies that include a spectrum of playful be-haviors as mainstream ICTD research.• The ICTD community at large is poised at a juncture where interdisciplinary crossings are pushingthe boundaries of established themes and subject matters. This provides an opportunity to moveaway from ICTD’s established viewpoints to discuss and modify some of the basic premises of tech-nology use in development contexts.All articles in this special issue speak convincingly and compellingly about the importance of digital lei-sure for understanding technology practice.For instance, Sey and Ortoleva’s “All Work and No Play? Judging the Uses of Mobile Technologies andICTs in Developing Countries” moves across disciplines of philosophy, psychology, and anthropology tounderstand the potential of play for ICTD practice. The authors examine the ramiªcations of the expo-nential growth of mobile technologies in emerging economies and their impacts on the sociopersonaldevelopment of marginalized publics by fusing social, playful, and pleasure-oriented needs.We see an emphasis on the personal element in Oreglia’s “ICT and (Personal) Development in RuralChina.” Shifting contexts to rural China, the author draws our attention to the unlikely users—old peo-ple, rural women, people with little disposable income or education—whose ICT use is often motivatedby social purposes such as connecting with family in far-ºung places, being entertained and in general,passing time. While it is hard to prove a direct impact of these personal uses on GDP, the author arguesthat to ignore the indirect beneªts accruing to this population misses their powerful inºuence on socialequity and inclusion in the era of mobile telephony.In “Relax, You’ve Got M-PESA: Leisure as Empowerment,” Gajjala and Tetteh investigate mobile tech-nologies but focus their energies on the much-hyped M-PESA initiative, a cellphone-based money trans-fer system in the Kenyan context. Here, leisure is used as a strategic digital instrument to promote theplatform and sustain the interest of current users. Through this effort, the authors explicitly bridge thevi Information Technologies & International DevelopmentFROM THE GUEST EDITORSªeld of new media studies and ICT4D, linking scholarship on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter social prac-tices to M-PESA.While the leisure thrust in mobile technology uses have resulted in their viral dispersion among disad-vantaged populations, the need of the hour is to recognize leisure as not only a social act but also a criti-cal cultural space. In Kolko and Racadio’s article, “The Value of Non-Instrumental Computer Use: A Studyof Skills Acquisition and Performance in Brazil,” leisure is situated in telecenters, libraries, schools, andother public places. This extends the rich conversations on the virtual public sphere to urban contexts,underlining the need for us to look at both the material and the digital domains as complements of eachother. And within these cultural geographies, the authors argue for the complex relationship betweeninstrumental and non-instrumental uses of technospaces.Talking of the public sphere, Tully and Ekdale twin the discourse of hashtag publics in media studiesand the ICTD realm. In “Sites of Playful Engagement: Twitter Hashtags as Spaces of Leisure and Develop-ment in Kenya,” the authors reveal the everyday leisure and entertainment practices of popular hashtagson Kenyan Twitter as melding politics and entertainment in rich and playful ways. Through hashtags, theauthors argue that Kenyans use Twitter as an instrument of collective protest against government cor-ruption, and as a platform to share jokes, comment on media misrepresentations of their country, andcommunicate with people across the globe. Clearly, a link exists between context and use in understand-ing people’s participation and empowerment through ICTs. Initiating a discussion on what we mean byICT for leisure involves identifying the lived realities of speciªc geospatial spaces united by their commonrelationship with broken and strapped infrastructures. The conºuence of nine researchers and ªve arti-cles in this special issue provides excellent opportunities to question, discuss, and modify some of thebasic premises of technology use in development contexts.Rounding out this special issue is a book review by Pamela Abbott, “Connecting ICTs to Development:The IDRC Experience.”Payal Arora, Assistant Professor, Erasmus University. arora@eshcc.eur.nlNimmi Rangaswamy, Senior Research Scientist, Xerox Research Centre India.nimmi.rangasway@xerox.comReferencesArora, P. (2014). The leisure commons: A spatial history of Web 2.0. London, UK & New York, NY:Routledge.Arora, P., & Rangaswamy, N. (2013). Digital leisure for development: Rethinking new media practices fromthe Global South. Media Culture & Society, 35(7), 898–905.Rangaswamy, N., & Cutrell, E. (2013). Anthropology, development and ICTs: Slums, youth, and the mobileInternet in urban India. Information Technologies & International Development, 9(2), 51–63.Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2014 viiARORA, RANGASWAMY

Digital leisure for development: Rethinking new media practices from the global south

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Digital leisure for development: Rethinking new media practices from the global south

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