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Wired for change: the links between ICTs and development discourses
Author(s) -
Schech Susanne
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.870
Subject(s) - skepticism , nexus (standard) , icts , modernization theory , information and communications technology , power (physics) , perspective (graphical) , enlightenment , sociology , dependency (uml) , political science , political economy , epistemology , law , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science , embedded system , systems engineering , engineering
The ICT revolution's promises and threats for developing countries can be brought into clearer perspective if we pay attention to the underlying discourses on development and knowledge employed in this debate. This paper suggests that those who enthusiastically embrace ICTs tend to operate within a modernization discourse, while sceptics are influenced by dependency and post‐colonial discourses of development. Both perspectives operate with a liberal notion of knowledge as separate from power. The paper argues that a more fruitful approach is to analyse the role ICTs play in the power–knowledge nexus. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.