Here is the Abstract and the full document is available here.
A more pacific global community, engendered through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the hopeful and indeed lofty goal championed by the practice and theory of ICT4Peace. A recent addition to the field of international development, there has been little effort to strenuously challenge the propositions and assumptions put forth by ICT4Peace. What is noticeably absent from the ICT4Peace agenda is an attempt at critical self-reflection, an endeavour to understand if its tools of the trade—the ‘new’ ICTs—having emerged from unique Western experiences, are apposite to areas of conflict in the developing world. The following research is intended to explore how the dominant discourse surrounding ICT4Peace possibly obscures alternative understandings of the effects of ICT in conflict-affected environments. Using discourse analysis this paper isolates the central themes and assumptions of ICT4Peace by examining its Operational, Programmatic, and Peace-building applications. This analysis highlights three dominant discursive themes—Neutrality, Liberalism and Positivity—each respectively perpetuating the assumptions that: (i) ICTs encourage equality; (ii) ICTs are democratizing; and (iii) ICTs promote grassroots involvement. A critique of these themes and assumptions indicates substantial dissonance between the social changes that ICTs are expected to engender and the actual demands of ‘failed states’. By neglecting to address these shortcomings, ICT4Peace offers an incomplete understanding of the potential effects of these tools, possibly to the detriment of already vulnerable societies.
At a packed conference hall in Arusha, Tanzania a Ugandan journalist, AndrewMwenda poses what he expects to be a thought-provoking but rhetorical question. The audience, notable for both its diversity and its international stature - corroborated by the presence of primatolagist Jane Goodall sitting next to Google's Sergey Brin - listen intently to Mwenda’s controversial and surprising story. Devout in his belief that foreign aid and debt cancellation undermine Africa’s development and should be discontinued, he asks, ‘Can you give me a single example of one country that was developed with aid? Just give me one example.’ From the audience comes an unexpected reply: ‘Bullocks!’
Famed U2 rocker-cum-philanthropist, Bono emerges noticeably frustrated; He answers that Ireland in the days of the potato famine is an example that Mwenda has failed to note. Bono would later lament, ‘You'd think somebody farted in here when the words “debt relief” came up…Well, I’ll tell you that 20 million children in Africa are going to school today as a direct result of debt relief.” Referring to the EU aid used to increase investment in Ireland’s education system he notes that, ‘the reason Ireland now has one of the hottest economies in the world and gets all this direct investment from companies like Google and Intel is that they realized Ireland had an extremely well-educated population.’ Bono has become one of the most famous and outspoken promoters of debt relief and financial aid to poor countries, particularly in Africa. Certainly, he is accustomed to resistance from obstinate states backtracking on pledges, he is even accustomed to resistance from powerful financial organisations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but rarely has he been snubbed by those he hopes to help—individual Africans.
The venue for this debate is the TED Global Conference, a biennial event dedicated to ‘spreading ideas’ in Technology, Entertainment and Design, with a focus on International Development. Bono and his charitable organisation DATA (Debt Aids Trade Africa) were partly the inspiration for this year’s spotlight on Africa. Yet, the debate emerging from the TED Global forum, represents a growing drift in how the story of Africa is being told, one that does not necessarily correspond to Bono’s finite list of villains: debt, poverty and AIDS. Last year when NBC anchor Brian Williams travelled to Africa under Bono’s watchful-eye he heralded Bono as, ‘[leveraging] his own name to open doors, raise money and heal what ails an entire continent.’ But as experts outside the media spotlight are increasingly eager to highlight, what ‘ails’ the continent is not as simple as African debt.
Just 5 years ago, the debt relief dispute rang hollow. Those demanding debt relief, including Bono, did so on ethical grounds difficult to dispute. With the world’s poorest countries paying $100 million dollars each day in debt repayments, cancellation could mean the difference between life and death to the 41% of Africans who live on less than a Euro a day. Campaigners of debt relief like the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), have challenged the legality of many of these loans, referring to them as illegitimate debts. This contention implicates poor lending practices, leaving responsibility for the debt shared between the debtor and the creditor. Paraguay made this argument in 2005, stating that it had no legal obligation to repay its loans on the grounds that the loans granted in the late 80s to Gustavo Gramont Berres, were made with the bank’s full knowledge that he had no legal right to request such loans. Similar cases of allegedly corrupt and fraudulent lending practices are cited across the developing world.
Champions of dept relief like Bono, and organisations like Eurodad, have summarised the case for debt relief as both a legal and a moral imperative, but as the TED Global Conference is indicating, the developing world has a batch of home-grown champions like Mwenda who argue for investment, grass-roots entrepreneurship, and African democratic accountability—not charity from richer nations. This message is slowly finding support in the West, including New York University economics professor William Easterly, a former research economist at the World Bank, and author of the best-selling book ‘The White Man’s Burden.’ He dramatically paints debt-relief activists like Bono as well-meaning villains when telling his version of Africa’s story; Easterly’s heroes are uniquely African. He explains in a recent Wall Street Journal article, that African entrepreneurs have ‘shown what they are capable of…for example, [launching] the world’s fastest growing cell phone industry.’ As for Bono, Easterly jokes that he ‘is a much better musician than economist.’ Ultimately the battle to tell Africa’s story is just beginning and as African voices like Mwenda’s find receptive audiences in the West, Bono may soon find that this is no longer his story to tell.
Every technological innovation is ambiguous, with the potential for both utopia and dystopia. Gustavo Lins Ribeiro (1997:4)
Introduction
Take a moment to watch Ridley Scott’s commercial for the 1984 introduction of the Macintosh computer. What is dramatically depicted is a technology which, in the right hands, promises to liberate humanity from Orwellian tyranny and oppression. The advertisement even explicitly promises that ‘On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”’ In 2007, we take for granted that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provides services unthinkable, even 20 years ago. Satellites improve our spatial awareness, cell phones encourage constant communication, and laptops with wireless access to the internet allow for uninterrupted access to the ‘Information Society.’ Conversely, advanced satellite technology allows state militaries to gather intrusive and private information, and terrorists can use cell phones as explosive detonators; such has been the Western experience with technological modernity. From this experience stems a particular rationality, a way of viewing the role of technology in our lives, one not unlike that depicted in the 1984 Apple ad as a strong, liberating and perfecting force, when combined with noble Western intentions. Avgerou (2002) refers to this as ‘techno-economic rationality’ and suggests that it is instrumental to how Western developed societies define problems and determine solutions (2). Consequently, Western ‘problems’ like global warming, interstate conflict, and international development, come to be viewed as problems of technology, thus their solutions are viewed as equally technological in nature. Of interest to this particular research proposal is the problem of ‘failed states’ and the twin challenges of peacekeeping and peace building in conflict areas. In the legacy of the Information Systems approach to development, and the more recent field of ICT for development (generally referred to as ICT4D), ICT4Peace is a growing field of academic, and political interest. ICT is generally understood to ‘encompasses the full range of the production, distribution and consumption of messages, across all media from radio and television, to satellite to Internet,’ (Wilson 1998: 6) however for the purposes of this dissertation, those forms of ICT that are the most relevant to the modern conflict community, specifically PCs (Personal Computers) including laptops, mobile phones and other communications devices that use the Internet, including VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) shall be highlighted. Sanjana Hattotuwa (2004) suggests that ICT4Peace ‘is the use of enabling technologies to augment existing stakeholder interventions, enable hitherto marginalised actors to participate more fully in peacebuilding processes, empower grassroots communities and bring cohesion to the incredible range of activities on multiple tiers that are an intrinsic part of full-field peacebuilding and conflict transformation’ (12).
ICT4Peace takes several instrumental forms; (i) operationally, ICTs are a tool and support mechanism for military, diplomatic and civil peace practitioners, allowing for the coordination of complex logistics and the management of relief operations, helping to control the rapid flow of information, supplies and people in the field of conflict zones; (ii) programmatically, ICTs are increasingly understood as specific tools that can help failed and developing states to ‘“leapfrog” over traditional barriers to development by enhancing governance, empowering citizens, facilitating regional development and national economic integration with the global economy, and offering new opportunities to combat poverty’ (Rohozinski 2003: 4); (iii) finally, the most recent application of ICT is its peace building application, it’s use ‘as a potential medium through which to link up the members of communities torn apart by war—to allow them to communicate and cooperate together, to thereby build bridges of peace’ (ibid). Certainly, the foundations of the discipline of ICT4Peace are heavily rooted in the West’s unique experience with technological modernity. Avegerou, in criticizing this approach to development has claimed that ‘[most] information systems professionals, indoctrinated in the rationality of modernity, have little capacity to recognise the clashes of rationality they encounter when they strive to emulate the effects that ICT has “enabled” in the western economies in the context of developing countries’ (Avgerou 2000: 12). This dissertation ventures to understand: in what ways the dominant discourse surrounding ICT4Peace possibly obscures alternative understandings of the effects of ICT in conflict zones? This research question, related to critical theories of rationality and modernity, hopes to employ a practical rather than theoretical appraisal. In his critique of ICT4D Heeks (2002) has lamented that ‘only a tiny fraction of theory-related papers focus on practical implications in their conclusions.’ This dissertation intends to validate Heeks' conclusion that ‘the ultimate purpose of theory must be not just to provide a better understanding of the world but also to provide the basis for better interventions in that world’ (Heeks 2002). Subsequently this dissertation hopes to discover the theoretical and ideological foundations of the ICT4Peace movement, as depicted in the dominant discourse, and suggest areas of where a practical critique indicates flaws. Such a critique begins with intensive analysis of the ICT4Peace discourse as presented in an extensive literature review, partitioned into the three primary applications of ICT4Peace previously mentioned: (i) operational applications, (ii) programmatic applications and (iii) peace building applications. Such a literature review will also examine the limited research to date on ICT4Peace, the most authoritative example being the United Nations ICT Task Force report, ‘Information and Communication Technology for Peace: The Role of ICT in Preventing, Responding to and Recovering from Conflict’ (Stauffacher, Drake, Curion, et al. 2005). The literature review is expected to demonstrate that the ICT4Peace discourse is overall unreflective of reality and based on what Rohozinski (2003) suggests are Western ‘neutral, liberal and positive’ assumptions about the potential of ICTs in conflict zones (8).
Once the literature review has demonstrated these assumptions, the critique that follows will be based on the practicalities of conflict zones which the dominant discourse fails to address or consider. This practical critique will address each of the dominant assumptions individually including: (i) the belief that ICTs encourage equality, (ii) that transparency and information flows are democratizing and conducive to peace, and (iii) that ICTs encourage peace building through grassroots involvement. Finally, this dissertation proposes to examine the Government out of the Box initiative (GooB)*, an ICT4Peace case study that is still in the development stages, to examine the extent to which the dominant ‘neutral, liberal and positive’ discourse is shaping its progress, and perhaps obscuring alternative understandings of its possible effects. By examining the GooB initiative, this essay proposes to highlight how overlooked institutional assumptions may affect the design of ICT4Peace initiatives and impact the social compatibility of Western products in conflict zones.
This paper hopes to steer clear of both Technological Determinism, which Feenberg (1999) has aptly described as ‘a cheerful doctrine of progress’ (3) as well as Technological Essentialism which suggests that ‘there is one and only one “essence” of technology and it is responsible for the chief problems of modern civilization’ (ibid). Ultimately the goal of this dissertation is not to discredit ICT4Peace, but rather to focus attention on alternate understandings of the possible impacts of ICTs in conflict zones, thus providing the basis for better understanding and better interventions. Western society has rarely found need to assess the social implications of technology, as ‘common sense instrumentalism treated technology as a neutral means, requiring no particular philosophical explanation or justification,’ (Feenberg 1999:1) but as ICT4Peace initiatives lay claim to ‘failed’ and ‘fragile’ states, it would be irresponsible not to consider the alternate implications of ICT in these countries. To appreciate the value of such a critique, it is useful to recall the hard lesson learned in the field of international development that, despite benign humanitarian intentions, food aid in the hands of local warlords can become a powerful and destructive weapon (Rohozinski 2003:8). This proposal began, by noting the possible utopic and dystopic features of every technological innovation, it is only by considering and tempering the two possibilities that responsible ICT4Peace interventions can proceed.
Dissertation Outline and Timeline
Chapter 1 – Introduction and Explanation of terms
Chapter 2 (June 15) – Critical Literature Review:
(a) The history of social theories of technology
(b) ICT4Peace current research
(c) ICT4Peace applications:
(i) operational applications
(ii) programmatic applications
(iii) peace building applications
Chapter 3 (June 15) – Discussion of findings, trends, and assumptions of the dominant discourse
Chapter 4 (June 30) –Practical critique of dominant discourse:
(i) ICT encourages equality?
(ii) transparency and information flows are democratizing and conducive to peace?
(iii) ICT encourages peace building through grassroots involvement?
Chapter 5 (July 15) – Case Study: Government out of the Box
Chapter 6 (July 30) – Conclusions
Month of August: Revisions and Formatting
September 1st: Submission
Preliminary Literature Review:
The Research Value of the Proposed Dissertation
Rigorous academic critiques of ICT4Peace are sparse, there is nonetheless a great tradition situated within the realm of critical development theory and social theories of technology that endeavour to problematise ‘the grand narratives that have defined development thinking, be that the entrenchment of markets, the progression of capitalism or […] the emergence of an information society’ (Wilson 2001: 2; see Escobar 1988 as an example). Previous to these critiques were the critical theorists of modernity and technology including Mumford and Marcuse who respectively warned of ‘authoritarian technics’ (Mumford 1964) and Western ‘scientific-technical rationality’ as political systems of domination (Marcuse 1964). Marcuse, adopting a Marxist perspective, suggested that the Western regard for science and technology served a particular hierarchical structure of power and class and reinforced the ‘rationality of the free market [… maintaining] the unequal relations fostered by capital accumulation’ (Avgerou 2000: 5). Thus, the historical critique of technological modernity suggests that the fundamental principal that has come to distinguish “modern” Western society from “traditional” societies is the belief that man can be improved by reason alone (Touraine 1995). This is the theoretical backbone in which the ICT4Peace movement is grounded. Emanating from the conviction that science and its technological products are beneficial to human progress and improvement, ‘children of both globalism and the computer age see themselves as creating a new world mediated by hi-tech, where access to the network is both a sort of post-modern liberation and the experience of a new democratic means’ (Ribeiro 1997: 3). In addition to its positivist theoretical foundations, ICT4Peace owes it’s genesis to the historical climate within which it evolved.
The end of the 20th Century witnessed unprecedented international interventions in conflict zones across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the southern borders of Europe, driven largely by the magnitude of human suffering in these areas and ‘in part by hope for the “peace dividend” that was to accrue with the end of the cold war’ (Rohozinski 2003:2). Mark Duffield (2005) suggests that this period experienced a ‘securitisation’ of international development, as the Cold War Era’s geopolitics (the security of the state) were replaced with the Humanitarian Era’s biopolitics (the security of populations). In other words, ‘international danger now equates with the unsecured circulatory flows and networked interconnections associated with the social, economic and political life of global populations’ (Duffield 2005: 143). Thus, this period witnessed a shift away from more traditional and limited interventions, intended to curb violence and provide humanitarian aid, towards a more comprehensive social transformation of these areas, applying the liberal levers of development, positivist notions of progress, and exercises of good governance and market reform. The stated goals of these ventures were to ‘transform conflict zones from nests of Hobbesian atavism and poverty into modern, liberal, market-oriented democracies’ (Rohozinski 2003:3). Based on the West’s own experiences with technological modernity, development and relief practitioners came to consider ICTs as neutral devices of communication and information transmission, while simultaneously ‘harboring strong expectations for the positive development and peace-building potential that they may enable’ (ibid: 4). Hence critical development theory views the premise and practice of ICT4Peace initiatives as a product of positivism, and the belief that by applying rational science and reason, desired and beneficial results may be achieved (ibid). This belief is understandable considering that Western experience with ICTs have largely conformed to the norms of liberal industrialized societies, which as Rohozinski (2003) is quick to add, are ‘the societies in which these technologies were first developed and who continue to predominate globally as core users’ (17). However, the question remains if this Western support for equating ICT with progress and peace is adequate substantiation for the large scale experimentation with ICT4Peace initiatives currently underway or proposed in conflict areas.
Proponents of ICT4Peace cite the Zapatista ‘Netwar’ in Chiapas, Mexico as conclusive evidence that ICTs are both changing the nature of social conflicts and making them more peaceful. By using fax machines, satellites communications, and the internet, ‘[what] began as a violent insurgency by a small indigenous force in an isolated region was thus transformed and expanded, within weeks, into a non-violent, less overtly destructive, but still highly disruptive movement that engaged the involvement of activists from far and wide and had both foreign and national repercussions for Mexico’ (Ronfeldt 1998: 4). Despite the tremendous coverage and analysis of the Zapatista uprising since the height of the conflict in the early 1990s**, it is unclear how relevant the event is to modern ICT4Peace initiatives. World internet use has increased by more than two hundred percent in the last seven years alone (Internet World Stat 2007), and was in only its nascent stages of acceptance at the height of the Zapatista uprising in 1993-1995. Much of the attention that the uprising was able to generate, and therefore the political concessions garnered, were linked to the novelty of the medium.
What the ICT4Peace literature lacks is an attempt to challenge its largely unsubstantiated assumptions, and discern the practical implications of its interventions. The suggestion that ICTs can unite and build bridges between warring parties in conflict areas, remains more of a theoretical intention that a practical reality. Rohozinski (2003) posits that ‘the liberal values that buttress this perspective […] may severely underestimate the various forms of structural violence that separate communities in conflict, and which often remain even after the cessation of physical violence (6). Western understanding of technology is intimately linked to the grand social transformations it is assumed to engender. These assumptions must be intensively deconstructed, and the practical realities of these interventions better understood before they can responsibly be applied to areas acknowledged to be ‘fragile.’
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*The GooB is ‘a concept for a ready-made public administration and management ICT based toolset for the purposes of state-building. The idea is to give a new national government an infrastructure to build a local civil service quickly, hence creating national ownership and a local capacity for delivering services. The GooB-concept is aimed to support the existing international state-building efforts by involving local administrations early on and building their capacity to handle basic administrative things, such as citizens registers, financial flows, etc’ (Stauffacher, Drake, Curion, et al. 2005).
