Ester Barinaga
Professor
Powerful Dichotomies: Inclusion and exclusion in the Information Society
Author
Summary, in English
Technological development, in particular the development of information and communicatiion technologies (ICT), is often presented as the answer to many social problems. Proponents of the Information Society suggest that poverty, failing integration, unemployment, and llack of democracy can be addressed with the appropriate technological means. Inequality iis often framed in terms of a digital divide. According to this perspective, a person’’s socio-economic status and opportunity for a better life depends on their access to, and capacity to make use of, new technologies.
This book challenges such claims. The analysis is carefully developed from an ethnographic study of a regional development projects founded on the alleged promises of science and technology to solve social problems. She presents the case of Kista Science City, located in the northern outskirts of the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Kista Science City, like the Indian ICT-industry centre in Bangalore and Silicon Valley in
California, is representative of the high-tech urban clusters, developed
through co-operation between business, public policy-makers and higher
education, that are a global phenomenon.
In an engaged and colourful account employing critical social theory, Barinaga depicts and interprets the practices of Kista Science City. She finds that technology-driven development is superimposed on the prevailing social order, reproducing social inequality and economic disadvantage instead of reducing it. The new, progressive vocabulary of science-based regional development projects tends to mask deeper mechanisms of exclusion, which in this case are often related to categorisation based on ethnicity. However, Barinaga argues that this outcome is not inevitable. She concludes the book by offering ideas for envisioning an effort to destabilise and eventually alter the current state of affairs.
This book challenges such claims. The analysis is carefully developed from an ethnographic study of a regional development projects founded on the alleged promises of science and technology to solve social problems. She presents the case of Kista Science City, located in the northern outskirts of the Swedish capital, Stockholm. Kista Science City, like the Indian ICT-industry centre in Bangalore and Silicon Valley in
California, is representative of the high-tech urban clusters, developed
through co-operation between business, public policy-makers and higher
education, that are a global phenomenon.
In an engaged and colourful account employing critical social theory, Barinaga depicts and interprets the practices of Kista Science City. She finds that technology-driven development is superimposed on the prevailing social order, reproducing social inequality and economic disadvantage instead of reducing it. The new, progressive vocabulary of science-based regional development projects tends to mask deeper mechanisms of exclusion, which in this case are often related to categorisation based on ethnicity. However, Barinaga argues that this outcome is not inevitable. She concludes the book by offering ideas for envisioning an effort to destabilise and eventually alter the current state of affairs.
Publishing year
2010
Language
English
Document type
Book
Publisher
Ekonomiska forskningsinstitutet, EFI
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 9789172588141