Technology Of The Oppressed: Inequity And The Digital Mundane In Favelas Of Brazil

Description

How Brazilian favela residents engage with and appropriate technologies, both to fight the oppression in their lives and to represent themselves in the world. Brazilian favelas are impoverished settlements usually located on hillsides or the outskirts of a city. In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of how favela residents engage with technology in community technology centers and in their everyday lives. Their stories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by technology don't just reject it, but consciously resist and appropriate it, and how their experiences with digital technologies enable them to navigate both digital and nondigital sources of oppression—and even, at times, to flourish. Nemer uses a decolonial and intersectional framework called Mundane Technology as an analytical tool to understand how digital technologies can simultaneously be sites of oppression and tools in the fight for freedom. Building on the work of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, he shows how the favela residents appropriate everyday technologies—technological artifacts (cell phones, Facebook), operations (repair), and spaces (Telecenters and Lan Houses)—and use them to alleviate the oppression in their everyday lives. He also addresses the relationship of misinformation to radicalization and the rise of the new far right. Contrary to the simplistic techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Yet the spirit, love, community, resilience, and resistance of favela residents make possible their pursuit of freedom. Cover Half title Series title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments 1 | Introduction Favelas: The site of oppression Territory Of Good: Gurigica, São Benedito, Itararé, And Bairro Da Penha Digital Inequalities In Vitória Positionality 2 | Repairing the Broken City Repair As Mundane Technology Repairing The Keyboard The Internet Of The Oppressed Mobile Mundane Technology Mundane Technology: Resistance As Repair 3 | Community Technology Centers as Mundane Technologies Rethinking The Role Of Telecenters In Communities The Bottom Of The Sociotechnical Pyramid LAN Houses: Can A Mundane Technology Be For-Profit? LAN Houses As Safe Social Places Bringing Homework To The LAN House 4 | Social Media for Survival Social Media: Facebook And Youtube The Liberation Of The Selfie Breaking The Culture Of Silence Through Selfies 5 | Proud Faveladas: Resisting Gendered Oppression in Territory of Good Paulo Freire, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, And Feminist Criticism CTCs As Spaces Of Gender Oppression Telecenter As Safe But Limited Spaces For Women Digital Technologies Amplifying Gender Oppression 6 | Geographies of Oppression: Uncovering Spaces of Silencing The Social Movement Of The Oppressed Social Boundaries On Social Network Sites The Orkutization Of Shoppings "Is It Because I'm Black?" 7 | Technology of the Oppressor From June Journeys To The Rise Of Bolsonaro From Facebook To Whatsapp The Rise Of Right-Wing Extremism The Human Infrastructure Of Fake News From Misinformation To Radicalization Why Bolsonaro And The New Right Hate Paulo Freire? 8 | Technology of Hope: Reliving Technology of the Oppressed Appendix | Methodology Fieldwork Phases Data Collection Primary Data Participant Observation Interviews Audio Recording Focus Groups Field Notes Secondary Data Government Documents Data Analysis Triangulation References Index