Category Archives: announcements

Welcome to I181: Technology & Poverty

Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays 10-12.30 Place: 210 South Hall Instructors: Janaki Srinivasan & Neha Kumar In this course, we encourage students to examine the interplay between technological systems, economic activities, social structures and practices in the lives of ‘the poor.’ Our goal … Continue reading

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Lecture 11, 6/26

Enter mobile phones. What do users do with them? Talk on the phone? Not just. In this class, we will talk about some of the motivations that underlie feature (and smart) phone adoption and how these phones are being used … Continue reading

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Panel Discussion, 6/21

The topic of this discussion will be “Mobile Phones and their Affordances” and our panelists will talk about their experiences with mobile technologies, why they chose to look at the mobile phone for their work, and what challenges they faced … Continue reading

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Lecture 9, 6/19

Great job with the presentations last Thursday! In this class, we will discuss community radio initiatives and projects that have been focused on citizen journalism. We will also discuss themes of democratization and surveillance as they relate to these projects.

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Lecture 7, 06/12

In this lecture, we will discuss user appropriation of technology. The focus will be on rural China, where Elisa Oreglia – our guest speaker for the day – does her research. Below is a description of her talk. Online even … Continue reading

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Lecture 5, 6/5

Both ‘Digital Divide’ and ‘Information Society’ have been central concepts in arguments for providing access to digital technologies to poor and marginalized societies. These concepts rework some of the institutional themes of development and growth that we covered before. In … Continue reading

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Lecture 4, 5/31

From the “top-down” approaches of the cases discussed so far, in this class we will shift to taking a “bottom-up” approach to understanding both technology and poverty. On the one hand, the lecture tackles some of the shortcomings of statistical … Continue reading

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Lecture 3, 5/29

This lecture will discuss the post-independence push towards industrialization in many developing countries. This emphasis followed from economic growth models that saw capital investment as the key to realizing economic growth with the presumption that improved social conditions would follow. … Continue reading

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Lecture 2, 5/24

In this class, we will discuss foundational theories of technology and of development that will offer us a way to understand the role of technology in development projects. In the first part of the lecture, we will ask what constitutes … Continue reading

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Lecture 1, 5/22

In this introductory class, we will lay out some of the important themes and concepts of this course. We will focus on discussions about the role of technology in poverty alleviation, examining the ways in which these discussions have changed … Continue reading

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