CALL FOR PAPERS
We invite researchers working in the field of mobile
communication and gender in the developing world to submit an abstract for
consideration for a volume whose current working title
is Intersections of gender, development and mobile technology:
social context and relations of power planned for submission to the
Routledge series Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality. The
deadline for abstract submission is September 30th, 2014 (please see guidelines
below). Once decisions have been made regarding abstract selection, those who
submitted abstracts will be informed in a timely manner and the editors
(Caroline Wamala, Laura Stark) will then write the book proposal to the
publisher on the basis of the accepted abstracts.
If Routledge accepts our proposal, our target deadline for
completion of full chapters is December 31st, 2015. However, this deadline will
depend on the publisher’s timetable. A workshop may also be organized for
authors to meet and discuss their research if funding becomes available.
THEME:
Mobile technologies such as mobile phones, smart phones,
tablets, and note books have revolutionized our way of life. How we
communicate, relate and organize our way of living has been impacted and aided
by the proliferation of these devices. In order to narrow the socioeconomic
disparities between countries and regions, the use of information communication
technologies (ICTs), mobile technologies included, continue to be championed by
development efforts, and access to timely information enabled through ICTs is
said to promote socio-economic well-being. Communication technologies that are mobile
in character have enlarged development prospects due to their widespread
adoption among even the poor in so-called developing countries. Mobile phones
enable communication and information exchange in the remotest parts of the
globe, and have consequently become synonymous with the discourse on poverty
reduction and economic growth.
The proposed volume focuses on the changing intersections
between technology, gender and other categories of social and cultural power
difference (age, race, ethnicity, class, caste, religion, etc.), and asks how
these intersections can inform development discourse, practice and research.
The theoretical underpinnings of the volume engage with the intersectionality
paradigm in teasing out the complexities involved in using mobile technologies
for development purposes, and the concept of development is problematized
through analysis of empirical materials.
The inspiration for this volume comes from new trends
observed at the Mobile Communications for Development (M4D) conference held in
Dakar, Senegal in April 2014. At the first M4D conference held in 2008, issues
related to society and gender were barely on the agenda and only a few voices
were raised in skepticism of the dominant climate of techno-optimism. Just six
years later, the mobile-for-development field has come a long way. Both
researchers and practitioners, often for different reasons, attend closely to
the implications of gender and are taking a more critical view of the
transformative capabilities of mobile telephony. They are also calling for more
sensitivity to the socio-cultural and political contexts of behaviors linked to
mobile use, as well as the social consequences of that use.
There is a growing sense that well-being and empowerment,
two concepts central to current development discourses, need to be examined
from more nuanced perspectives, with greater attention to their internal
contradictions. For example, increased benefits through mobile health
interventions measured in physical health may come at the cost of social or
cultural disempowerment, when for instance HIV patients who come to prenatal
clinics are treated badly by community healthcare workers, or when outreach
efforts enhance the authority of the mother-in-law over the reproductive rights
of her daughter-in-law within the home. While mobile phones are said to provide
women with feelings of safety and security both at home and in public because
they are tools for women and other vulnerable groups to alert others for help
if needed, they have also been shown to lead to physical abuse of women when
information in the hands of women can be perceived as a threat to men’s
decision-making positions in the home. In addition, just as other technologies
have contributed to the expression of hegemonic as well as subordinate
masculinities, we hope to receive contributions that highlight how the
engagement with mobile technologies in everyday communication practices
reinforce, challenge or even subvert contextual expressions of masculinities.
Development interventions may entail costs and risks for users other than those
which are measurable by quantitative means. Questions need to be asked whether
some targeted beneficiaries are empowered while others are disempowered, and we
need to forge a more holistic view of well-being. This has led both researchers
and practitioners in the field of mobiles-for-development to call for a more
profound and rigorous examination of howdifferent dimensions of social life are
intertwined, and how forms of differentiation create complex systems of
oppression.
PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION OF SERIES:
Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality
is committed to the development of new feminist and profeminist perspectives on
changing gender relations, with special attention to:
- Intersections between gender and power differentials, based on age, class, dis/abilities, ethnicity, nationality, racialisation, sexuality, violence, and other social divisions
- Intersections of societal dimensions and processes of continuity and change: culture, economy, generativity, polity, sexuality, science and technology
- Embodiment: Intersections of discourse and materiality, and of sex and gender
- Transdiscipilinity: intersections of humanities, social sciences, medical, technical and natural sciences
- Intersections of different branches of feminist theorizing, including: historical materialist feminisms, postcolonial and anti-racist feminisms, radical feminisms, sexual difference feminisms, queerfeminisms,cyberfeminisms, posthuman feminisms, critical studies on men and masculinities
- A critical analysis of the travelling of ideas, theories and concepts
- A politics of location, reflexivity and transnational contextualizing that reflects the basis of the series framed within European diversity and transnational power relations
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACT
Please send a 1-page abstract of your proposed chapter to
both Caroline Wamala (caroline.wamala@kau.se) and Laura Stark
(laura.stark@jyu.fi), in which the following information is clearly stated (this
information will help us to make a more convincing case for the book’s merits
to the publisher):
- the main research question(s) of your proposed chapter, please limit these to three questions, and state them in the form of concrete, specific question(s).
- your source data and methods
- the geographical scope of your data and analysis
- to what current discussions do your research findings contribute, with what research literature does your chapter engage?
- in keeping with the themes of the Routledge series in which our volume will be published, how does your chapter topic/theme relate to Masculinity and feminist studies and intersectionality? How will it advance our knowledge in these areas?
ABOUT THE EDITORS:
Caroline Wamala is senior lecturer at the Department of
Gender Research, Karlstad University. She is also the Director for the HumanIT
research centre also at Karlstad University. Her research is situated within
the field of gender and technology focusing on how ICTs contribute to the
construction and expression of gender, as well as the other way round.
Laura Stark is Professor of Ethnology at the Department of
History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has been the
director of the multi-researcher research project Mobile Technology,
Gender and Development in Africa, India and Bangladesh funded by the
Academy of Finland 2010–2013.
