The Digital Challenge

Information Technology in the Development Context

Shirin Madon, S Krishna

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351768658
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This title was first published in 2003. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly being recognized as vital to the economic growth and global inclusion and participation of developing countries. This book brings together both academics and practitioners to provide a comprehensive and insightful overview of ICT and development around the world. It examines the role of IT in providing new economic and industrial opportunities, in increasing access to global information and communication, in assisting small cultural and ethnic groups to overcome disadvantages of physical distance and in catalysing initiatives towards democratic decentralization and empowerment of citizens. It also critically appraises major problems such as inappropriate focus and resource allocation, and of missed opportunities. By combining comparative case studies from Africa, South and East Asia, South America and Eastern Europe with theoretical analysis, this volume synthesizes a range of issues related to the evident tensions that exist for developing countries as they try to balance global and local priorities through the adoption and use of ICTs.

PART I

ICTs AND DEVELOPMENT:
THEORETICAL AND
METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Chapter 1

Taking Culture Seriously: ICTs Culture and Development

Chris Westrup, Saheer Al Jaghoub, Heba El Sayed, Wei Liu

1. Introduction

The first part of the title of this chapter is taken from the recent book by Geoff Walsham, which engages in an extensive exploration of the theory and practice of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in both the North and South.¹ Walsham, in a discussion with Simon Bell about the use of Western methodologies such as Logframe in Third World countries, makes the comment ‘My argument in a nutshell is the need to take culture seriously’ (Walsham, 2000: 227).² This remark is a useful starting point: what does taking culture seriously imply? And it is an exploration (albeit preliminary at this stage) of some of the issues arising from this statement that forms the substance of this chapter. As an issue, it is interesting because it draws things together (Latour, 1990) and this chapter seeks to show that this exploration opens issues that are central to development and to the use of ICTs in general.

First, the question of culture is raised: what is it; how is it to be recognised and is culture a useful demarcation between North and South? For a word that was coined only some two hundred and fifty years ago, the term is often seen as referring to aspects that are extremely significant for different societies (Williams, 1981). Second, culture is increasingly recognised as important in the introduction and use of ICTs. Within organizations in the North aspects of organizational culture have been identified over the last twenty years and very often attempts are made to manage organizational culture to create desired outcomes (Peters and Waterman, 1982). Culture is both an explanation and a sensitizing factor in the use of ICTs in other countries and other parts of the world. Most of this analysis has been phrased in terms of Western cultures and non-Western ones, but, equally and importantly, other aspects are being identified: for example the work of Indian IS professionals in Jamaica (Barrett and Walsham, 1995). The terrain of the discussion on culture is, of course, much wider. A recent debate, that of Japanisation, the conscious following of Japanese production techniques by US and European countries, is interesting because, apparently, it is about the inculcation of non Western cultures into Western organizations. Third, if culture is to be used as a means to show the nuances of specific contexts for ICT implementation and use, then it is important to turn the relationship around and consider what does the notion of culture do in investigating the nature of ICT technologies? Are they culturally neutral, carriers of Western domination, or resources to be appropriated by the South as is suitable? Finally, as is evident from the discussion above, the notion of culture is of great practical importance and any consideration of culture and ICTs should raise the issues of how ICT introduction and use is to be researched, advised upon or implemented if the notion of culture is to be taken seriously.

The core argument of this chapter is simply that, to take culture seriously means investigating cultures, analysing how cultures are expressed, and describing cultures. In contrast, this chapter avoids using culture as an explanation in itself. The notion of culture is becoming and should become an important part of the stock in trade of those researching the development and use of ICTs and of those engaged in the processes of embedding ICTs in differing situations. However, using the notion of culture is but one resource amongst other and equally important and plausible lines of explanation (see Kuper, 1999; Ingold, 1996). Politics and power relations, social networks and ties, economics and economic interactions all need investigation, discussion, and articulation to avoid our debates becoming centred on issues of knowledge and ideas. These arenas, given the rise of knowledge management, are perhaps those that people interested in IS could easily focus on and thus we should be all the more wary of culture as an entity or stock of knowledge.

This chapter is divided in four parts. The first section seeks to explore the notion of culture drawing primarily from an anthropological literature, perhaps the academic discipline, which would lay claim to a specialist concern with culture. A second section discusses some ways in which notions of culture have been applied in the IS literatures. This discussion paves the way to a consideration of ICTs in relation to culture using examples from both North and South and an investigation of the ways in which notions of culture can assist in the research of ICTs and in the implementation and use of ICTs in a variety of settings.

2. On Culture

‘Everybody is into culture now’ (Kuper, 1999: 2 (original emphasis))

Culture is a term that everyone thinks they understand and it has become a potent aspect of identity. Anthropologists have discovered that the natives they study have found that they have cultures, which they seek to express, conserve and develop to show their distinctiveness. Recently, culture has been used as a strong expression of difference between Islamic cultures and those of the West. Within western societies cultures are widely talked about: youth cultures, organizational cultures, organizational subcultures and so on. As can be seen already the notion of culture and the ways in which it is expressed are diverse and are not confined to academia. However the investigation of culture has given rise to a new form of academic discourse-cultural studies, which has become institutionalized as a popular academic discipline.

When it comes to the exploration of cultures in different parts of the world, anthropologists have been at the forefront in identifying and representing cultural diversity. Carrithers (1992) characterizes an early phase that he calls a seashell theory. The analogy is that of a vast variety of different cultures, each self-contained, like different seashells on a beach. Each shell has its own characteristics, which are to be explored, described, and classified. Similarly, each culture is to be respected, examined, and described as part of a diversity, which humans have developed as ways of living. As a consequence, anthropology as a discipline shared a scientific concern with the identification and classification of different cultures as scientific phenomena. However, while emphasizing diversity, this approach tends to neglect history, the sense of cultures as cultural wholes is supported by ignoring issues of how they might change and thus admitting that cultural boundaries may shift. One reason why the seashell theory caught hold was, as mentioned above, its aptness in providing common ground with other scientific projects. However, another reason is based on how anthropology was practiced. The standard approach was that of intensive fieldwork over several years within a particular culture followed by the writing up of these experiences in a monograph. Clifford and Marcus (1986) and others have made much of the practices of writing up, of representation, in anthropology, but it is apparent that this form of research leads to a certain timelessness when describing the culture that was visited. Carrithers gives an example of how subsequent fieldwork can change this perception. Turnbull wrote a celebrated book The Forest People on the Mbuti pygmies, which evoked a happy society living at peace with the world. He wrote:

I was first among the Mbuti pygmies of the Ituri Forest, in what was the Belgian Congo, in 1951. I went back for something over a year in 1954. Even in that short space of time things had changed and initial impressions had to be corrected. When I returned again in 1957-9 I had quite a hard time reconciling some of my earlier findings with what I found then. And on returning to the same part of the same forest yet again in 1970-2, it seemed as through I had to contradict myself all over again (Turnbull, 1983 quoted in Carrithers, 1992: 22).

This recognition of change is important for three reasons. First, as discussed above, it shows that different patterns of research open up different and important issues. In this case, longitudinal intensive ethnography reveals the importance of change in the exploration of culture. Second, it is a step towards identifying the importance of history and a historical perspective. At one level, the recognition of change shows that other cultures have histories and so one element of difference, that of history, between North and South begins to be dismantled. However perhaps the most interesting reason is that, investigation begins to be directed into how cultures change and we move from a seashell view of cultures to one of cultures as products and processes of change. This is an important issue for those who research ICTs.

Taking change seriously can lead to a different purchase on the notion of culture itself. Kuper’s (1999) discussion of the work of Clifford Geertz is a useful entry point. Geertz is one of the best-known anthropologists and his ideas have been very influential in discussions of culture and the value of ethnography in a variety of disciplines. Geertz’s description of culture that is often quoted is as follows:

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical. (Geertz quoted in Kuper, 1999: 98)

This definition focuses on how culture guides social life and how the act of interpreting culture is to be done by ‘thick description’; a detailed observation followed by a necessary interpretation by the author of the material that has been observed. Geertz suggests that this process is similar to that of someone engaged in deciphering literary texts; cultures are to be read and interpreted. The literary analogy has proved to be influential in a range of other disciplines, but what Geertz’s view portrays is that it is culture which matters and which acts as the main explanation of human action. As Kuper notes what he doesn’t engage in is that cultural models can be used for other such as political ends and that arising from this point, it is clear that culture can be contested. While taking on board that point, there is also a difficulty in identifying culture and we are left with the notion that cultures may well be inconsistent and changing rather than texts for explication. To conclude this section, we can briefly consider a recent exchange amongst anthropologists on the notion that human worlds are culturally constructed (see Ingold, 1996).³

Amongst the anthropologists there was dislike of the term ‘construction’ and the implication that people stood outside and then engaged in the conscious construction of things. Equally there was concern about the idea of people free floating in ‘webs of significance’ à la Geertz as it assumes that people place significance on things out there and that meaning is disembodied. Instead, where there was agreement, it was around the notion of exploring processes by which individuals interact with their environment and how both, people and their environment constitute each other in a dialectical way. Individuals are immersed in the world and experiences become enfolded into that person, but, similarly, the environment, as well as shaping individuals, is also shaped by them. Thus we end up with a notion of culture that is not a thing, not a discrete entity, but an ongoing process that is inherently changeable and often malleable. Equally, culture becomes an ongoing accomplishment and though we do not have a privileged access to something termed culture, we can seek to identify processes by which meanings can be maintained, contested, shared or changed. Finally, we can become aware that when people start to talk about culture, that act, in itself, can be part of a process of redefining or maintaining relationships in order to accomplish other things.

3. Culture and ICTs

Although the concept of culture has often been used rather narrowly in the IS literature, we have suggested that IS research in this area would benefit if more attention was paid to the contemporary anthropological view of culture which – as something which is contested, temporal and emergent – has the potential to offer information systems researchers rich insights into how new information technologies affect or mediate organizational and national cultures, vice versa, i.e. how cultures affect the adoption and use of IT. (Avison and Myers, 1995)

This quotation is a part of the conclusion of an interesting paper exploring an anthropological perspective on IT and organizational culture. As has been discussed above, there is much to agree with in this statement especially the point on the contested, temporal and emergent attributes of culture. Where there is room for development is on the question of how IS affects or mediates organizational and national cultures and vice versa. This is not a straightforward extrapolation because an important (and unanswered) question is how can the attributes of culture expressed above be squared with notions of national or organizational culture? Stated more precisely, does the paper retain the concept of culture when referring to national and organizational cultures? To investigate this issue, we turn to an exploration of culture in the wider setting of organizations and nation states and how culture can be related to ICTs.

About twenty years ago there was great attention on the issue of organizational culture, an interest that has remained despite the vicissitudes of other approaches such as Business Process Reengineering. Certain books are linked to the rise in interest in this phenomenon – Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, Deal and Kennedy’s Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life are perhaps the best known. One of the reasons advanced for this interest in culture was the rapid expansion of Japanese competition in manufacturing particularly in the US. Much of the success of Japanese manufacturing was placed on cultural issues such as group loyalties, the Keiretsu interlinking of companies, the flexibility of the labour force and management, and the use of approaches, which then became known as Just in Time (JIT) and Total Quality Management (TQM) (Elger and Smith, 1994). And it raises an interest...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Introduction: Challenges of IT in the Development Context
• Part I: ICTs and Development: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives
• Part II: E-Governance and the Digital Divide
• Part III: ICTs and New Organizational Forms
• Part IV: ICT Development and Global Software Outsourcing