Technology, Inequality, and Social Justice - II

Abstract

Technologies, from pharmaceuticals to malaria nets, are invariably characterized as tools to achieve societal betterment, but we know that their impacts are much more complicated. In this panel, we focus on the relationships between technology, inequality, and social justice in historical and international perspective. First, we explore how technologies mediate, ameliorate, and exacerbate social inequality. What are the impacts of technology on inequality? How do technologies, and the ideologies that motivate them, shape concepts of social justice? How has the push towards innovation affected technology selection and the sustainability of social justice programs? How have these technologies been interpreted differently by policymakers and those they are intended to serve? Are there broad similarities across technologies explicitly designed to achieve social justice goals? Second, we are interested in how societal imaginaries regarding inequity and its amelioration are reflected in technological development, implementation, and promotion. How do technologies oriented towards social justice compare historically, and across countries? How do different understandings of social inequality and justice affect international development interventions, for example, where ideologies must travel? Third, we seek to analyze institutions—both public and private—engaged in developing and marketing technology to achieve social justice. How do they understand this goal, and how is it embodied in practices and policies? How do social enterprises, for example, attempt to achieve social justice goals while making a profit? What kinds of knowledge and expertise are seen as relevant? We especially welcome papers which focus on regions outside of Europe and North America.

Chair

• Heidi Morefield, Princeton University

Discussant

• Heidi Morefield, Princeton University

Individual Presentations

• Satellites, Drones, and Balloons: The Right to Connect and Aerial Internet Infrastructure - Alex Reiss Sorokin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• New Models: Translating and Mutating Prosthetic Technology in Late Colonial India - Hilary Buxton, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

• Traveling Inequalities: A Feminist Analysis of Aspirational Technologies in Women-Empowerment Programs - Palashi Vaghela, Cornell University

• The Politics of Little Empowerment Devices in International Development - Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan

Session Organizers

• Heidi Morefield, Princeton University

• Shobita Parthasarathy, University of Michigan