Consumers of Debt: Digital Subaltern 2.0 Through ICT4D 2.0

• In Event: Technologies of Becoming in the Gendered Spaces of Consumerism

Abstract

The question of the “subaltern” and their representation raised by the postcolonial scholars revisits us in Web 2.0 space in present times. While the original question coming from subaltern studies collective was more about academic representation and “writing in reverse” (Beverley, 1999) of histories and her-stories, in Web 2.0 space these questions resurface in other ways through non-profit and corporate social responsibility. As we continue to research issues of digital divide and ICTs for development (ICT4D), we see the difference of any kind represented in online spaces while we continue to celebrate the unproblematic and top-down diffusion of innovation from the Global North to the Global South.

However, there is a darker side to what is happening through these online formats in the name of women’s empowerment. The inclusion of subaltern populations into global space is happening through their consumption of debt via microfinance portals that connect women from the Global North to women from the Global South in a transaction of lending and borrowing that is mediated by global financial institutions. As Federici (2014) notes, debt is increasingly used as a form of accumulation by the state and by financial institutions. In addition, in the case of microfinance, it is also being used as a means of control over women. I examine these issues through visual and textual analysis of sites, such as micrograam.com, kiva.org and novica.com. I observe that while this individualized so-called empowerment of women and subaltern citizens is offered up through a process of NGO-ization and IT-ization of the global, there is a simultaneous retraction of protections from the public sector as the care services previously considered the responsibility of the state and of employers “unbundle”. Thus, there is financialization of reproduction through “micro” monetizing of particular kinds of micro-work as more women and subaltern citizens are drawn into consuming debt globally without protection from the state or their place of work.

Author

• Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State University