[ecrea] CFP - Intersections of gender, development and mobile technology: social context and relations of power

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 po
sitions 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 how different 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 /at/ kau.se)) and Laura Stark ((laura.stark /at/ 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.




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