My Mobile Phone, My Life: Deconstructing Development (Maendeleo) and Gender Narratives among the Marakwet in Kenya

dc.contributor.authorKomen, Leah Jerop
dc.date.accessioned2021-11-18T16:02:40Z
dc.date.available2021-11-18T16:02:40Z
dc.date.issued2020-02
dc.description11 pagesen_US
dc.description.abstractThe increased adoption of mobile telephony for development is based on the assumption that mobile telephony has the potential to foster social change. To some, such technology can aid most developing countries to leapfrog stages of development. Yet to others, the technology is at most counterproductive: development has been understood differently by the developed in comparison to the underdeveloped. Missing in this narrative is the people’s own conceptualization of the term development as well as their gender roles, often a component of development programs. This study presents findings on an alternative conceptualization of development, dubbed maendeleo, a Swahili term that denotes process, participation, progress, growth, change, and improved standard of living—as defined by the people or women themselves as they interact with mobile telephony in rural Kenya. Using Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory to analyze interviews, this study proposes an alternative conceptualization of development. This different perspective on development denotes both process and emergence, through the processes and roles that mobile telephony plays in the techno-social interactions of users, context, and other factors as they form social assemblages that are fluid in nature, hence challenging the Western proposition that new technologies produce development understood as social transformation.en_US
dc.identifier.citationKomen, L.J. 2020. My Mobile Phone, My Life: Deconstructing Development (Maendeleo) and Gender Narratives among the Marakwet in Kenya. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, no. 16. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/ada.2020.16.4.en_US
dc.identifier.issn2325-0496
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/26827
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherFembot Collectiveen_US
dc.rightsCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USen_US
dc.subjectAssemblages, Development, Gender, Maendeleo, Mobile telephony, M-Pesaen_US
dc.titleMy Mobile Phone, My Life: Deconstructing Development (Maendeleo) and Gender Narratives among the Marakwet in Kenyaen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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