Subversion, Conversion, Development ─ Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange and the Politics of Design

This book explores alternative cultural encounters with and around informationtechnologies. These encounters are alternative because they counter dominant, Western-orientednotions of media consumption; they include media practices as forms of cultural resistance andsubversion, "DIY cultures," and other nonmainstream models of technology production. Thecontributors -- leading thinkers in science and technology studies, anthropology, and softwaredesign -- pay special attention to the specific inflections that different cultures and communitiesgive to the value of knowledge. The richly detailed accounts presented here challenge the dominantview of knowledge as a neutral good -- information available for representation and encoding butseparated from all social relations. The chapters examine specific cases in which the forms ofknowledge and cross-cultural encounters are shaping technology use and development. They considerdesign, use, and reuse of technological tools, including databases, GPS devices, books, andcomputers, in locations that range from Australia and New Guinea to Germany and the United States.

ContributorsPoline Bala, Alan Blackwell, Wade Chambers,Michael Christie, Hildegard Diemberger, Stephen Hugh-Jones, James Leach, Jerome Lewis, Dawn Nafus,Gregers Petersen, Marilyn Strathern, David Turnbull, Helen Verran, Laura Watts, Lee Wilson

James Leach is Professor of Anthropology and ARC Future Fellow at the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia and Directeur de recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CREDO, France. Lee Wilson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland.