Global-local divides and ontological politics: feminist STS perspectives on mobile learning for community health workers in Kenya. Issue 3 (3rd July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Henry, Jade Vu; Oliver, Martin; Winters, Niall
• Is Part Of: Learning, media & technology. Volume 44:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 235
• Page End: 251
• Publication Date: 2019-07-03
• Subjects: Feminist theory -- mobile phone -- global education -- STS -- community health worker; Educational technology -- Periodicals; Internet in education -- Periodicals; Television in education -- Periodicals; Distance education -- Periodicals; Teaching -- Aids and devices -- Periodicals; 371.33
• DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2019.1628047
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1743-9884

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This theoretical paper argues that Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) can help advance the emancipatory project in critical Ed Tech research. To support this claim, we deploy Tsing's concept of 'scale-making projects' (2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) to connect 'global' narratives to 'local' users in a mobile learning project for Kenyan health workers. Drawing from this exemplar case, we discuss more broadly how FSTS provides useful theory and methods for tracing the trans-national power relations of digital technologies 'on the ground'. The paper concludes by advocating for new forms of emancipatory Ed Tech research – ones framed not only within oppositional pairings such as 'global' versus 'local', but which elucidate how binaries themselves are constituted through far-flung trans-national arrays of sociomaterial practice.