Chapter published in Location Technologies in International Context, eds. R. Wilken, G. Goggin & H. Horst
Several years ago I had the opportunity to conduct research in Haiti funded by the National Science Foundation. Haiti was recovering from the terrible earthquake of 2010, and many humanitarian responders and academic researchers were there to "help." Observing this interaction, I became interested in the gaps between intention and reality. Drawing on research carried out in Haiti from 2010-2013, I began to consider how mobile communication infrastructures and location technologies create uneven global assemblages of power that may have more, or less, democratizing effects depending on how they are performed.
Locational Technology
This chapter seeks to bring into view the contested material grounding and spatial frictions of uneven (and sometimes competing) global and local locational technology infrastructures and their dispositions.
The takeoff of digital humanitarianism using platforms such as OpenStreetMaps (OSM) was built upon idealistic beliefs in the power of open data and locational media. However, the sharing of such locational technologies relies on material and social infrastructures that can be easily coopted into neoliberal governance through participatory logics. This analysis of locational technologies in post-earthquake Haiti considers how humanitarian aid and development processes using OSM might be improved by first recognizing the uneven topologies of accessibility within post-disaster communications infrastructures, and second by building on local appropriation of connectivity within everyday life to envision and enact more performative participatory processes across diverse communication platforms.
Digital Humanitarianism
In this analysis of the use of locational technologies in post-earthquake Haiti, I consider how digital humanitarianism (and longer-term development projects) might be improved by first recognizing the uneven topologies of post-disaster communication infrastructures; second investigating what kinds of locational technology are also being used ‘on the ground’ as it were; and third by reflecting on building connectivity and more accessible ‘performative participation’ processes across diverse communication platforms.
Appropriate Technology or Appropriating Technology?
Democratizing the hybrid spaces of locational technology, especially in the Global South, requires paying closer attention to the capabilities that people already have, protecting these, and asking how local appropriations of technology might be built on in ways that strengthen local actors and modes of located action.
Locational technology is not evenly distributed or accessed, and local practices may differ from those of highly mobile and connected humanitarian responders. It is important to understand the local context in which people purchase cell phones, charge them, share their location and stay connected with distant locations, especially after a disaster. There is a kind of patching together of functioning systems from pieces of different technology, some high tech and some rather low tech.
Democratizing Locational Technology After Disasters
Using communication technology to respond to disasters or to build grassroots development networks only works if there are communities organized to appropriate technology and adapt it to their needs, rather than the imposition of imported high-tech solutions from outside. Democratizing digital access is not simply about creating open maps and crowd-sourced data. It requires joining up connected locations where people bridge the capacities of mobile phones to serve their everyday needs such as access to energy, transportation, goods and information not to mention mobile money. It requires the creation of new assemblages that can evade depoliticization and generate new forms of community-based power. Locational technologies must be emplaced within material and social locations to become localized.