TECHNO: (How) does the analyst account for the data practices and responsibilities of the people and organizations studied?

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Angela Okune's picture
August 15, 2018
  • AO: interestingly, von Schnitzler merges a macro and techno analysis to argue that technology itself becomes a political terrain for the negotiation of moral-political questions about limits, entitlements and obligations of citizenship in SA (671).

  • AO: von Schnitzler notes the protagonists were the “users,” the “cunning water thieves,” the “economic saboteurs,” the “bad payers,” “tamperers,” “electricity poachers,” and the residents with “political problems” who pull out, bypass, break, or rewire the devices requiring the constant innovation of new “anti-programs” (“smarter meters,” “security seals,” tools that “audit,” “track,” “monitor,” and “enable remote disconnections”). She notes technical expertise is produced in constant conflict with what one might, with Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (2009), term “expertise in the wild.” (687)

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