digital dead end: fighting for social justice in the information age

Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916

Book Reviews

Digital dead end: Fighting for socialjustice in the information age

Virginia Eubanks

MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011

This book is an excellent account ofa fascinating action research projectembedded within the YWCA ofTroy-Cohoes (New York, U.S.). Vir-ginia Eubanks highlights a numberof contemporary issues, concerns, andcontradictions that are relevant not onlyfor IT and digital divide scholars andactivists, but probably even more sofor politicians, sociologists, and com-munity/street workers. In this book theexperiences of the author’s active involve-ment in developing several participatoryprojects with the Troy-Cohoes commu-nity in the YWCA is described in a veryaccessible, vivid, and self-reflexive way.

The ethnographic and grounded-theory approach, which Eubanks (2011)calls ‘‘collaborative action and reflection’’(p. 178) rather than participant obser-vation was clearly a productive way tounderstand and make sense of the com-plex mechanisms of social exclusion aswell as identify potential opportunities forinclusion and empowerment. An enor-mous amount of time and energy musthave gone into this project, with at timessurprising, at other times frustrating,but also important findings as a result.The author, furthermore, unapolo-getically takes a normative and thuspolitical stance and this is refreshing andcommendable. On this note, however, I

do not quite see why a distinction needsto be construed between Engaged Objec-tivity and subjectivity. It appears as if theauthor wants to defend herself againsta positivist and empiricist tradition insocial sciences, while this is not necessarynor very productive in view of thequalitative and ethnographic paradigmin which the author situates herself,which from a paradigmatic perspectivechallenges the very notion of objectivity.

One of the most refreshing findingsof this collaborative action researchproject is that the author shows throughthe profiles of and interviews with theparticipants to the project that so-calledordinary people, even those that are cate-gorized as low income and precarious, areoften much more knowledgeable abouttechnology and about what technology isdoing to them than is generally assumedby most researchers and policymakers.The degree of lay-knowledge or everydayexpertise in this regard should clearlynot be underestimated. Besides this,the drawings made by the author onthe basis of what participants toldher what the digital divide representsaccording to them is an innovative wayof making this visually apparent. In thisregard, the acknowledgement of a criticalambivalence towards information andcommunication technologies (ICTs)both as tools of oppression, discipline andas tools of empowerment, knowledge,and action, is highly relevant.

Regarding the former Eubanks makesa very persuasive analysis of the various

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Book Reviews Book Reviews

ways in which technology negativelyimpacts low-income communities. Shecarefully outlines the consequencesfor such communities of the currentglobal neo-liberal technology obsessedeconomy in terms of the impact ofdelocalization, low minimum wages, lackof job security, de-unionization, and theexpectations of high flexibility; all preva-lent characteristics of the informationand communication economy as pointedout by critics of the Post-Fordist econ-omy in the 1990 (see Jessop, 1992; Lash &Urry, 1994). In this regard, Ducatel andBurgelman (1999) predicted more than10 years ago that one of the main risksof a pre-dominantly service-orientedeconomy is that it might result in ‘‘paypolarization between high wage andstatus ‘‘professional’’ workers and a low-skill tier of workers suffering poor payand status’’ (p. 46). In her book, Eubanksprovides some compelling evidence thatthis is precisely what has happened, evenwithin the ICT industry itself.

The author furthermore laments thefact that billions of taxpayers’ moneyis being pumped into this knowledgeand ICT-driven economy with littlereturn for society in terms of job growthand social welfare, on the contrary.Much of the work in those industries isnot, as is generally assumed, well paid,but highly precarious, repetitive, andexploitative. In this regard, she refersfor example to call centers or basic dataentry work. The information economy,in other words, does not bring prosperityfor all and equivalent jobs to replacemanufacturing, but increases risks forvulnerable groups in society, especiallywomen. Eubanks argues – reminiscentof a Marxist analysis – that it is precisely

this ‘‘exploitation of poor and workingclass people – especially women – [that]makes the information economy possi-ble’’ (p. 78). This goes against commonconceptions that the service and ICTindustries will ultimately enable Westerneconomies to overcome the steadydecline of the heavily unionized (andthus well-paid) manufacturing industry.

She also points to the ability of tech-nologies to measure and monitor infor-mation workers’ performance in everyminute detail. Along the same lines, state-surveillance through ICT-systems is alsomost felt by those families and individu-als with low incomes, either because theyare precarious laborers or dependent onstate benefits to survive. Surveillance andthe monitoring of the poor is not new ofcourse, but this got an entirely new andmuch more pervasive dimension with theintroduction of e-government and thelinking-up of various databases holdinginformation about health, housing, ben-efits, police records, and so forth. Thishas profound consequences, certainly forpoor communities often dependent onstate support, even if they have (low paid)work. The lack of transparency and theopaque nature of these information tech-nologies, as well as the tendency of suchinformation networks to decontextualizeand fragment data, makes that excludedcommunities that are dependent on theState for housing or even food are oftenfaced with seemingly arbitrary and unpre-dictable decisions made by governmentservices on the basis of data retrieved fromICT-systems. For many of these commu-nities IT is the real ‘‘face of the system’’(Eubanks, 2011, p. 97).

However, the author does not getstuck in the negative consequences of

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the information and communicationsociety identified by her research,but also addresses the opportunitiestechnologies provide for empowerment,for learning and for knowledge-sharing,which Eubanks calls ‘‘popular technol-ogy’’ (p. 90) embedded in an approach ofhigh-tech equity and popular education(see Freire, 1970). She describes threeprojects that embody this participatoryand educational approach; a communitytechnology lab, a women resource webdirectory, and the development of asimulation computer game to learn howthe social welfare system operates aswell as make middle-classes acquaintedwith the particular challenges of thosedependent on state support.

In each of the three projects educa-tion, training, and acquiring skills wasplaced central, whether it was in the formof tutorials and workshops organizedin the lab, courses to learn HTML tobuild websites, share contacts to buildthe directory or learning how the socialsecurity system is structured. However,each project was also about much morethan just acquiring and/or sharing skills,they were also conducive to ‘‘personaland political transformation’’ and areconsidered as ‘‘cognitive [justice], notdistributive’’ (Eubanks, p. 127). As such,she critiques a linear model of internetaccess, prevalent in some academic, andpolicy discourses, focused on the tech-nology and material conditions. Insteada more holistic approach towards socialexclusion is being foregrounded, withrelevance to issues of privacy, housing,social justice citizenship, gender, ratherthan merely focusing on access to ICTsand the networks that sustains themand/or IT-skills. While the dominant

discourse was indeed a linear one, – thatis give people access to the internet andall their problems will be solved, morenuanced and holistic approaches to therelationship between ICTs and socialexclusion/inclusion have been aroundfor quite some time (Cammaerts, VanAudenhove, Nulens, & Pauwels, 2003;Compaine, 2001; Norris, 2001).

Another important aspect the authorhighlights in relation to working withvulnerable communities is the need forremuneration of some sort for the timeand energy volunteers/participants putinto a project. While this is often theobject of critique by those warning ofthe dangers to research validity, there isa case to be made to pay participants fortheir time and the energy they put intoa research project and by doing so valuethe participants’ contribution in thecommunity building labor they providedby being active in the project. This iscertainly the case if the research addressespoor and low-income communities. Oneparticipant to the project voiced it as suchit goes beyond volunteering your voice.It’s somebody acknowledging that thereis a financial need, aside from just talkingabout poverty and people struggling(Zianaveva, quoted in Eubanks, 2011:140 – emphasis in original).

There are, however, also a few weak-nesses that can be identified. While theauthor clearly aimed to write a book thatis accessible for and relevant to variousconstituencies, at times I felt the book wastoo descriptive and anecdotal and lackeda more explicit engagement with conceptsand current theoretical debates. Many ofthe findings and results of this projectare highly relevant to theory-building onwhat constitutes political participation



and its relation to power, on Feministdebates relating to citizenship or on class-issues in the information and communi-cation society. For example, when theauthor writes that social structures pro-duce subject-positions (p. 150) it is a pitythat Foucault’s (1978) analytics of poweris not mentioned.

Along the same lines, engagementwith the work of Lister (1997) in termsof feminist perspectives on citizenship,Mouffe (1999) on passions, conflict, andemotions in politics and participation,Negri (1988) and others in relation tothe ‘‘social worker,’’ class and precari-ous labor, Lyon (1988, 2006) on privacyand surveillance issues in the informationsociety and the work of Silverstone (2002)on the double articulation of mediationand of Mackenzie and Wajcman (2009)on the social shaping/construction oftechnology in everyday contexts, wouldhave been fruitful. These authors and theconcepts as well as ideas they introduced,could have served as theoretical build-ing blocks to construct a more explicittheoretical framework that underpins theresearch better, giving the book a moreanalytical structure and relate it more tocurrent debates in the field on power,participation and resistance and the rela-tionship to technology.

Another point of critique is thatthe author approaches the distinctionbetween a politics of re-distribution and apolitics of recognition/cognition at timesas too dichotomous. While there areclearly issues with both of these, does theone necessarily make the other less wor-thy or is the one more problematic thanthe other? Alternatively, I would arguethat it would be more productive to seethem working in conjunction with each

other in view of fostering social inclusionas well as social and cognitive justicewithin information and communicationsocieties. In this regard, we could referto the work of Laclau and Mouffe (1985:182) on de-essentializing social andpolitical struggles and building chainsof equivalence between struggles forre-distribution and struggles for recog-nition. Mouffe (1993: 77) points to theneed to construct a ‘‘chain of equivalenceamong the different democratic strugglesso as to create an equivalent articulationbetween the demands of women, blacks,workers, gays, and others.’’

Finally, I missed some discussionand reflection on the generalizability ofthe research results presented in thisbook. Given the nature of the projectthe research done was very localized andto some extent very context specific.Would similar conclusions have beenreached if the same research would havebeen conducted in even more deprivedareas in the U.S. that are less mixed interms of educational, social, and racialbackgrounds? Along the same lines,it could also have been made moreexplicit to which extent the findingspresented in this book are relevant toother Western contexts besides the U.S.and to communities living in the GlobalSouth.

Bart CammaertsLondon School of Economics and Political

Science

References

Cammaerts, B., Van Audenhove, L., Nulens,G. & Pauwels, C. (Eds.) (2003). Beyondthe digital divide: Reducing exclusion andfostering inclusion. Brussels, Belgium:VUB Press.

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Compaine, B. M. (Ed.) (2001). The digitaldivide: Facing a crisis or creating a myth?Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ducatel, K. & Burgelman, J.-C. (1999).Employment map: Jobs, skill and workinglife on the road to 2010, Futures reportseries n◦13. Sevilla, Spain: IPTS.

Foucault, M. (1978). History of sexuality, part1: An introduction. New York: Pantheon.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed.New York, NY: Continuum.

Jessop, B. (1992). Fordism and post-fordism:A critical reformulation. In A. J. Scott &M. Stormper (Eds.), Pathways toindustrialisation and regional development(pp. 42–62). London, England:Routledge.

Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemonyand socialist strategy: Towards ademocratic politics. London, England:Verso.

Lash, S. & Urry, J. (1994). Economies of signsand space. London, England: Sage.

Lister, R. (1997). Citizenship: Feministperspectives. London, England:Macmillan.

Lyon, D. (1988). The information society:Issues and illusions. Cambridge, England:Polity.

Lyon, D. (2006). 9/11, synopticon, andscopophilia: Watching and beingwatched. In K. D. Haggerty & R. V.Ericson (Eds.), The new politics ofsurveillance and visibility (pp. 35–54).Toronto, Canada: University of TorontoPress.

Mackenzie, D. & Wajcman, J. (Eds.) (2009).The social shaping of technology.Maidenhead, England: Open UniversityPress.

Mouffe, C. (1993). The return of the political.London, England: Verso.

Mouffe, C. (1999). Deliberative democracyor agonistic pluralism? Social Research,66(3), 746–758.

Negri, A. (1988). Revolution retrieved:Writings on Marx, Keynes, capitalist crisisand new socials subjects (1967–1983).London, England: Red Notes.

Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide? Civicengagement, information poverty and theInternet in democratic societies.Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Silverstone, R. (2002). Complicity andcollusion in the mediation of everydaylife. New Literary History, 33(4),761–780.


digital dead end: fighting for social justice in the information age

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