Overview

A unique contribution to the theoretical, methodological and policy understandings of technology and technological potential, this book calls for an urgent reconsideration of the assumptions underlying discourses about the capacity of technologies to bring about empowerment and change. Exploring the ways in which technological innovation, in combination with wider neoliberal ideologies, is imagined in ways that reinforce conceptions of the individual as empowered through discourses of choice, consumerism and individualism, Technological Imaginings and Cultures of Change reveals that the common assumptions about technology and digital engagement not only fail to represent the realities experienced by those engaged with them, but also obstruct the potential for meaningful engagement in a digital environment. Presenting original empirical data from four methodologically innovative research projects into the use of technology in local and community buildings and services, the author demonstrates that in the absence of a wider social, cultural and political structure in which to locate technology, new technologies, whilst generating feelings of being connected on an individual level, leave people operating alone and in an unconnected manner. A ground-breaking study of the increasing gap between how technology is imagined, used and made to mean, Technological Imaginings and Cultures of Change shows that the real issues critical to digital engagement surround community makeup, work and creative practices, financial imperatives, political structures and individual motivation. As such, it will be of interest to policy makers and well as scholars of sociology, research methods, digital cultures, geography and communication studies.

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9781472424822

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Helen Thornham is Research Fellow at the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, UK. She is the author of Ethnographies of the Videogame: Gender, Narrative and Praxis and co-editor of Renewing Feminism: Narratives, Fantasies and Futures, and Content Cultures: Transformations of user generated content in Public Service Broadcasting.

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