My book chapter “Digital Infrastructures and Technoutopian Fantasies: The Colonial Roots of Technology Aid in the Global South” was published in Exploring Digital Humanities in India Pedagogies, Practices, and Institutional Possibilities, an edited collection by Maya Dodd and Nidhi Kalra.
My chapter explores Facebook’s unsuccessful attempt at offering the Free Basics initiative in India and examines the colonial paradigms about modernization, progress, and equality evoked by this initiative. I show how Facebook’s technoutopian promises about the affordances of (digital) technologies, particularly claims about equality, opportunities, and rights, predate the digital era and are reminiscent of British colonial discourse about Western modernity.
(If you would like to read the chapter but don’t have access to the book, please send me a message.)
Dhanashree Thorat 