Skip to content
1981
Governing Technologies
  • ISSN: 2516-3523
  • E-ISSN: 2516-3531
file format pdf download PDF

Abstract

This Special Issue aims to problematize past and current socio-technical imaginaries and datafication practices of the rapidly digitizing nation states in South and South East Asia, and gathers critical analyses of where the digital, government and power intersect. The papers in this issue emerge from a workshop on convened in October 2022 by Monash University and University of Nottingham Malaysia, where the guest editors worked. The papers engaged with a number of questions that animate our current understandings of how technologies govern and are governed: Who are the (human and non-human) actors propelling these initiatives and new arrangements? What do their discourses around these imaginaries reveal about their ambitions, interests and conflicts? What role do communities and the people play in shaping, adapting and resisting digital plans and practices, and who decides? Providing an introduction to this Special Issue, this editorial presents a conversation amongst the three guest editors of the issue, where they reflect on some aspects of governing technologies as they play out in South and South East Asia, setting the stage for further engagement from the authors in this issue.

© 2024 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jdmp_00158_2
2024-10-31
2026-04-11

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/jdmp/15/3/jdmp.15.3.309_Lim.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1386/jdmp_00158_2&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Access Now (2024), ‘Hey Google: We need to learn more about your role in the war on Gaza’, 16 May, https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/google-ai-war-gaza-israel/. Accessed 15 June 2024.
  2. Ali, C. (2023), ‘Lived policy: Towards the humanization of telecommunications, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 67:4, pp. 596–614.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Anderson, B. R. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Anderson, W. (1992), ‘“Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile”: Laboratory medicine as colonial discourse’, Critical Inquiry, 18:3, pp. 506–29.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Anderson, W. and Adams, V. (2008), ‘Pramoedya’s chickens: Postcolonial studies of technoscience’, in E. J. Hackett, S. Turner, O. Amsterdamska, W. E. Bijker, M. E. Lynch, J. Wajcman, L. Smith-Doerr, M. Solomon, A. Supnithadnaporn and C. Thorpe (eds), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 181–204.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Arnold, D. (2013), ‘Nehruvian science and postcolonial India’, Isis, 104:2, pp. 360–70, https://doi.org/10.1086/670954.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bächtold, S. (2023), ‘Blackouts, whitelists, and “terrorist others”: The role of socio-technical imaginaries in Myanmar’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 17:4, pp. 394–414, https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2022.2152940.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Bächtold, S. (forthcoming), ‘Experimenting on the frontier: Imperial laboratories and Facebook’s political effects in Myanmar’, in D. Nguyen, B. Mutsvairo and J. Zeng (eds), Technology, Society & Power, Leiden: Brill.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Barder, A. D. (2015), Empire Within: International Hierarchy and Its Imperial Laboratories of Governance, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Benjamin, R. (@ruha9) (2017), ‘Note to selves: Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within’, X, 3 November, https://x.com/ruha9/status/926180439827591168?lang=en. Accessed 3 January 2018.
  11. Bockelbrink, B., Priest, J. and David, L. (2020), ‘A practical guide for evolving agile and resilient organizations with Sociocracy 3.0’, Sociocracy 3.0, https://sociocracy30.org/_res/practical-guide/S3-practical-guide.pdf. Accessed 20 August 2020.
  12. Castells, M. (2013), Communication Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Cerf, M., Matz, S. and Berg, A. (2020), ‘Using blockchain to improve decision making that benefits the public good’, Frontiers in Blockchain, 3:13, p. 13.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Charmaz, K. (2006), Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis, London: Sage Publications.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Couldry, N. and Mejias, U. A. (2019), The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Deejay, A., Wells, T., Henne, K. and Bächtold, S. (2023), ‘Bad adopters or bad proponents of technology? Facebook and the violence against Muslims in Myanmar’, Third World Quarterly, 45:8, pp. 1309–24, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2285808.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Dhillon, V., Metcalf, D. and Hooper, M. (2017), Blockchain Enabled Applications: Understand the Blockchain Ecosystem and How to Make It Work for You, Berkeley, CA: Apress.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Foucault, M. (2004), Sécurité, territoire, population: Cours au Collège de France 1977–1978, Paris: Gallimard/Seuil.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Go, J. (2016), ‘Globalizing sociology, turning south. Perspectival realism and the southern standpoint’, Sociologica: Italian Journal of Sociology, 2, https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.2383/85279.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Haucap, J. and Stühmeier, T. (2016), ‘Competition and antitrust in internet markets’, in J. M. Bauer and M. Latzer (eds), Handbook on the Economics of the Internet, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 183–210.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Hutchby, I. (2001), ‘Technologies, texts and affordances’, Sociology, 35:2, pp. 441–56, https://doi.org/10.1177/S0038038501000219.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Jasanoff, S. (2004), States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order, New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Jasanoff, S. and Kim, S.-H. (2009), ‘Containing the atom: Sociotechnical imaginaries and nuclear power in the United States and South Korea’, Minerva, 47:2, pp. 119–46, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9124-4.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Jenkins, H. (2009), Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Kim, H. M., Laskowski, M. and Nan, N. (2018), ‘A first step in the co-evolution of blockchain and ontologies: Towards engineering an ontology of governance at the blockchain protocol level’, Cornell University, 6 January, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1801.02027.
  27. Lim, J. B. Y. (2024), Digital Media Interventions in Southeast Asia: A Decolonial Perspective, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Lindskov Jacobsen, K. (2015), The Politics of Humanitarian Technology: Good Intentions, Unintended Consequences and Insecurity, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Mager, A. and Katzenbach, C. (2021), ‘Future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology: Multiple, contested, commodified’, New Media & Society, 23:2, pp. 223–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820929321.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Microsoft New Zealand News Centre (2024), ‘Cloud agreement enables more sustainable innovation with Māori land’, 7 May, https://news.microsoft.com/en-nz/2024/05/07/cloud-agreement-enables-more-sustainable-innovation-with-maori-land/. Accessed 15 June 2024.
  31. Migdal, J. S. (1988), Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Mitchell, T. (2002), Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Prasad, R. (2018), ‘Ascendant India, digital India: How net neutrality advocates defeated Facebook’s Free Basics’, Media, Culture & Society, 40:3, pp. 415–31, https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443717736117.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Quet, M. and Dahdah, M. A. (2020), ‘Technologies without borders? The digitization of society in a postcolonial world’, Science, Technology and Society, 25:3, pp. 363–67, https://doi.org/10.1177/0971721820912894.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Raghunath, P. (2020), Community Radio Policies in South Asia: A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Raghunath, P. (2021), Towards Equitable and Sustainable Technology Futures, Media Development, 2021/2, Toronto: WACC.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Scott, J. C. (1998), Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. The Intercept (2024), ‘OpenAI quietly deletes ban on using ChatGPT for “military and warfare”’, 12 January, https://theintercept.com/2024/01/12/open-ai-military-ban-chatgpt/. Accessed 15 June 2024.
/content/journals/10.1386/jdmp_00158_2
Loading
  • Article Type: Editorial
Keyword(s): Big Tech; datafication; governance; imperial laboratories; social media; South Asia; South East Asia; technology

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test