User Theory for Inclusion or Exclusion? User participation and inclusive citizenships.

BORTZ GABRIELA

Cambridge, MA

Congreso; Science and Democracy Network Annual Meeting; 2022

Harvard Kennedy School

The role of users in socio-technological change has been widely addressed by Innovation Studies (IS) and critical Science, Technology and Society studies (STS): respectively, from their role as consumers, adopters, or experimenters to maximize profit (von Hippel, 1986; Schot, Kanger and Verbong 2016), to exploring the mutual shaping of users and technologies and the power relations embedded into the process of use (Oudshorn & Pinch, 2003). By the turn of the century, amidst broader claims to democratize Science and Technology, scholars and practitioners explored how technologies may contribute to overcoming social, material, and political restrictions in terms of structural inequalities (Heeks, Foster and Nugroho, 2014; Fressoli et al, 2014). However, while discursively praising user inclusion as a ‘good practice’, ‘technologies for inclusive development’ (TID) ranged from processes of distributed decision-making and empowerment to paternalistic schemes and unwanted effects that reinforce exclusion patterns (Thomas et al, 2017). Prompted by development agencies or by national states in developing countries, TID initiatives put into tension the role (and capacities) of the state to assure its citizens access to basic goods and services. This work revisits user theories through the lens of inclusion/exclusion, followed by a multiple case study on state-led TID initiatives (in health and nutrition). It aims to explore the relationship between how are users envisioned, their space for participation in TID initiatives, and the negotiation of what is understood as “inclusion” by the states. This work argues that the diverse theoretical views on user-centeredness (systematized into 5 types) are tied to different normative assumptions about what user participation is for, with implications for STS theory, technology practice, and democratic practice in developing countries. The work examines, first, how these differences lead to differential outcomes in terms of inclusion (such as exclusion in problem-solving, distribution of benefits, asymmetrical power relations, and decision making). Second, it explores how states mold through “inclusive” technologies their ideas on what inclusion is and who is the subject of that inclusion (user/citizen). We analyze how bringing an inclusiveness/exclusion dimension may help to show user literature blind spots, deepening our understanding of inclusion in technology making and in assuring basic rights.