Ethical ICT research practice for community engagement in rural South Africa

Abstract

The research reported here evolved from the researcher’s ethnographic immersion in an ICT for Development (ICT4D) project in a deep rural part of South Africa. During ethnographic immersion, three key issues emerged from fieldwork. Firstly, the researcher realised his limited understanding of the worldview of research participants. Secondly, he realised his inability to appropriately and ethically do community entry and implement the ICT4D artefact (e.g. ICT4D training and policy), especially because of his limited understanding of the cultural context, underlying values, emancipatory concepts and interests, as well as incomplete insight into the oppressive circumstances that the people in the research setting find themselves in. The third issue relates to an inability to interpret and explain the collisions and conflicts that emerged from introducing, aligning, and implementing the ICT4D artefact. Through critical ethnographic methods and a critical orientation to knowledge, the researcher shows how these inabilities, collisions, and false consciousnesses emerged to be the result of cultural entrapment and ethnocentricity that he and the research participants suffered from. A key argument throughout this thesis is that the emancipation of the researcher is a precursor for the emancipation of the researched. The researcher thus asks: In what ways should ICT4D researchers and practitioners achieve self-emancipation, in order to ensure the ongoing emancipation and empowerment of the deep rural developing community in South Africa? The study subsequently argues the link between the topic of this thesis, namely the issue of ethical research practice, and the primary research question. A unique perspective on these problems is presented as the study looks at emancipatory ICT4D research and practice in context of a deep rural Zulu community in South Africa, and specifically the journey of social transformation that the researcher himself embarked on. The study retrospectively applies Bourdieu’s critical lineage to reflect on the research contribution and how the researcher was eventually able to construct adequate knowledge of the ICT4D social situation. Building onto the idea of critical reflexivity, the researcher argues that critical introspection should also be part of critical ICT4D research in South African contexts. Through confessional writing, the researcher describes experiential knowledge of the worldview collisions that emerged from ICT4D research and practice. In particular, manifestations of the collisions between the typical task-orientated or performance-orientated value system of Western-minded societies and the traditional loyalty-based value system or people-orientated culture of the Zulu people are described. The research contributes by challenging dominant ICT4D discourses and by arguing for an end to a line of ICT4D research and practice where outsiders with a Western task-orientated worldview, like the researcher himself, make unqualified and inadequate assumptions about their own position in ICT4D practice, and about their own understanding of how to “develop” traditional communities in South Africa through ICTs. Following Bourdieu, the researcher argues that one can only build an adequate understanding of the social situation through critical reflexivity, by making the necessary knowledge breaks, and by allowing oneself to be carried away by the game of ICT4D practice.