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Reviewed by:
  • Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide
  • John C. Pierce (bio)
Mark Warschauer Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)

Mark Warschauer's book represents an important and necessary stage in the evolution of scholarly thinking about The Digital Divide, a significant concept that recently entered the lexicon of contemporary literature about technology transfer. The concept of the digital divide is perhaps itself a case study in the transfer or diffusion of knowledge. When first appearing as a breakthrough conceptualization capable of intellectually organizing and fueling an area of study, concepts and their implications tend to be presented starkly and forcefully. That austere framing of an intellectual innovation invites attention, clarifies issues, and provokes reaction and research. With time, understanding of that concept becomes more subtle, more sophisticated, and often more contentious. But it is not only the understanding that evolves. The underlying phenomenon at issue (i.e., the digital divide) also is transformed both by the implications of developing understanding of it and by its own intrinsic political dynamic. As the concept is reified or refined, the new understandings alter the conclusions observers draw about its actual significance and distribution. And, as those conclusions obtain currency, the concept may become politicized, leading to attempts to restructure or eliminate what are seen as its negative attributes.

Few concepts better illustrate this course than the digital divide. Warschauer does excellent work in reviewing and evaluating its conceptual and political aspects. Thinking about the digital divide began as a view of a large and absolute gulf between those with and without "physical access to computers and connectivity," and then expanded to include "access to the additional resources that allow people to use technology well' (p. 6). The central [End Page 218] theme of Warschauer's book is that "the notion of a binary divide between haves and have-nots is thus inaccurate and can even be patronizing because it fails to value the social resources that diverse groups bring to the table" (p. 7). The political implications of such a divide are important because the have or have-not status was seen to both produce differences in social and political power and to co-occur with preexisting differences in that power connected to variations in income, race, education, and location. The result may be a magnification of the relative disadvantage attendant to those without physical access to computers and connectivity. In response to the divide's perceived cumulative impact on disadvantage, governments, companies, not-for-profit organizations, and educational institutions strove to bridge the gulf through their participation in activities designed to mitigate that disadvantage, such as assistance in gaining access to the Internet or in obtaining the physical hardware necessary to that access.

Warschauer centers his analysis on the relationship of Internet communication technology (ICT) and "social inclusion," especially for the disadvantaged. His takes as his "central premise that the ability to access, adapt, and create new knowledge using new information and communication technology is critical to social inclusion in today's era" (p. 9). But, by the end of the book, it is clear that the relationship between social inclusion in the form of social capital is reciprocal, not only producing access to ICT, but also "ICT can be promoted in ways that encourage the development of social capital" (p. 197). Warschauer confronts his propositions through cross-national research, employing long-term ethnographic research "and short-term intensive field observations" in India, Brazil, Egypt, China, and the United States (p. 9).

Any questions about the work from the reviewer's perspective are relatively minor, but a few are worth noting nonetheless.

The book's focus is on social inclusion, but wants for much systematic analysis of that inclusion at the individual level. A separate chapter, or a weaving through multiple chapters of analysis of survey data of the relationship between ICT access and use, and perceptions of social inclusion or trust, would have added a valuable dimension to the work.

Warschauer rightly focuses on social capital and ICT. In the context of a lot of definitional slippage in the concept out there in the literature, he provides a pretty tight definition of...

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