'Power and the digital divide'

Ethics and Information Technology

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 159-165

  Moss, Jeremy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE   (Australia)

Author keywords

Coercion; Digital divide; Force; Foucault; Information and communication technology (ICT); Power

Indexed keywords

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; SOCIAL SCIENCES;

COERCION; DIGITAL DIVIDE; FORCE; FOUCAULT; INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES; POWER;

PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS;

EID: 0742313630     PISSN: 13881957     EISSN: 15728439     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1019983909305     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. B. Russell, 'The forms of power,' in Power, S. Lukes, ed., Blackwell, Oxford, 1994, p. 19.
2. M. Foucault, 'The subject and power,' in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hertfordshire, 1982, p. 221.
3. D.C. Hoy, 'Power, repression, progress: Foucault, Lukes and the Frankfurt School,' in The Foucault Reader, D.C. Hoy, ed., Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, pp. 135-136.
4. T. Wartenberg, The Forms of Power, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1990, pp. 73-74.
5. T. Hobbes, Leviathan, M. Oakshott, ed., Blackwell, Oxford, 1946, p. 56.
6. Foucault's move in the later writings is to recognise and incorporate the ontological primacy of power-to in his overall conception of power, making it a more coherent theory.
7. Following Wartenburg, I disagree with Lukes and Connolly that the concept of power can be analysed as an 'essentially contested concept.' Wartenburg points out that power-over and power-to refer to two different senses of power that have evolved in ordinary language. Therefore, it is not necessary to speak of concepts that are inherently irreconcilable, just that they describe different phenomena which may well have strong conceptual connections. For an illuminating discussion of this issue see Wartenburg, The Forms of Power, ch. 1. See also W.E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (3rd edition), Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993, ch. 3 for the opposite view.
8. M. Foucault, 'Governmentality', in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller, eds., Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hertfordshire, 1991 & The History of Sexuality vol.I, trans., Robert Hurley, Allen Lane, London, 1979, pt 5. For a history of the philosophical development of these two ideas see my 'Introduction' in The Later Foucault: Politics and Philosophy, J. Moss, ed., Sage, London, 1998.
9. http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/content/sections/index.cfm?key=2
10. In discussing the divide within nations, I will concentrate on the example of the United States.
11. http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/content/stories/index.cfm?key=168
12. Human Development Report 2000, published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford, 2000, p. 41.
13. A study prepared by the International Telecommunications Union, Challenges to the Network: Internet for Development, Geneva, ITU, 1999, found that the presence of internet hosts was related to other common indicators of development such as health and literacy.
14. Although an important impact of the digital divide is a restriction of people's access to democratic institutions and processes, I will not consider that consequence here.
15. Human Development Report 2000, published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Oxford University Press, New York/Oxford, 2000.
16. World Bank Press Release, Release No: 2001/042/S 'New World Bank Report Urges Broader Approach To Reducing Poverty,' Washington, September 12, 2000-referring to World Development Report: Attacking Poverty.
17. World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty, p. 3, http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/report/index.htm
18. For a discussion of some of these issues see Human Development Report, 2000, p. 36.
19. See D. Tapscott, The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence, McGraw Hill, New York, 1996;
20. D.G. Johnson, 'Democratic Value and the Internet' in Internet Ethics, D. Langford, ed., Macmillan Press, London, 2000.
21. Foucault, 'The subject and power,' in H.L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, p. 221.
22. T. Luke, 'Dealing with the Digital Divide: The Rough Realities of Cyberspace,' Telos, #118, 2000.
23. We should also note that the process of subject creation involves the subject playing an active though not necessarily autonomous part. They play a part because it is the selfunderstandings that they have that help to determine their actions or beliefs. In Bentham's idealised panopticon it is a prisoner's internalised norms that help to make him or her into a person of the 'right' type. This is the result of a subject being led to a particular understanding and then, once accepted, applying it to his or her actions. The active role that the subject plays in 'correctly' structuring their own actions is one of the key reasons for the success of this form of power, as it operates through influencing a person to act in the right way.
24. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol.I, trans., Robert Hurley, Allen Lane, London, 1979, p. 86.
25. For a discussion of these issues see J.R. Bell and D.A. Bell, The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, CUP, Cambridge, 1999.
26. Martha, C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, 'Internal Criticism and the Indian Rationalist Tradition,' in M. Krausz, ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation, University of Notre Dame Press, Indiana, 1989.