Policies on the Margins: The Case of Technology in the Favelas, Brazil (video)
12 Feb 2018 digital HKS Seminar Series with ICT professor, Dr. David Nemer
Dr. David Nemer is an Assistant Professor of Information Communication Technology in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky. He holds a Ph.D. in Informatics from Indiana University. Dr. Nemer is an ethnographer who is specifically interested in studying ICTs in less industrialized parts of the world to understand their effect on the development and empowerment of marginalized communities. He came to the Kennedy School to talk about his research of CTCs in the Favelas.
During his seminar, David Nemer shares the challenges faced by Favela residents as new policies impact their community technology centers. Nemer spent six months conducting his research in a favela located in Vitoria, Brazil.
COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY CENTERS AS COMMUNITY CENTERS
Community technology centers (CTCs) are facilities that provide computer and internet access to people lacking the resources to have them in their home. CTCs have become not only Favelas’ main gateway to the online world, but also places where the locals socialize in a safe and trusted space.
As Nemer describes in the video, CTCs have become community centers where parties are hosted, and daycares for children whose parents work long hours to make ends meet. Since the CTCs are safe havens from the drug wars and the violence that coincides with them, they have taken on entirely new roles beyond simply providing a computer and an internet connection.
“Even though it’s a drug war, (the cartels) kind of want to serve the community. They bring propane tanks to the community so the drug lords can somehow work to please them because if the community turns against them, the police will come and they (the cartels) don’t want any attention drawn to them…
They understand that by shutting down the LAN houses or the Telecenters it will upset the community because they really use those centers so they try to respect that.”
LAN HOUSES AND TELECENTERS
LAN houses are privately owned by people within the community, so any money that goes into them goes back into surrounding businesses (and community). Although LAN houses are more commonly used for playing video games, Nemer saw them being used as key internet access points.
Aside from LAN houses, Nemer also spent time looking at Telecenters during his six months in the Favela. The Telecenters play the same community center (CTC) role that the LAN houses did, but while the LAN houses are privately owned the Telecenters are government funded.
Despite their positive roles within the communities, Nemer did notice one key difference between the two types of CTCs. LAN houses were more male oriented and the Telecenters were more female oriented.
“The LAN house was very male oriented because of the games…You would see women being objectified on game posters…Games create a very masculine environment unfortunately. They would not allow women to play video games or play against boys…parents did not want their girls in such masculine environments. The ambience was dark and was not inviting to any outsiders and women would not feel comfortable there.”
Because of this, Telecenters became the feminine space.
“(The Telecenter) was very bright, it was owned by the city, and it was open to everyone so women went there instead. However, that has huge implications because the telecenters did not have video games. The computers ran on a linux based operating system so the women could not have access to the same games as their male counterparts.”
While it isn’t ideal to have such gendered CTCs, the two still provide their communities decent internet access as well as a safe space for people to conduct their lives within the Favela.
However, given the growing spread of mobile phones and cheaper PCs, some policymakers, practitioners, and scholars argue about the possible irrelevance of CTCs (like Telecenters) in low-income communities; like Favelas.
Nemer explains, “We used to have twenty-five Telecenters in Vitoria, now we have four or five. The city keeps those five telecenters open for limited hours…They claim the telecenters are too expensive, but every social service is going to be expensive. They cannot look to Telecenters to be sustainable in a sense that they will find a way to fund themselves. It’s like a public school; you don’t expect a school to be profitable, it’s something that gives back to the community.”
“They (the government) don’t see how Telecenters go beyond computers labs and see how there is so much community building within them.”
HOW FAVELAS ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND
“The favelas rely on human infrastructure, and that’s what sets them back so much…before they can get to a stage where they can compete with others, they have to walk at least a mile to get there,” Nemer says. “There’s always this extra effort they have to make to get to a bearable place so they engage with things like earning money.”
“The infrastructure is always breaking. They live in a place where if they flip the switch, they don’t know if the power will come on. Before they can even do that, they have to go outside and make sure all the cables are in shape and connected…so there’s always these extra steps they have to take.”
Besides lacking strong infrastructure, the Favelas are also lagging behind on current technologies. This can be very alienating to Favela residents, especially once they step outside their communities. The local government may try to create new policies that create greater access to public wifi, but without the means to connect to this wifi, there will be no benefit the Favelas.
THE TAKE AWAY
Nemer’s main goals now are to implement policy changes in his hometown of Vitoria that will specifically help the CTCs within the Favela. Besides working to stop the defunding of Telecenters, Nemer is working to stop taxation of equipment that the Favelas are in dire need of, given their lack of reliable infrastructure. What is it that he hopes viewers take away from this seminar?
“I hope they see that it was the humans that made it work, and that technology was used as a tool (to create these communities). I want them to think less about this very optimistic view on what technology can do to us, but rather what can we do with technology to promote social good…We’re still facing this “techno-optimism” where everyone has a laptop and they can just connect to the wifi. We’re still not there yet, there are still lots of spaces where we need to make progress.”
Eva is a graduate of Simmons College and a new writer for digital HKS with a fondness for comedy podcasts.
