Page 120 - Education in a Digital World

International Development 107

implies, a key concern here is the issue of social inclusion – i.e. the assistance of
individuals, families and communities to engage and participate fully in society. The
field of international development therefore seeks to focus on the equitable redis-
tribution of economic resources, and the reduction of inequalities in employment,
education, housing, health, recreation, culture and civic activity. In this manner, the
application of educational technology within the field of international development
is often framed in straightforward terms of the efforts of organisations outside low-
income countries to use digital technologies to reduce poverty and increase individuals’
life-chances.
These broad-brush descriptions do little to convey the complexity of international
development and international aid. In particular it is important to recognise that the
goals of international development are driven by political agendas beyond assisting
those individuals who could be considered to be ‘in need’. As Tim Unwin contends:

[there is] an increasingly hegemonic approach by international donors and
financial institutions about how best to support development in the poor
countries of the world, based fundamentally on devising mechanisms to
ensure economic growth through the creation of liberal democratic political
systems.
(Unwin 2009a, p.14)

As such, international development should be seen as an inherently directive as
well as redistributive act on the part of an ‘international community’ seeking to
reorganise the economic, political and societal arrangements of low-income nations
(Mosse 2005). As Susan Robertson and colleagues have detailed, the nature of these
change agendas has shifted continuously throughout different phases of develop-
ment activity since the 1980s (Robertson et al. 2007). For instance, international
development efforts during the 1980s under the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’
saw a set of policy prescriptions and ‘structural adjustments’ aimed at bringing low-
income countries into the increasingly globalised form of financial markets that had
emerged since the 1950s. During the 1990s, this emphasis shifted towards a notion
of ‘adjustment with a human face’– especially the pursuit of ‘good governance’
where countries were supported to supposedly develop their own policy processes.
Then following the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, a distinct merging
of concerns over developmental aid and concerns over global security took place
(Robertson et al. 2007). Throughout all these phases, international development can
be said to have been a politically and ideologically driven field of activity – coming
to define the social reality and the social problems of life in many societies.
As Arturo Escobar (2000, p.11) concludes, development is “a pervasive cultural
discourse with profound consequences for the production of social reality in the
so-called Third World”.
Understanding the role of digital technology in ‘developmental’ terms therefore
involves more than celebrating the use of technology as a neutral tool to address the