Digital Peripheries: Internet and Socio-spatial Practices in the Rurban

Digital technologies have created an urban/non-urban divide in accessing and using the internet, with socio-spatial inequalities reinforced by unjust access. This book explores the impacts of uneven production, access, and use of digital technology in rurban settings, drawing from dependency theory and Actor-Network Theory. It proposes an open theory of the connected rurban as a framework that addresses and accommodates the specificities of these communities in the twenty-first century.

Format: Hardback
Length: 178 pages
Publication date: 16 August 2022
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Despite the widespread presence of digital technologies in our daily lives, there remains a significant urban/non-urban divide in accessing and effectively using the internet. This divide is not limited to the Global South, which is often perceived as peripheral, but also extends to the Global North, which is considered advanced and a driver of technological development. This phenomenon suggests the existence and persistence of socio-technological peripheries, where socio-spatial inequalities are exacerbated by unequal access to the internet. To better understand how such peripherality manifests and is challenged in rurban settings, where the rural and the urban coexist and interact, the first part of this book draws on dependency theory and decolonial thinking to explore the impacts of uneven production, access, and use of digital technology. The second part employs Actor-Network Theory as a methodological framework to examine the recursive entanglement of the everyday and the use of the internet in three villages: two in Brazil and one in the United Kingdom. By highlighting challenges that transcend North-South divides, Digital Peripheries proposes an open theory of the connected rurban as a framework that addresses and accommodates the unique characteristics of these communities in the twenty-first century.

Weight: 420g
Dimension: 158 x 236 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781786609601