Disjunctures and Connections: Case Studies of How Techno-politics Make and Cut Networks

Drawing on case study material, this paper focuses on ways in which definitions of 'media' and other technical objects act to promote or prevent 'connection'. In a development context, the ways in which new media objects such as ICTs are defined in relation to other objects, people and institutions map out new figurations of power and connection, or new 'technological zones' (Barry), that revalue and recombine political agency. Consideration of the politics of technology needs to be moved away from seeing ICTs as neutral tools to be enabled or as problematic interventions to be contained; rather, we need to be able to make visible and negotiable the possible communicative assemblages that might be produced.