Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

"Ich werde ganz einfach telegraphieren" — Subjekte, Telegraphie, Autonomie und Fortschritt in Theodor Fontanes Gesellschaftsromanen Electronic media influence our thoughts and behaviours. Our present situation resembles that of the industrial world in the late nineteenth century, when electrical telegraphy, the precursor of today's media technologies, gained a dominant position in telecommunications. In our day, conditioning prevents us from reaching a deeper understanding of our relationship to technical media. Because electrical media were still new in the late nineteenth century, observers then were more readily able to analyse their effects and to recognize potentials of subjects in their accounts. In Germany the writer Theodor Fontane demonstrated through depictions in his late novels of society that, by reflecting on the nature of the self and its relation to telegraphy and concomitant ideologies, subjects have the capacity to become aware not only of factors that control them, but also of their autonomous potentials. This consciousness provides the basis for their self-empowerment in the use of telegraphy. However, because Fontane critically depicts Wilhelminian society, his protagonists only attain this level of Consciousness in isolated instances. Its realisation is continuously achieved through Fontane's narrative depiction and its reconstruction by the readers. The image of the subject and its potentials that emerges in this reconstruction provides valuable insights applicable also to evaluations of our present media involvement. Contrary to a wide-spread belief as to subjects'powerlessness and insignificance, our findings imply that the position of subjects in relation to media can be described more positively. Fontane's depiction is concentrated in three identifiable areas, in which the conjunction of telegraphy and ideology exerts a controlling influence on subjects. In accordance with this focus our study examines the views of nature and technology as fateful forces, the alteration of time- and space experiences, and the construction of German, foreign and technical cultures. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

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This qualitative study explored the effects of intercultural differences on technology transfer interventions. More specifically, the emphasis was on key differences between the worldviews of change agents and clients that impact such change agentry attempts. Utilizing frameworks taken from intercultural relations, change agentry, and diffusion of innovations research, the study examined a single case of change agentry-the distribution of cookstoves to a rural community in Peru-in an attempt to answer the following question: How do intercultural differences help shape the results of change agentry interventions in technology transfer attempts? The focus of this study was the distribution of "improved cookstoves" in rural Andean, Peru, by a rural aid organization based at a university in Lima, Peru. Individuals from both the aid organization and the community were interviewed regarding their experience, including the engineering and technical team responsible for diffusing the technology, as well as community members who adopted the technology, others who did not, and a third group trained by the aid organization to be local "experts" in the use of cookstoves. The research contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationships between change agents and client recipients by contributing a,n intercultural perspective to discussions of the diffusion of innovations and development interventions.

A Research Report submitted at the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master Arts in International Relations Johannesburg, 2019 / Existing frameworks that seek to respond to the challenge of preventing and managing electoral violence often omit technology as a relevant factor. Yet there is resounding proof that technology has wielded a sizeable amount of influence in shaping voter behaviour and perceptions, mobilising support, lobbying and ultimately influencing electoral outcomes. The utilisation of technology is evidenced by many examples; such as the use of biometrics to register and identify voters, the establishment of situation rooms and drones that collect data in real time, campaigns messages that are sent via text messages, video footage, radio, internet and bots that are used to collect and transmit information. The main problem that this study seeks to interrogate is the bi-directional outcomes generated by the use of ICTs in elections. There are cases where ICTs have been deployed to ferment violence, whilst ICTs have also proven to be useful in preventing electoral violence. Therefore, there is a need for research that assesses how ICTs can be better harnessed as a tool for the prevention and reduction of electoral violence in Africa. Notably, by exploring the use of ICTs by actors in Kenya’s 2007, 2013 and 2017 elections, the study posits that collaboration and responsible use are key in the prevention of electoral violence. Moreover, the study highlights that the use of new ICTs in elections is important in the growing discourse about defining the parameters of electoral integrity. / NG (2020)

Bibliography: leaves 47-53. / The "new" reproductive technologies (NRTs) have gathered substantial momentum in recent years. 'Psychological' discourse on these techniques has tended towards uncritical preoccupation with intra-individual, constitutional factors, and has ignored the sociocultural, political and economic contexts of these practices. Within an inter-disciplinary, social-constructionist framework, this study presents a feminist critique of the NRTs in which they are argued to be biopsychosocially noxious to women. Modern biomedicine's appropriation and ownership of infertility as "disease" is argued to be consistent with the agendas of capitalism and patriarchy. Results of fieldwork within a particular medical setting are presented to develop a hermeneutic of the discursive interface between medical gatekeepers and the applicant 'patients' with whom they negotiate treatment. In a concluding section a dominant theme in gatekeepers' talk, "the well-being of the child", is ideologically analyzed; women-centered strategies are briefly discussed; and implications for the interface between psychology and reproductive technology are drawn.

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Critical theory cannot say, today, what the rise of new technologies is changing for the socio-political order. By reducing the impact of digital technology to the specific interests of those who exploit it, the constructivist approach to technology only gives a segmental and tactical vision of its issues. Furthermore, if they indeed diagnose ruptures in practices and representations, epistemological analyzes of digital technology remain silent as to the structurally political dimension of these transformations, however radical. This thesis therefore proposes to articulate these critiques with an epistemic, unified postulate of the impact of digital transformation on the implicit theoretical framework which underlies the legitimacy (and even more profoundly, the condition of possibility) of liberal democracy. It puts the critical theory of technology into perspective using a classic approach to political theory, which consists of recalling the contingency and dependence of regimes on a certain social reality (relevant not only to practices but to symbolic, epistemic order that results from it). The political issues of technology are thus approached through the notion of the imaginary - not only to show the influence of digital transformation on the representations which form the basis of the common world, but to affirm that the fundamentally political issue of digital technology is above all a poetic issue: we must restore to theory its creative power, to dare to imagine a socio-political landscape, and an ideal horizon, radically transformed. Une relecture des enjeux politiques du numérique: la technologie et la production de l'imaginaire social La théorie critique ne sait pas dire, aujourd’hui, ce que change l’essor des nouvelles technologies pour l’ordre socio-politique. En réduisant l’impact du numérique aux intérêts ponctuels de ceux qui l’instrumentalisent, l’approche constructiviste de la technologie ne donne de ses enjeux qu’une vision segmentaire et tactique. Par ailleurs, si elles diagnostiquent bien des ruptures dans les pratiques et les représentations, les analyses épistémologiques du numérique demeurent muettes quant à la dimension structurellement politique de ces transformations pourtant radicales.Cette thèse propose donc d’articuler ces critiques à un postulat épistémique, unifié, de l’impact de la transformation numérique sur le cadre théorique implicite qui sous-tend la légitimité (et plus profondément encore, la condition de possibilité) de la démocratie libérale. Elle met en perspective la théorie critique de la technologie à l’aide d’une approche classique de la théorie politique, qui consiste à rappeler la contingence et la dépendance des régimes à une certaine réalité sociale (relevant non seulement des pratiques mais de l’ordre symbolique, épistémique qui en découle). Les enjeux politiques de la technologie sont ainsi abordés au travers de la notion d’imaginaire — pas seulement pour montrer l’influence de la transformation numérique sur les représentations qui fondent le monde commun, mais pour affirmer que l’enjeu fondamentalement politique du numérique est avant tout un enjeu poétique : il faut rendre à la théorie sa puissance créatrice, pour oser imaginer un paysage socio-politique, et un horizon idéel, radicalement transformés.