Situated knowledges claims about the interferences of disability, gender, and information communication technologies

Abstract

This article presents an explorative study which aims to explore the interference of disability, gender, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), research experience, and the accountability that comes with making knowledge claims. It draws on interviews with two women working with disability in the Sultanate of Oman and an autobiographical account by the researcher. The research contributes to the relatively sparse literature about disability, gender, and ICT in the Sultanate of Oman. The study articulates that the concept of situated knowledges and the notion of interference enable the researcher to capture the intra-actions between the researcher, the participants in the research, the research context, and knowledge production. This enables making accountable knowledge claims about the interference of disability, gender, and ICT. The article focuses on the following questions: How is interference implicated in the epistemological dimension? How are interference and situated knowledges intra-acting?¹

Keywords:

• Disability
• gender
• information and communication technologies
• interference
• situated knowledges
• Sultanate of Oman

Acknowledgement

I gratefully acknowledge the help of all the people who provided support in various ways and phases of the study. A previous version of this article was published in Näslund, R. (2017). “The world at your fingertips if you know the computer”: agency, information and communication technologies and disability (Doctoral thesis). Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Notes

1 I use the concept of intra-actions instead of interactions by drawing upon Karen Barad. For her, intra-action pays attention to how entities are enacted, and not pre-given as in the notion of interaction (Barad, 2003, p. 815).

2 In the extracts from the interviews (…) is used in the text to indicate omissions from the original interviews and […] is used for presenting the inserted alterations.

3 In the interviews when talking about people with disability I used the word disabled since that was the word used by Ramia and Noor.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecka Näslund

Rebecka Näslund holds a PhD from Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden. Her research has focused on access and use concerning information and communication technologies in the everyday lives of pupils with disabilities in Sweden. Lately her reserch has focused on disability, gender, technology, and education in the Sultanate of Oman.