Reproducing hierarchies or resisting domination: exploring the gendering of technology spaces in the favelas

Abstract

The relationships among gender, institutional structures, and their associated physical spaces are made visible with the deployment and diffusion of technologies within said spaces. As such, we seek to explore the gendering of technology specifically exploring how users gender gaming spaces and gaming practices. In this article, we challenge the notion of ICTs and gender neutrality exploring how institutional frameworks as well as formal and informal structures impact the ways new technologies are deployed and used. Based on a 10-month ethnography in Community Technology Centers (CTCs) in the favelas, urban slums of Vitória, Brazil, this paper focuses on the uses of ICTs by favela residents, and expands the notion of technological space beyond the physical into the domain of space as socially constructed and negotiated, exposing how space can be defined by socially explicit and implicit boundaries.

Keywords:

• ICTs
• ethnography
• technology
• gaming
• gender
• space
• ICTD

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The country’s population is organized in five social classes – A, B, C (C1, C2), D, and E, which is based solely on people’s wealth and income (Vaitsman & O’Dougherty, 2003). The people in classes C2, D, and E are considered poor and inhabit the slums and marginalized areas in Brazil.

2 Pardo Brazilians represent a wide range of skin colors and backgrounds. They are typically a mixture of Afro-Brazilian, Native Brazilian, and White-Brazilian.

3 Marta is a Brazilian professional soccer player and a 5 time FIFA World Player of the Year.

4 Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI) was an NGO hired by the city government to help manage the Telecenters.

5 Inclusion Agents are the people responsible for taking care of each Telecenter, promoting computer related workshops and classes and helping the users.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Nemer

David Nemer is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His research and teaching interests cover the intersection of Science and Technology Studies, ICT for Development, and Human-Computer Interaction. Nemer is an ethnographer whose fieldworks include the Slums of Vitória, Brazil; Havana, Cuba; and Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia. Nemer is the author of Favela Digital: The other side of technology (Editora GSA, 2013). He has written for The Guardian, El País, and The Tribune.

Kishonna L. Gray

Kishonna Gray is an Assistant Professor in Communication and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Her research broadly intersects identity and digital media with a particular focus on video games and gaming culture. Gray's recent book, Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live examines the reality of women and people of color in one of the largest gaming communities.