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Total enframing: Global South and techno-developmental orthodoxy

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Abstract

Martin Heidegger describes technology in essence as the late modern Western understanding of Being which is planetary in its reach. Succeeding the long phase of colonialism after World War II, the history of the global spread of this understanding of Being is intertwined with the developmental and globalization eras in the Global South. Techno-capitalist development crowds out alternative forms of economic and social life, which have been meaningfully prevalent in the Global South. The monistic metaphysics that powers developmentalism makes alternatives impossible. However, alternative political possibilities still exist, which are post-metaphysical and post-techno-developmental. Such politics pays attention to the place, things and self that matters to human beings and opens up a space for resisting techno-developmentalism.

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Notes

  1. It is true that living standards and real incomes have risen. But so too have risen, across nations, expectations about how human life is to be lived and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few. Oxfam reported in October 2014 that “it is inequality within countries that matters most to people, as the poorest struggle to get by while their neighbours prosper, and this is rising rapidly in the majority of countries. Seven out of ten people live in countries where the gap between rich and poor is greater than it was 30 years ago. In countries around the world, a wealthy minority are taking an ever-increasing share of their nation’s income” (Online source: http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/even-it-up).

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  1. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

    Siby K. George

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George, S.K. Total enframing: Global South and techno-developmental orthodoxy. AI & Soc 32, 191–199 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0614-7

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