Between incursions and appropriations: digital technologies and pluriversal modernities in the Global South

Abstract

Abstract Based on a recent body of scholarship that addresses the epistemologies of the South, our goal is to incite a shift in how we conceptualize technology adoption in the Global South. We interrogate the notion that the role of digital technologies in these regions follows a linear model of progress from traditional lifeways toward industrial modernity. Joining a recent shift toward decolonizing the study of the flow of digital technologies in the Global South, this article calls for a new approach that prioritizes specific historical, cultural, and epistemological contexts in the Global South and acknowledges the fragmentation left behind by colonization and divergent economic policies. We argue that communities appropriate digital communication technologies in complex ways and weave them into their existing ancestral epistemologies.