Technology of the oppressed: inequity and the digital mundane in favelas of Brazil

Abstract

David Nemer conducts an ethnographic study to analyze how favela residents appropriate everyday technologies, not only artifacts but spaces and processes, in order to alleviate oppressions in daily life. Nemer applies the concept of Mundane Technologies, which encompasses everyday, non-productive activities and desires that engage people. Embedded in the appropriation of these technologies are the processes of how people exercise their agency and consciousness, to mobilize towards a better quality of life, i.e. how they critically and consciously reinvent technology. According to the author, this constitutes acts of hope in the search for liberation. The book is grounded in Freirean theory, and Nemer brings several concepts of Paulo Freire to support his argument, such as the notion of oppression,