I’m just back from a variety of recent travels–lecturing, workshopping, seminaring, meeting with academics and researchers in various parts of the Asian less developed countries (LDCs). Specifically I was invited to discuss community informatics with academics/researchers in 3 universities in 3 rather different regions of Asia.
In reflecting on these meetings I realized the very strong strain of consistency in our discussions. In each instance, the academics, almost all of whom had recent Ph.D.s from research universities in Developed Countries (DC’s) returned home to find that their recently acquired skills and areas of expert knowledge were of little direct value in their home environments.
A consistent theme that emerged from my discussions was confusion and frustration that many of these colleagues expressed at trying to fit the dead hand of their received discipline based knowledge and training into the urgent vibrancy of the requirements for their skills and engagement in the world just outside their doors.
How exactly could these recent Social Science and IT/computer science Ph.D.s shoehorn their hyper-specialized, theory and methodology oriented, super advanced technology focused and platformed research and instruction into the much more rural, problem-based, and people-centred issues towards which they were being urged (by their governments, university administrations, and personal consciences) to respond.
Let me say first that these are the best – the most committed and the most aware of the academics and researchers in their respective countries—they are the ones who are asking the questions and who not incidentally had sufficient success within their respective formal educational structures to get scholarships and other forms of financial support to obtain degrees in DC universities.
Ph.D.s from major research universities in computer science, physics, economics, social sciences—these are the best and the brightest of the graduates and sufficiently committed to their countries of origin to not take the easy and most lucrative way out and stay around in the DCs as academic émigrés. These folks chose to return and hopefully use their newly acquired skills in support of economic and social development in their respective countries.
The problem though is that having been through years of education and the forcible narrowing of their intellectual pursuits into the formalized disciplinary structures and sub-disciplines and sub-sub-disciplines of the typical DC graduate program they return to their countries where an interest in or possible application either in research or in instruction for those sub-sub-disciplines is essentially non-existent.
The problem is that the process of creating conceptual rigour within the conventional disciplinary structures in DC graduate schools is precisely what is not needed in tackling the immediate issues and areas requiring research attention or professional training in an LDC environment. The difficulty is that what would be useful in support of economic and social development in an LDC’s is not for the most part discipline based let alone sub- or sub-sub or sub-sub-sub discipline based; rather, responding to the local problems and opportunities in the LDC requires multi- or transdisciplinary approaches and a high degree of flexibility and pragmatism in response—precisely what is bred out of graduates in a typical DC Ph.D. program.
In the area in which I work–Community Informatics—community-based use of ICTs, those with Computer or Information or Social Science backgrounds aren’t for the most part equipped to support activities on the ground enabling local development with ICTs.
The issues are too broad—involving an understanding and sensitivity (and not incidentally research skills) that can accommodate both technical and social issues; the questions at least the technical ones are too trivial and mundane to be of academic interest in DC institutions; and yet those are the ones that need to be addressed on the ground if there is to be effective use of ICTs in the LDC. The type of engagement required with these issues is a practical and boots-dirtying effort whereas academe in the DC creates the expectation of pristine labs, mathematical formulations, and computer simulations as an ultimate goal.
And so, the questions that I was asked to address as I entered into discussions with my colleagues in the LDCs was how could they retrain themselves from their level of extreme specialization, abstraction, and narrowness into a path which would allow them to directly engage with the real issues that surrounded them. That was their interest in Community Informatics—it was the focus on identifying and responding to real problems on the ground, working towards solutions in a pragmatic and discipline neutral way, engaging with practice and practitioners and the dilemmas of local policy rather than attempting to maintain a false face of place independent, neutrality and disinterest.
There are also very real contradictions at play—between university administrations which on the one hand have adopted Western academic strategies, disciplinary structures and promotion and tenure policies (publication in prestige journals as the basis for P&T for example) while at the same time urging faculty to engage with local communities and local issues. Equally governments as funders on the one hand push researchers to engage with local issues while at the same time insisting that universities aspire to being world class competitive on the basis of criteria which more or less completely ignore local LDC realities.
The dilemma is particularly acute when it comes to teaching. Should recently returned Ph.D.s be teaching what he or she has learned–the most advanced techniques and technology strategies few of which offer employment opportunities locally, or should they be teaching issues and approaches which have local relevance but which would not directly enable students to go abroad for advanced training or for employment in DC firms or in local firms with DC orientations and markets.
As well of course, students expect to be taught from DC text books and with DC formulations and often have aspirations to use these educations for emigration or local employment in DC based companies (fostered with government support) while ignoring the fact that most will have little opportunity for employment or emigration but will most certainly find themselves in one way or another needing to respond to the immediate issues in their domestic environments.
The use of metrics such as the singularly DC biased university league tables, the use of DC based publication metrics, and so on simply reinforces the dilemmas around local country realism and engagement on the part of academics and researchers in the LDC environment. The result is a very great deal of frustration among the best of LDC academics. Their training, skills and opportunity structure is one which impels them to disengage from their local environment to the degree possible and to aspire not to engage locally but rather to enter into global structures of opportunity while the best or the most notable and mobile look towards the first opportunity to migrate back and out.
As some LDC’s transition economically into middle income countries the pressure (and opportunity) to migrate is dissipating somewhat but this simply results in a bifurcated system (mirroring an accelerating local social and economic divide) where some (generally the most elite) institutions become part of the global system while others remain in and attempt to respond to the local environment.
The situation in the larger and more advanced of the LDC’s—Brazil, South Africa, India, China—differs somewhat from the pattern described above as these countries are large enough to develop and support institutions which can both participate in (and thus accommodate) DC research and researchers while to some degree at least being able to focus attention on local development. Even (or particularly) within these countries there remains a strong tension between those who advocate for development focused research and instruction and those who opt for participation in DC focused research areas and activities.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
Walter Brown
June 9, 2011
Thanks Michael, this is perhaps the best observation on developing country ICT challenges that I have heard from the Community Informatics fraternity in a very long time. I do differ with you on one point though – the more advanced countries you list, with the minor exception of China, are perhaps even in a more precarious situation than the LDCs, defined on a strict GDP per capita basis which really has little connection with real people. The alarming levels of economic and social inequalities threaten the stability of these countries, unless, as in Brazil and India, visible actions are taken to alleviate such inequalities, including the use of ICTs to do this. South Africa is especially at risk – up to three quarters of the population with livelihoods equivalent to the poorest LDCs, and the other quarter enjoying lifestyles equivalent to most DCs. Price of ICTs is a particularly difficult problem that most researchers in any sub-discipline of ICTs avoid like the plague, and yet it is the most crucial to ICT adoption and use. I just recently estimated that South Africa’s poorest 10% must pay 245% of their average monthly income to access 1Mbps uncapped unshaped broadband (a minimum for effective learning today?), and this does not include user terminal prices. The richest 10% do quite nicely at 3% of their average incomes. The situation is of course much more complex than price alone, but no amount of “training” or “e-skilling” will help if the price of information is beyond the wildest dreams of affordability for most people. One Guru of Gurus who has, throughout his life, understood the dilemmas you discuss is Sam Pitroda, listen to Sam’s ideas on education at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BCDl2whJzM . Please continue this thread of thinking – it is not only the Ph.D. returnees that will appreciate the insights, it is 4 billion unconnected global citizens, heading towards 7 billion in the not-too-distant future.
Walter.
Michael Gurstein
June 9, 2011
Thanks Walter, I agree with your very important point about the cost of ICTs for the poor in middle income countries. I think that this is one of the issues that is generally (and even purposefully) ignored in discussions on the “developmental benefits” of Mobiles for example.
James Van Leeuwen
June 9, 2011
Re: cost of enablement.
What incentivizes ‘haves’ to invest in ICT enablement of ‘have nots’ who would otherwise never have such enablement?
No CD or LCD PhD here, but the question seems relevant to the Digital Divide wherever it exists, including Canada’s First Nations.
What are the political and economical value propositions that are getting the best traction, and why?
Looking for numbers, especially economic case studies.
Michael Gurstein
June 9, 2011
James, interestingly many of the Ph.D.’s with whom I was meeting had been funded by their own governments.
Pamela McLean
June 9, 2011
I have just pointed people to this link and responded to it at dadamac’s postersous – http://dadamac.posterous.com/response-to-the-dead-hand-of-western-academe.
My response began: I always appreciate Mike Gurstein’s posts, and this one was even closer to my heart than usual. It explores something which I struggle to understand – and which he, as an academic, can explain.
As a practitioner I have often been bewildered by the apparent chasm between the work of most ICT4D academics and the reality on the ground.
So – thanks Mike for being an academic who cares about practicalities and who shares your knowledge in ways that are accessible to non-academics . Let’s keep up the conversation and hope we can help the academics and practitioners to work together to the benefit of all.
Thanks too to Walter for the links to Sam Pitroda – a new name to me . I was so pleased to discover him expressing other ideas that are dear to my heart and explaining them in ways that are so clear and calm. I will point others to his ideas on education at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BCDl2whJzM
Parminder Jeet Singh
June 9, 2011
Mike,
While I do see and completely understand and appreciate the ‘problem’ you describe, I think that even more than the narrow specialization, it may be the ideological discourse that these PhD students get drenched in during the course of their studies that is problematic. These ideological contexts shape the structure of their thinking. One can still modify ones tools, with which i mean the more technical skills, if the structure of thinking is not warped. And this warping of the structure of thinking, or ideology, is made worse in a context that there is already an increasingly assertive middle class at home at political-economy war with the majority, whose orientations are closer to the dominant discourse in the west, and the fact that the returnee is most likely to belong to and be surrounded by this dominant social class. Such idealogical warping in worse in technical areas, like ICTs, information sciences etc where there is a disciplinary claim of certain neutrality, whereby it creeps in quite unsuspectingly, since there are no formal means of socio-political questioning of different standpoints.
Parminder
Michael Gurstein
June 10, 2011
Interesting comment Parminder, thanks.
I think I generally agree in that those with whom I was interacting were not provided with appropriate technical (or conceptual) tools to respond to their local requirements during the course of their Ph.D. programs. On returning home, there were conflicting pressures–on the one hand to play out as researchers or instructors the models that they received as grad students which bore relatively little relationship to the realities they found around themselves on the other to respond to the very real requirements/opportunties in their local contexts.
Your point about the “assertive middle class” is also a useful one, although I think that the role and influence of this middle class varies from country to country. However, this role generally takes the form of attempts by national governments and the emergent middle class to focus on leading edge technologies (which tend to be focussed on urban, individual, and mobile applications) which use technology platforms which as Walter (in his earlier and important comment on the blogpost) points out are much beyond the financial reach of rural and urban poor populations. The most obvious of these of course are things like Ipads, Iphones, and mobile applications in general.
As an aside it would be very interesting and I think worthwhile to examine the “m” (for mobile) phenomena as a development meme in LDC’s where all the focus now seems to be on the development of applications for mobiles with very very little consideration being given to the broader developmental context (and framing) within which mobile can certainly make a contribution but where it would necessarily have a complimentary but not replacement role for PC based applications.
Best,
Mike
Aaron Nyangkwe
June 11, 2011
Hi all
I just returned from vacation
The problem lies with the education policies and the environment where
a person is educated.
Take for an example some obtaining an MBA from a highly economic
competitive environment like Britain or the US having to operate in a
corrupt environment. That person will not find its feet in applying
the notions acquired and developing them.
In defining development geared education policies, most leaders take
their environment into consideration. And countries that have such
policies develop. Look at Japan, most of their resource persons are
not trained outside.
I am not against foreign human ressources but this must be blended
with local ressources or else we arrive at the situation highlighted
here
Aaron
Vinaya Kasajoo
June 13, 2011
Hello,
Thanks for your observations. I am curious to know whether you have been to Nepal or not. Nepal has varieties and deep experiences of communication communication. Hope you have been there too.
Vinaya Kasajoo
Michael Gurstein
June 13, 2011
Unfortunately not in this context Vinaya… maybe next trip :).
M
mokurai
June 14, 2011
I just posted a reply on my own blog, http://replacingtextbooks.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/the-dead-hand-in-education/ It also feeds to Planet Sugar, which is a wide-ranging aggregation of blogs on many topics related to getting computers and education to every child in the world, finding out what they really need to know, and ending poverty and its associated ills.
http://planet.sugarlabs.org/
Isaac Holeman
June 21, 2011
Great post Michael!
I like your focus on students from LDC who may study in DC and later return to work in their homeland. It bears mentioning, though, that these problems are equally frustrating for students from DC who may wish to attend graduate school at a DC institution but focus on issues in LDCs. I’m from Oregon and currently work in Malawi, and I worry about the institutional hurdles I’ll face when I start graduate school and try to get approval for a dissertation proposal relevant to the circumstances I’ve observed here.
Further, I’m unconvinced that this hyper-specialization in DC graduate work is any more conducive to addressing real DC problems than it is to addressing LDC problems. The DC faculty I’ve interacted with who do really great, world changing work typically bounce from project to project, broadly applying quantitative and qualitative skills or a background in technology development in a way that suits collaboration with government, nonprofits or social businesses. The research your local government ought to conduct probably won’t challenge the theoretical underpinnings of a prominent dogma, but you might help get some folks off the street and into transitional housing if you’re willing to be a generalist, opportunistic researcher.
Finally, a question: is this hyper specialization related to inflation in number of years required to earn a phd? I don’t understand how these programs came to last 7+ years in North America, while they typically last 3-4 in England. The number of years for a phd in north america makes the field very unappealing to anyone who would like to become a better researcher but perhaps use the skills to solve practical problems for a nonprofit, business or government rather than seeking a tenure track academic position and research that will be cited by many other researchers.
cheers
Isaac
CharityGamboa
July 5, 2011
Just my take on this as I am in the education sector. As far as I know, as I am in graduate school here in the US, is when you get into a program you develop a portfolio. Your portfolio will focus on what you hope to achieve from the program. I grew up in a developing country so I essentially worked on my goals and how I may be able to fit my training abroad to what my home country needs. I have developed my portfolio the moment I started so if that helps, then it is something some of you might consider. There are basically two things you might want to zero in:
[1] elaborate the significance of being a learner, leader and collaborator
[2] reflect on the impact of your study to your community
It does help sometimes to plan ahead. You should be on top of everything, too. I mean it’s very simple – why major in “underwater basket weaving” when you cannot apply that to your home country?
But let me give you an example that may be applicable to developing countries: In the state of Texas, we have introduced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) projects even on the secondary level. Some of the schools have been designated as STEM schools and have incorporated most of the courses within the curriculum. We have established our own learning models, and part of that is doing efficient Internet research as part of “exploring” concepts (We employ the 5E instructional model – Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend or Elaborate, and Evaluate). . Few years back in the Philippines, we had some Dutch volunteers who brought some Lego (learning building blocks) to a high school in the Philippines. We incorporated that into the Science and Math courses. Here in the US, they usually start with the Lego Mindstorms in Science. So just saying that It really is easy to incorporate STEM. Maybe work on a portfolio, gear that towards your community, and apply it in your home country. Hopefully, it should fit within your country’s developmental plans. Mold it within the system if you can. It’s always worth a try (and hopefully this makes sense). Plus, everyone wants to be globally competitive nowadays, anyways.
John Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
July 12, 2011
The analysis is cogent, sad, and seems to be a regular refrain: somehow those who ‘better’ themselves are portrayed as letting the side down.
The real question is the familiar one of the ‘haves and the ‘have-nots’; what systemic changes are necessary to (a) convert the situation of the ‘have-nots’ into a subject worthy of attention by the ‘haves’ and (b) convert the perspective of the ‘haves’ to one that recognises their own position is one of head-in-sand….
The one really sad on-going refrain seems to be that the pursuit of values focuses on profit and reputation before action to change the world-system. We do not really understand this system (yet), so we concentrate on directing our attention to a perceived failing i.e. something we are indignant about and intend to castigate. The need is to understand how the Complex Adaptive System (CAS) called ‘society’ works and what choice of perturbation and change might bring about a beneficial morphogenesis. This high-faluting piece of theory is going on all the time in the systems we either adhere to or reject. They work at all the levels commentators have raised in the context of this ‘problem to be solved’.
Traditional methods for bringing about change focus on power systems, the ultimate being war, less obvious ones being culpable disregard to the plight of the ‘have-nots’. The real effector of change is the billions of ordinary small actions by people – overcoming subversion by ‘bigger’ power blocks, or, as has been the case in recent history revulsion at terrorism or autocracies. Apathy is the dangerous contagion. Values also demand action. The complexity and subtlety of these ideas is well discussed in the (current) BBC Reith lectures given by Aung San Suu Kyi Burmese pro-democracy leader: lecture 1 “Dissent” and 2 “Securing Freedom” The challenge is the balance between: futile protest versus contagion by compromise with the established power system, versus a new morphogenesis to effect change. Moving stirring and hopefully in the end successful and peaceful.
My own work focuses on the nature and working of systems of values across the hierarchy of value systems interacting with each other to perturb and change – hopefully for the better – the grand scheme of things. This is founded on a new science of [computational] socio-geonomics. It is not a pursuit just in academe, but in the actions, efforts and beliefs of everyone, everywhere, everyday, everything. The study is into how the living systems of the entire world of human enterprise constitute the Living Labs of progress to a better world order. It is about both bottom-up and top-down modelling of the pursuit of change. It is neutral as regards systems and models but decidedly not about systems of values.
We all tend to laud big visions; I support the current EU Flagship project FuturICT, [www.futurict.eu] described as an Apollo vision to mend the world. We need to remember Neil Armstrong’s words; “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. The bottom-up involvement of society is recognised as necessary to this flagship endeavour, We are all part of the Living Earth Simulator; it is called ‘Life’. How to build the bridge between our aspirations as social animals and our higher-level cognitive powers is the subject of socio-geonomic research.
Is a World Model Society just a chimera? it is certainly needed before we destroy the World.
Michael Gurstein
July 12, 2011
Thanks very much for this John, you have made a very strong and cogent case for folks like those in the Community Informatics community to take the work that socio-genomics is doing very seriously and perhaps see how some sort of linkage could be affected between the two.