South African, Rural ICT Implementation: a critical retrospective application of Latour's due process model

Abstract

The potential developmental role of ICTs can pressurise governments to engage in ‘catch up’ and ‘leapfrog’. Consequently, analysis of the accompanying socio-political dimensions and risks can be, disastrously, neglected. This paper examines a specific technology implementation – a South African government sponsored telecentre using Latour’s Due Process model, an analytical tool grounded in Actor-Network Theory, where technology implementation is viewed as a symmetrical treatment of technology and society within a single collective. It is used here, retrospectively, to make sense of why the telecentre both failed to institutionalise within a successful actor-network, and, contributed to the destabilization and partial destruction of a successfully established women’s development organisation.