Internet Reagency: The Implications of a Global Science for Collaboration, Productivity, and Gender Inequity in Less Developed Areas

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ABSTRACT This essay is a call for research on the role of information andcommunication technology in distant lands. I address the globalization of science as aprocess by replacing the concept of development with the idea of reagency, a processof redirection involving a contingent reaction between identities. I focus on theGuest, an identity that assumes particular importance in relation to Hosts in Africa,Latin America, and Asia. Following recent work that stresses the dependence ofknowledge production on places, the Guest House is introduced as an architecturalstructure that crystallizes and reinforces a Guest/Host relationship that has developedduring the aid era. The advent of the Internet offers the possibility of a change inthe structure of science, with the inclusion of researchers in distant lands as fullparticipants in global scientific communities. The principal issue is whether theconnectivity initiative centering on the Internet is just another development program,like so many others that have come and gone, or whether it is different in character.Three empirical research questions are posed to assist in examining this question. Aminor thread throughout the essay explains the author’s romantic interest in thesubject, and his transition from a phony donor to a real one.

Keywords collaboration agency, computer-mediated communication, developingareas, Ghana, human–computer interaction, identity, Kenya, Third World

Reagency of the Internet, or, How I Becamea Guest for Science

Wesley Shrum

Admonish me not, my beloved Father for . . . sojourning here at Sa-markand . . . . I love my native Kandhar and . . . pine to return. But forgiveme . . . my passion for knowledge. In Kandhar there are no scholars, nolibraries, no quadrants, no astrolabes. My star-gazing excites nothing butridicule and scorn. My countrymen care more for the glitter of the swordthan for the quill of the scholar. (Saif-ud-din Salman, as quoted by AbdusSalam1)

This paper examines technology and globalization, with specific referenceto the question: How and to what extent will the Internet globalizescience?2 That is, will new communication technologies diffusing throughdistant land3 early in this millennium change the structure of science in thelong term? The theoretical basis for this question is ultimately simple. Theinclusion of scientists4 in Africa, Latin America, and Asia in global scien-tific communities would constitute a major change in the structure ofscience that has existed since the 17th century.5 The focus of this essay is

Social Studies of Science 34/•(••••• 2005) 1–32© SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi)ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312705052106www.sagepublications.com

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on conditions in Africa that could dramatically change with the widespreaddissemination of new information and communication technologies. Theseconditions are currently constrained, not only by resource inequities, butalso by the institutions that import initiatives, programs, and projects inthe name of development. The hypothesis is that the Internet could‘reagentize’ science in less-developed areas more effectively than priorinitiatives, because of a shift in collaborative patterns that have very little todo with the ideology of participation and much to do with the maintenanceof relationships online. My experience suggests there are serious impedi-ments to the development of such patterns.

Science in distant lands is a compelling subject of analysis, but‘development’ is a misleading concept.6 The connectivity initiative7 is onein a lengthy series of transactions between what were once called the Firstand Third Worlds, best viewed as a process of ‘reagency’ (a contingentredirection of action involving identities) rather than ‘development’ (aconvergence of social systems). In the postwar era, repeated donor ini-tiatives have redirected knowledge production systems in Africa, Asia, andLatin America, but none has had the potential of the connectivity initiativeto promote change. In what follows, I pose a question about science as aglobal enterprise that would replace the notion of development in order togive a particular interpretation to the problem of technology and global-ization. All initiatives in ‘less-developed’ areas trigger chains of interactionsamong specialized groups of professionals.8 The question is: To what extentwill the Internet globalize science by changing the relationship of place andidentity from one in which embedded Guests propel initiatives into distantlands to one in which colleagues collaborate as intellectual equals fromdistant locations?

My own identity as a Guest came as something of a surprise 10 yearsago on my first trip to Africa to study scientific networks. It was one ofthose peculiar identities others knew first, before I did myself. My view ofthe matter is shaped by the experience of coming to be something I wasnot. Having assumed an involuntary identity, I tried to make the best of it.As I became a participant in the process, it seemed clear that ‘develop-ment’ did not describe anything I witnessed; or, rather, it was witnessedonly in a very forced, non-intuitive and sometimes even destructive sense. Iintroduce the notion of reagency, since a better understanding of socialprocess can sometimes be achieved by changing the concept ordinarilyused for it. The allure of the Internet is that bits of sealing wax and stringcould allow knowledge workers in distant lands to establish and maintaininteractions with emplaced and embedded actors through computer-medi-ated relationships, both contributing to global communities and shapingthem in new ways. Yet processes of dependency set in motion by develop-ment agencies themselves may undermine that potential.9

The first section of this paper replaces the concept of developmentwith the concept of reagency. I argue that notions of identity and place arerequired to understand how a particular kind of agency is produced indistant lands, illustrating the point through a comparison of the Guest

2 Social Studies of Science 34/?

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House at two Kenyan research institutes. The second section of the paperdescribes in more detail the Guest as an emplaced identity, a visitor whocomes bearing opportunities, importing initiatives, programs, and projectsinto the research institutions of other countries. With identity, reagency,and place as guiding constructs, I turn to the advent of the Internet in myown transformation and the reagency of connectivity initiatives as one ofredirection rather than control. The final section proposes three questions,the answers to which will be critical for understanding globalizing pro-cesses in the knowledge production systems of Africa, Latin America, andAsia. They explain how I became a Guest for Science.

The goal is to provide a conceptual and substantive context for thestudy of Internet effects on the globalization of science, where ‘global-ization’ is not limited to the Organization for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment (OECD) countries. While the Net lurks in the background asthe subject of interest, not much is said about it until the second half of thepaper, for two reasons. First, the readership of this journal is familiar withthe features of new communication technologies that are relevant to thepresent discussion: short time lags between sending and receiving mes-sages; the volume of information available; search engines; and new formsand potentials for interaction between scientists, scholars, and non-experts. Second, this essay is about research in specific times and places,primarily in Kenya and Ghana – one cannot study dreams of the futureunless one is asleep.10

Reagency

Much work on science and development employs or critiques the develop-ment concept (Gaillard, 1991; Shahidullah, 1991; Shrum & Shenhav,1995; Anderson, 2002; Drori et al., 2003). To observe that that there aredramatic resource differences between Europe and Africa, and to locatethese differences in processes of colonization and mimesis is an importantbeginning. The original motivation – and still most important aspect – ofthe development concept is reference to process in time, as a point orsequence of events located within the flow of time. In Science andTechnology Studies (STS) as well, the critique of traditional sociologies ofscience depends on a ‘heightened sense of time’, specifically that analystsshould try to understand scientific practice in its temporal unfolding(Pickering, 1993). In the context of telecommunications technology, weshould seek to understand globalizing effects in terms of dynamic patternsrooted in relationships between organizations during the postcolonial era.

Recent work on the concept of ‘agency’ also views the temporaldimension as central, focusing on the changing orientations of actors.11

The aim of such theory is to examine how the constraining and enablingcontexts of action are sustained by and altered through human agency(Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). Applied to the international context in thepost-World War II period, ‘development’ may be described as a set ofinitiatives, programs, and projects12 that originate in international, non-

Shrum: Reagency of the Internet 3

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governmental, and academic organizations with consequences for actors indistant lands. Programs and projects of the future are imagined, as theirauthors interact with the institutions and practices of the present, creatingsuch (improbable) initiatives as organizational change, the valuation of theenvironment over food production, and the interconnection of all humansthrough digital protocols. The complexity of the systems produced by suchimaginings means that they are far beyond the ability of anyone tocontrol.

Structural contexts involve, at minimum, the presence of social actorsthat occupy various roles, positions, or identities. In relations between‘developing’ and ‘developed’ areas, guests are crucial identities, redirectinglocal flows of activities around global initiatives such as agricultural pro-ductivity, accountability and evaluation, HIV/AIDS, environmentalism,and telecommunications. Defined as actors who temporarily inhabit cer-tain places in relation to Hosts, Guests are typically members of differentnational and ethnic categories, represent organizational sponsors withdivergent interests, and are characterized by resource differentials. Scien-tific Guests – like all others who represent multilateral and bilateraldonors, universities, non-governmental organizationss (NGOs), and gov-ernment agencies – deposit planned actions as they interact with Hosts,who modify and adapt their behavior. This does not occur in any consistentway – certainly not in the ways that Guests desire and expect.

The notion of ‘agency’, if it is not simply equated with action, involvesa relational aspect: otherwise it is free-floating, ‘un-placed’, and ‘un-identified’. Agency is always agency towards or in relation to something –people, meanings, events, and places.13 We must dwell on the locationswhere agency operates and insist on different kinds and degrees of agency.Likewise, what gives places their meaning are the kinds of interactions thattypically occur within their material location, which depends crucially onthe identities that populate them. Identities enable and facilitate relation-ships through the recognition of agentive orientations. Here I describeGuests as reagents given their capacity to take part in or bring about areaction, but not one that is under their control. Reagency describes, betterthan development, what happens when organizational representatives fromafar enter countries with agendas and initiatives. Discourse and resourcesare mobilized to receive initiatives, transmuted on location and repackagedfor evaluative, reporting, and ‘participatory’ requirements.

During the 1990s the orientation of development agencies shiftedtowards a reagency compatible with connectivity as a central agenda. It isjust such a shift – variously called collaboration, cooperation, participation,and partnership – that has ‘reagentized’ relationships between Guests andHosts in the practice of science in distant lands. It is generally assumedthat the advent of the Internet will globalize science through changing therelationship of place and identity that has previously characterized ini-tiatives from afar. Until recently, spatial constraints generated identitiesfrom constrained interactions between members of different national com-munities. These structured patterns include field visits, project meetings,


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ritualistic visits to bureaucratic personnel, permission-granting episodes,and on-site workshops – all relatively rare events that heightened theirsalience and reinforced differences between identities.

Accounts of science and technology in the USA and Europe have longrecognized that funding organizations are important to science, but stilltreat the acquisition of resources for research as unproblematic. Theyneglect the places that provide the foundations of knowledge by furnishingresources through which laboratories and inclusions are created. In someareas of the world, resources of any kind take on overwhelming sig-nificance. The places they originate are negotiated and transmitted, andthe interactions they facilitate become the key to understanding knowl-edge, its production and diffusion. We can contrast two such places in theresearch system of Kenya, both under the auspices of the Kenya Agricul-tural Research Institute.

The Guest House of the National Dryland Farming Research Centresits atop a hill looking east toward the arid lands of Kenya. Built ofreinforced concrete, without frills, its functionality is difficult to notice.The eye is drawn to surroundings of sheer beauty inhabited by humans for2 million years. A thorny acacia, with its horizontal spread, covers a youngpapaya tree, already bearing fruit. The Iveti and Mua hills surround thestation, but the highest, Kiima Kimwe (‘One Hill’), is disconnected fromthe rest. In the evening the sound of enyui birds (Kamba) mingles with thatof children singing at the station primary school. These are distant sounds– staff housing for 28 scientists spills down the hill from the station, andmany of the 220 or so other workers live nearby with their families. Theyare sounds of community, a community of knowledge workers. Not onlyare there agricultural scientists, but carpenters, masons, mechanics, herds-men and women, milkmen, a bartender, an accountant, clerks, caterers,typists, sweepers, watchmen, subordinate staff for planting and construc-tion, shopkeepers for the butchery, dry goods store, and dispensary. Whatis called casual labor – but is hardly casual – is employed for digging,weeding, and scaring birds from the research fields. The Guest Housestands empty and apart, but when the time comes there is space for eight,with four bedrooms off a hallway, a large common room, two refrigerators,a full kitchen, and hot meals prepared by the staff.14

Two hundred miles across the Rift Valley from Katumani is a sisterstation at Kakamega with its own guest facility. The primary difference inphysical structure is that the Kakamega Guest House was built as a four-bedroom residence for a US scientist and his family, who was to have spentseveral years assisting in the development and coordination of work onsorghum and millet throughout the country. When the time came, how-ever, he refused the position at the station because of its isolation, and itsdistance from Nairobi, Kenya’s resourceful capitol. Architectural distinc-tions between the two Guest Houses are dwarfed by differences in theirutilization. Katumani is generally quiet, with clean rooms, and regularmeals on request and on time – a working environment for consultants andprofessionals. Kakamega is noisy. Soukous music blares from the cassette


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player at midday, even as one resident lies ill in bed. The rooms are usedfor storage and not just accommodation. Relatives of the hostess enjoy ameal of ugali in the dining room. Guests are told none is available.

At both Katumani and Kakamega, the guest houses are located nearthe primary buildings of the institute, where research is conducted andmeetings are held.15 In each case there is a kitchen, a large room for dining,sitting, or viewing television, and several bedrooms.16 The rooms are notdecorated, but mosquito netting is an aesthetic delight to many Westernvisitors, and windows are often open to reveal charming scenes. Yet therecan be large differences between the experience of the two; as just indi-cated, a difference may spill over to the evaluation of the stations them-selves. During one visit, two factors were responsible for the differencebetween guest houses. Kakamega, unlike Katumani, had a telephone –installed for a Guest who did not come, but subject to staff misuse.Katumani, unlike Kakamega, was still unaffected by the ‘staff rationaliza-tion’ that had just cost the Kakamega hostess her job. It is difficult tocollaborate when one faces the immediate prospect of joining legions ofunemployed Kenyans. The ‘rationalization’ was due to the demands ofGuests tired of budget overruns and fed up with a research system thathired more and more staff to provide employment for the families ofscientists. The Guest House at Kakamega had deteriorated as a place toattract collaborators and funds.

Physical structures matter in terms of the ways they are organized andinteract with identities. Past work on places of science has analyzedsequestrations such as those involving machines and materials (Shapin,1998; Galison & Thompson, 1999; Knorr Cetina, 1999), exhibitions,hospitals, museums, and demonstration fields (Henke, 2000; Moore,2001; Livingstone, 2003), and the scientific identities that ‘have a place’ inarchitectural spaces (Gieryn, 2000, 2002a,b). The sequestration at issuehere is that an actor who becomes a Guest of a research institute is morereadily subject to the control of the Host. Located at a distance from shopsand restaurants, the Guest can be observed, scheduled, and solicited. Inturn, the Guest observes and evaluates the activity and appearance of theresearch organization as a potential project site.

Guests

The Guest is an outsider identity characterized by distinctive ethnicity,representation, and location. Guests are located in places designed astransient habitats that may be commercial (hotel), domestic (privateroom), or institutional (Guest House). Guests belong to a different ethnicor national category – once typically US, British, French, Dutch, or otherEuropean, but now often Japanese, Australian, or Chinese. Finally, owingto organizational affiliation, Guests serve as representatives of distantorganizations while hosts represent local organizations. These organiza-tions are characterized by dramatic resource differentials. The most im-portant aspect of this representation is not that their interests are divergent


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from those of the Host. Interests are generally parallel, complementary,and consistent. Organizational routines of NGO and donors require thatcertain sums of money be spent, and Guests are responsible for locatingHosts and disseminating these resources. It is in the interests of both Hostsand Guests to facilitate these distributions. The central point is that asscientific Guests deposit resources and discursive patterns, they set inmotion processes that are uncontrollable and complex in their effects.Since resources are generally available only within a limited time frame,and since Guests are severely limited by the duration and frequency ofvisits, the Guest House, the Director’s Office, and the Conference Roomall assume overwhelming importance as sites of scientific meaning. Theidentity of a Guest is coupled to a particular place and assumes a transientpassage.

Place and agency are intertwined in the process of knowledge produc-tion in distant lands, producing the identity of the Guest. As we considerthe connectivity initiative, we must keep places foremost in mind and avoid‘cyberspace’ like the plague.17 All communications are initiated by socialactors from specific places that exercise powerful effects on their frequency,style, and content (Miller & Slater, 2000). Internet technology has made itdifficult (in practical terms, impossible) to determine these locations,which has important implications for the ‘real’ identity of the sender. Thisconnection between identity and place in the pre-Internet world is given –not so much ‘powerful’ as taken for granted, a component of mundanereason (Pollner, 1987). To the extent that communication technologiessuch as email, video conferencing, and other mechanisms alter this rela-tionship, the frequency of face-to-face communication may be reduced.More important, egalitarian collaborations may be developed. For those inthe North, whose only connection to Africa at present are emails fromrelatives of recently deceased potentates soliciting financial assistance,techniques that disengage identity from place are well known. For scien-tists in the South, whose only connection to international science is theplaced-based identity analyzed here, new forms of collaboration areessential.

The segregation of this identity in buildings designed to accommodatedeterminate needs (hygiene, security, nutrition, communication) recog-nizes the special significance of Guests as purveyors of resources andactivities in the form of initiatives, programs, and projects. Although notunknown in the developed world, the Guest has a generalized relevance inlow-income areas that is largely missing in places where scientific resourcesare generated internally. The two physical structures considered here aredesigned for particular sorts of social negotiations involving resources.Their existence tells us much about the kind of science that is practicedand the social formations engaged in its production. The Guest House atKatumani sets apart from the community, but just next to the mainbuilding of the Centre, built with World Bank funds.18 There may be nophysical sign of their presence – save perhaps the boiled water in pitchers –but Guests are very important at Katumani. They are not understood as


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the Visiting Scientists of the First World, spending their sabbaticals atanother university, learning from and collaborating with colleagues in theirfield. They are seeds of an entirely different variety, to be cultivatedcarefully through agronomic practices that are well understood throughseveral decades of development assistance.

Of course, a residence is not the unique locus of interaction betweenGuest and Host, but the distinctive linkage between place and identitylends durability to social structural categories. Guest and Host are engagedin a dependency relationship that is neither hierarchical nor regularized fordeterminate periods. To be a Guest is to participate in a system as awelcome but transient identity.19 A Guest may come as an individual or asan organization. She is not a tourist or traveler, for a tourist simply viewsthe sights and a traveler comes as a questing participant.20 A Guest createsan expectation – not an expectation, exactly, but a prospect, a promise, achance. It is not possible to say what precisely that entails – thoughsometimes the prospect is more specific than others – because Guests havebeen associated with such a great variety of outcomes in the past. Neitheris a Guest a stranger, a Pale Rider who cleanses the town of Evil beforedeparting in a mist, never to be seen again. A Guest may arrive and departwithout visible effect. A Guest may be very well known, even an old friend,and may come often. Finally, a Guest is not an Other, or not only anOther. It is a type that is well understood in some respects. The crucialcharacteristic of Guests is that they come from Elsewhere, from a contextof greater resources, advantages, and opportunities. They are expected totransfer some resources, advantages, and opportunities to the Hostenvironment.

The issue of Guests may well have greater generality, but is hereunderstood specifically as an emergent identity with relatively short tempo-ral duration, arising from an organizational context in which most re-sources for knowledge production are externally generated. Certain kindsof identities, when they come to gain prominence in a research system,alter the ways in which vocabularies of justification are constructed, andconceal the variety of motivations and activities undertaken by scientiststhemselves. Guests invoke a schema allowing actors in the research systemto remember, select from their experiences, and recognize identities frompast interactions.21

Two key dimensions of the transience of the Guest are length of stay(one of the first things asked about any visitor) and revisitation (neverknown until the fact). This is one point of entry for ethnographers whohave studied technical assistance projects and an important contrast withthe Guest bringing programs or projects. The actions of the latter are toreview facilities, to inquire about interests (the answer is almost always‘yes, we are interested’), to assemble a team for a proposal. Once a projectis funded, it may or may not involve the emplacement of expatriates onsite, interacting with a team of locals and generating all of the complexitiesof sustained intercultural interaction. Thomas Grammig’s outstandingdescription of technical assistance projects in Chad and Mexico reveals the


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astonishing complexity of relationships within and between groups(Grammig, 2001). Interpretations that rely exclusively on notions of who isforeign and who is local are undermined by ethnic, gender, and classdivisions, among many others. As identities remain in place, they differ-entiate and develop individualities – over time, they can become people,even friends. The pure Guest is a transient, an action generator, an identitywithout other purpose than reagency.22

I became aware of the schema invoked by this identity in 1994 duringthe process of visiting approximately 100 research organizations. My ownproject at this time used network survey techniques to collect informationfrom scientists on their communication practices. This effort was fundedby a Dutch advisory group that was interested in the general conditions ofresearch scientists in three locations that represented low (Ghana), me-dium (Kenya), and high (India) levels of development.23 My discoverystemmed from the difficulty – often impossibility – of making the nature ofthe study clear to the respondent organizations. The task became a versionof the paradigmatic ethnomethodological ‘experiment’ in norm violationknown to generations of introductory sociology students. I had engagedunwittingly in ‘identity’ violation.

To approach such a varied group of organizations required a courtesyvisit to the Director or Chair24 that involved signing a Guest Book,25

describing the study, answering questions about RAWOO (The Nether-lands Development Assistance Research Council) and DGIS (The Nether-lands Development Agency), discussing the personnel and interests ofscientists at the organization. I was repeatedly perceived as Dutch in spiteof my Midwestern US accent and business card. I was universally askedabout the possibilities for funding, in spite of the fact that I was neither adonor nor a representative of a donor. At one university in Kenya, the teamwas received by the Dean of the Faculty and obtained permission toconduct interviews. On the way out, after finishing our presentation, theDean stopped me, perplexed. ‘OK, now’, he said, ‘when do we talk aboutthe money?’ In another instance, as the team dispersed to interviewscientists at an agricultural research station, the Acting Director of thestation drew me aside and provided a small trifold pamphlet listing theactivities of his own NGO. If we came from the Netherlands, he thought,the chances were better that we would fund research by his personal NGOthan by his own government research station! After struggling with thisproblem for several months, I simply gave in and accepted the fact that Ihad not contravened the broader identity. I may not have been a donor offunds, but I was a Guest for Science.

In 2001 I received a National Science Foundation grant that includedinfrastructural funds for ‘last-mile’ connectivity of scientists.26 If the re-search organizations we targeted could develop an Internet access point,we could build a local area network. Katumani – which had captivated meas well – was one of our sites. Now the dynamics of negotiation are morecomplex but also clearer. Hosts are interested in a series of questions: Howmuch money is available? What are the conditions for getting it? What do


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we have to do? Are there strings attached? Is this a short project or a longone? What is the discursive framework we will use? What are the prospectsfor subsequent work? How many people can be involved? Who will be theleader of the local team? How much freedom will they have and what dothey have to do? Who is really providing the resources, and will they becoming back? Guests, too, have their interests and questions: Is thisindividual trustworthy? When funds are provided, is there any way to holdthem accountable? For the reagency of the Internet, the most importantquestions involve the online relationships that persist or fade after de-parture. The idea of accountability is unimportant to many Hosts, unlessthe chances of Guests returning are reasonably high.

Back in 1994 those questions were far in the future. My daily experi-ence was simply that of repeatedly being drawn into a web of activities thatdepended centrally on the (mis)understanding that I represented a donorwith projects to locate, that I was a Guest for Science. The interactioncentered around organizational capabilities and interests that could bedeveloped for mutual benefit. That I had no such interests was not crucial,since it was the only way I could be perceived as a visitor to the institute oruniversity. Guests and Hosts engage in repetitive or habitual patterns ofinteraction that give the institutions of development their present sense ofpermanence.

The fundamental reason that scientists and administrators are inter-ested in Guests for Science is their organizational affiliation, their repre-sentation of ‘development’ institutions. ‘Donors’, in the broad sense, areorganizations that provide resources for a subset of nations defined in avariety of ways. They are typically categorized as multilateral or bilateralagencies, foundations, and NGOs. Until the late 1980s, funds were chan-neled through a single government ministry (typically External Affairs,Planning, Cooperation, Budget, or Treasury). Multilateral donors, such asdevelopment banks or United Nations (UN) agencies, receive funds frommany countries. The World Bank (International Bank for Reconstructionand Development), in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund,provides loans at low interest with grace periods and long repaymentschedules.27 Agencies of the UN are organized by activity rather thanregion and provide resources directly rather than loans.28 Bilateral donorsare agencies of a national government that cooperate with certain countriesdirectly. Even the largest bilateral agencies, such as the US Agency forInternational Development, pursue narrower agendas than multilateraldonors, and often work in countries where colonial relationships existed orwith particular subject interests.

It is difficult to estimate the proportion of research in Africa that isfunded by donors. In 1990, Jacques Gaillard called such a task impossibleowing to the large number of external funding sources and the lack ofcoordination. What no one doubts is that external funding is extremelyhigh for countries such as Kenya and Ghana. At the high end, someKenyan sources place the figure at about 90% for major research in-stitutes.29 Twenty years ago, before the decrease in donor assistance, it was


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estimated that foreign-funded research at the University of Nairobi ex-ceeded research funded from domestic sources by a ratio of 10 to 1.30 Asthe outgoing Director of the government research institutes in Ghana saidin early 2002, ‘The government doesn’t fund research. We pay onlysalary.’31

Guests are closely associated with donors, but they may also be visitingscientists. If you have not been a Guest in this strict sense, you may havevisited places in Africa, Asia, or Latin America outside the confines of astructured tour and experienced the ‘instant friend’ among the locals. Thatparadigm is elaborated in complex patterns to generate the Guest whoseprimary identity is organizational. Scientists and technical experts are notonly representatives of donors, but they are, or may become, friends andprofessional associates. This may result in kinship mobility, for example, aneducation for one’s children in Europe or America. Donors send Guests, ofcourse, but the significance of the former is much less than generallyimagined, while the latter are much more important. Donors are organiza-tions that provide resources and financial assistance, while Guests arepeople who may work for donors, may know people who work for donors,or simply appear, by virtue of their employment, ethnicity, or culturalbackground, to represent a conduit for resources from Elsewhere. Guestsare potential sources of projects, of research, and of funds for performingevaluations, and for the technical advice that involves the provision ofresources and research partnerships. They provide funds – sometimesdirectly, from their personal accounts, but more often indirectly throughrecommendations to donors and funding agencies. Guests are friends,points of contact with the developed world, sources of knowledge andhope.32

What are the benefits of undertaking research activities? Since thesalary of a typical scientist is low in comparison with living costs andkinship obligations, one can generalize: there are no scientists who do nothave other sources of income, including research projects and consultan-cies as well as non-scientific businesses and investments. For an Africanscientist, getting a ‘project’ is to get opportunities to have such things as acomputer, money for a phone, and travel. A commodity coordinator, forexample, is given a small budget for out-of-station activities, which fundstrips to other research plots and stations. If he stays at an inexpensivelodging (or a Guest House at a reduced rate), he can collect a few shillingsfor himself or for his family. A scientist on safari may buy rice in Mwea,chickens in Kericho, sorghum in Kakamega. Since the widespread recogni-tion that formal institutions such as ministries, university bureaucracies,and institutes themselves divert funds from projects, scientists seek direct,personal relationships with Guests, be they visiting scientists or careeremployees of donors (Shrum, 2000). These personalized relationships aremore important to donor-driven funding than the institutionalized, oftenpeer-reviewed and competitive processes that characterize grant giving inOECD countries.


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The rejection of development, the introduction of reagency, the em-phasis on the centrality of Guest/Host interactions, and their embedded-ness in places structured by resource inequities is fundamental to under-standing the production of knowledge in many parts of the world. Whilethe position argued here is anti-developmental, it is descriptive rather thancritical. One principal interpretation of reagency in the context of sub-Saharan Africa is corruption.33 This view is simplistic, since funds ear-marked for certain purposes and people are often used for other ends inthe Western context as well. What seems different to Guests in Africa is thatthe intended activities do not occur, and that the institutions of develop-ment galvanize activities but do not typically bring about directed change.Identity, reagency and place will retain their significance with the introduc-tion of the Internet. For social studies of science, the main issue is theextent to which they will change the structure of science through theinclusion of new groups of researchers in global scientific communities.

Advent of the Internet

Since the beginning of the development era it has been argued that scienceshould be a global endeavor. At the University of Kansas in the mid 1970s,my first encounter with the sociology of science took for granted thatscience was a communal activity in which communication structure andprocess were central to the making of knowledge (Hagstrom, 1966; Storer,1966; Ben-David, 1971; Merton, 1973). ‘Developing’ countries werevirtually absent from accounts of science.34 Fifteen years later, before theadvent of the Web, I began to wonder whether, as Stevan Dedijer claimedin 1963, scientists in ‘developing’ countries ‘suffer isolation’ from eachother and from the international scientific community. I was not aware thatthis idea had both an empirical aspect (as a claim about the professionalnetworks of scientists) and a normative aspect (as an assumption about thekinds of communication that might be desirable) (Dedijer, 1963). Still, itwas quickly apparent that the isolation assumption was relatively pervasive(Arvanitis & Gaillard, 1992; Salomon et al., 1994; Shrum & Shenhav,1995; Gaillard et al., 1997). Indeed, a large part of the reason for our 1994RAWOO study of research organizations was simple curiosity about theshape of social networks of scientists in Africa and Asia.35

With the development of Hypertext Markup Language and webbrowsers, the email and information retrieval technology of the Internetcould be viewed as isomorphic with the formal and informal dimensions ofscientific communication. Attention returned to the problem of isolation inthe 1990s. Among the initiatives brought by Guests to distant lands, theInternet has features that render it uniquely interesting. Unlike most othertechnologies – ‘appropriate’ or otherwise – the component costs of process-ing information have been falling. Each time I return to Africa, prices havedropped and I can buy more switches, more UTP (unshielded twistedpair) cable. It seemed, initially that the structural interest in Information


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and Communication Technologies (ICT) was absent in most other ini-tiatives. The targets of the project – scientists – already know that atechnology destined for professional communication can be used forpersonal communication as well.

The ‘Internet’, of course, is not a single technology. The ‘Internet’, the‘Net’, and the ‘Web’ emphasize interconnectivity resulting from a variety ofinitiatives involving what are variously called electronic networks, com-puter networks, informatics, Information Technologies (IT), ICT,36 tele-communications, and even, simply, ‘computers’.37 While the latter termi-nology may seem peculiar, the technological trajectory of the past decadehas led many to feel that the mere presence of a computer is synonymouswith connectivity (Wellman, 2001: 2031).

It is startling to realize that the notion that the Internet might be usedfor the promotion of science in ‘developing’ areas is very recent. The 1993chapter on Africa in the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organi-zation (UNESCO)’s first World Science Report makes no reference tocommunication technology, though its theme is transboundary linkagesand intellectual exchange.38 Abdus Salam (1993: 168) himself returned tothe theme of isolation 27 years after his classic paper in Minerva (Salam,1966). Reviewing the legacy of the Trieste institutions he founded,39 hecites only programs of visitation and training that were assumed to involvephysical co-presence, designed so that physicists from the ‘developing’world might resist the temptation of migrating. Before his passing, Salamregretted that his International Centre for Theoretical Physics40 remained aunique enterprise. His 1993 review of partnerships and cooperationbetween scientists in Europe and the Third World contains not a singlemention of telecommunications technology as a means of promoting cross-national interaction. Guests and physical co-presence still dominatedthinking about Third World capacity building.

In 1995 the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Develop-ment began to review policies on ICT in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.The same year, the International Council for Science formed a Committeefor Capacity Building in Science. One of three principal issues was the‘problem of isolation’ of scientists in ‘developing’ areas. Returning to theindependence-era agenda of Dedijer and Salam, connectivity became thenew problematic – indeed, it rapidly became the primary initiative inscience policy for development. In STS we now take for granted that‘problems’ are often discovered (in this case, rediscovered) in the wake oftheir technological ‘solutions’, so it should be no surprise that installationof the Internet rapidly became a central developmental initiative. It wouldhave no central authority and no overall plan. In order for scientists toflourish in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it was felt that their lack ofconnection to the formal and informal communication structures of sci-ence must be remedied. From the standpoint of my own research practicesin the mid-1990s – coding surveys, writing Statistical Analysis System(SAS) programs, reading field notes from my recent emplacements inAfrica and India – I wondered, like the scientist in my epigraph, whether I


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had sojourned to Samarkand or Kandhar. To be sure, there were manyknowledge-related activities in the organizations I visited. Whether therewere professional networks that crossed national boundaries, and whetherthere were opportunities to collaborate on local problems under conditionsof resource scarcity was another question.

The reason for the puzzle was simple. When computer communicationwas already widely perceived as a cutting edge technology in the USA andEurope, the Internet was not high on the list of priorities for scientists inKenya, Ghana, or Kerala (an Indian state known especially for its emphasison education and literacy).41 Fewer than 10% of the scientists we spokewith in 1994 had access to electronic mail. Many of those with access wereemployed in international research centers. Of academic and governmentresearchers, a mere 3–4% had some sort of access. More striking than lackof access was the lack of consciousness. It is not much of an exaggerationto say that electronic communication was wholly absent from the agenda ofthe primary research sectors in Kenya and Ghana in the early 1990s. WhenI examined the results in late 1994, I was surprised to find little evidence ofconsensus on the importance of the communication media I took forgranted in the USA.

When asked directly about their electronic communication needs,scientists did not see them as high priority. From a list of 20 possibleactions, the two concerned with creating electronic communication net-works were rated fifteenth and sixteenth respectively. ‘Creating inter-national electronic communication networks’ received the lowest priorityfor any of seven actions involving communication, networking, and grouplinkages. True, Indians were more concerned with electronic communica-tion than Africans in either location, but those in the poorest researchsystem (Ghana) were the least likely to see electronic networks as beingimportant. And if that were not curious, scientists in the internationalorganizations in Nairobi were not particularly concerned about the Inter-net. One said to me in late March of 1994: ‘It’ll be another white elephant.The donors will come in and try to establish electronic links, then leaveand not support the system. It’s not that important.’

In the years that followed, this ‘white elephant hypothesis’ has re-mained with me. Only 14% of these researchers – a very low figure on suchrating items – felt that creating electronic communication networks withinKenya was ‘very important’. One supposed that if electronic communica-tion networks were an unalloyed benefit, then scientists at internationalcenters – the only individuals that had regular access to such technology –would rate them more highly. Yet more than one-third of them saidelectronic communication networks were not important.

I wondered: Why did Kerala scientists – so many of whom seemedsharp and insightful – not jump on the bandwagon? Why did Ghanaiansand international scientists think it might be the next appearance of theWhite Elephant, perhaps one of those cases, in the opinion of Odhiambo(1993: 91), where Africans should ‘look gift horses in the mouth’? Therewere two main reasons. James Opare, a doctoral student from Ghana then


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in the USA, had done many of these interviews. He was certain that hiscompatriots did not know what electronic communication was: ‘After all’,he said simply, ‘we didn’t explain it to them.’ What the Internet was in1994 bore little resemblance to what it has become. A second reason,equally important, was that scientists did rate highly the improvement oflibraries and linkages between relevant social groups.42 Scientists in Africaand India were not confusing ends with means. Whether or not theInternet could be of any assistance was yet to be seen. The means ofcommunication were not viewed as the ends: information acquisition andnetworking. In 1994 there was little scientific content on the Web. Manyscientists were not at all sure who could be reached by email, or how itworked.

Would the Internet affect the ‘isolation’ said to characterize scientistsin the Third World? If isolation is not simply a state of mind, then it shouldhave a clear interpretation in terms of social networks: isolation is separa-tion from others, a lack of contact or social interaction. This seemedpossible to test. We used data on the 293 scientists interviewed in Kerala,Ghana, and Kenya to examine the extent and character of professionallinkages. The picture of social networks that emerged was primarily local incharacter. Scientists had numerous social and professional ties. Most of theprofessional linkages in these locations were between scientists in thenational research system. There was nothing surprising about that, butwhat did it imply?43

Futures

For STS, it is a given that technologies assume their own trajectories onceintroduced into distant lands (Akrich, 1992). The notion of reagencyunderscores the point that social processes, not artifacts, should be thefocus in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The primary issue in discussionsof isolation, capacity building, and collaboration involves the search for abetter understanding of the kinds of professional networks and the meansof collaboration relevant to the conduct of particular kinds of research,whether it be internationally oriented or targeted towards local problems.That is, what types of linkages are relevant to the making and reception ofknowledge claims? It is curious to argue for partnership, exploitation,segregation, or desolation without a sense of the conditions under whichresearchers operate in their local, everyday contexts. What I read in theliterature were ‘views from afar’. Like the piece by Shrum & Shenhav(1995) in the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, first drafted in1992, such views do not attend deeply to the conditions experienced indistant lands.44 Mea culpa, for not attending to these conditions at all.

Whether researchers are ‘connected’ or ‘isolated’ can only be assessedin relation to some criterion. What was to be the standard of comparisonfor levels of connectedness? It did not make sense to me, in the pre-Internet era, to compare the personal networks of African scientists di-rectly with the personal networks of scientists in the North. I could do it, in


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some fashion because I had data on the communication networks of asample of US scientists collected in 1980 for my dissertation. The samplewas drawn from the same organizational contexts and we had asked manyquestions about the frequency of contact with various sectors. US scien-tists, for instance, reported more frequent contact with government andbusiness, while African and Indian scientists reported more frequentcontact with universities and national research institutes. Membership ongovernment committees, advice to NGOs, consultancies, and attendanceat program review meetings were roughly similar. Even reports of meetingsattended were not radically different: about five per year for US respon-dents, compared with about three per year for the Southern sample.45

Given that the US sample was selected using a productivity criterion –hence relatively elite – while the African and Indian researchers were not,there was no evidence for any general hypothesis of ‘isolation’ of theSouthern researchers relative to those in the developed world.

Even if I designed a new study, with precisely the same questions, itwould not solve the problem. It is never just numbers that matter when youstudy science in faraway lands. You walk a lot, wait a lot. You meet thescientists, talk to people in their offices, and discover their children playingnear the goats. You learn about research on poverty alleviation throughimproved dairy practices, and that a coming Gospel Crusade features ‘SixDays of God’s Power Manifest’ in the district stadium. Much of what youfind is not in your interviews – it is participation in life where you read theDaily Nation and not the New York Times. In the universities, the researchinstitutes, and the NGO of Africa and India, there is a different sense oftime and pace, as well as place. There is a loveliness and quietude that doesnot exist in the scientific centers of the North. Go there, and you may wantto stay.

In short, I could understand how Abdus Salam (1966: 167), just backfrom Cambridge and Princeton, might find himself ‘desperately isolated’when he returned to his native Pakistan. However, he had returned to aplace with a heavy teaching load and extensive service tasks – somethingmany in the USA face as well. The ‘feeling of isolation’ conflates manyissues and neglects the most important globalizing processes. Had he comefrom a different place and a different field, he might have returned toKenya during a World Bank visit to reenergize the Kenyan AgriculturalResearch Institute, or he might have joined a team of breeders in Ghanaworking with an international center to develop a new variety of insect-resistant maize. He might well have found such adventures exciting,offering a new beginning, an opportunity for change. The feeling ofisolation is experienced by many of my own colleagues who are not part ofa scholarly community. Since they have rapid and continuous access to theInternet, technology does not explain it. What they experience as ‘isolation’might be a feeling of inundation and information overload when they longfor an empty Inbox.

The main argument of this essay is that all initiatives are reagentivesince they transmit streams of projects by means of identities into the


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scientific systems of ‘developing’ areas. Only the connectivity initiative hasthe potential to change the structure of science. What would it mean tochange the ‘structure of science’? An important form of structural changeinvolves the inclusion of new groups of actors into pre-existing networks.46

The integration of knowledge workers in Africa, Latin America, and Asiainto global communities would constitute a sea change of unprecedenteddimensions. Scholars such as Jochen Glaser (2002) argue that the Internetleaves the social order of scientific communities unchanged, affecting onlythe communalization of raw data analysis, the way data are produced, andthe ability of non-scientists to contribute to the scientific enterprise. Thesad truth in his argument is that the focus on science in developedcountries has been so dominant, that the integration of scientists fromelsewhere does not rise to the level of consciousness or discourse. Studiesof the impact of computer-mediated communication on knowledge workare uniform in their conclusion that the Internet has changed communica-tion practices but does not substitute for face-to-face interaction, whichremains important (Walsh & Bayma, 1996; Merz, 1997; Olson & Olson,2000).

There is some reason to suppose that widespread introduction of newcommunication technologies could integrate researchers in Africa, Asia,and Latin America into global scientific communities. Guest Houses,donor initiatives and emplaced interactions work against this integration topreserve patterns in which hosts have greater control over resources aftertheir deposition by Guests in projects. What will happen when the Internetcomes to Africa in a meaningful sense – and not in the partial, even trivial,sense in which maps of ‘connectedness’ imply that one can simply conversewith an African collaborator, or that s/he can simply download PDF essayson the web? I conclude this paper with a discussion of three issues thatseem crucial to understanding the effects of new communication technolo-gies on the globalization of science.

Can the Long-Term Consequences of New Communication Technologies bePredicted from their Short-Term Effects?

Cohort, Diaspora, and Latecomer effects are the most obvious short-termconsequences of nascent Internet connectivity in sub-Saharan Africa. As Istruggled to find Internet cafes in Accra, established ‘line-of-sight’ fromrooftops for a wireless connection, and tried (unsuccessfully) to track downthe university connectivity plan at the University of Ghana, I stumbledacross a student-run Internet cafe at one of the residence halls. In late2001 most residence halls had one cafe, and some had two. Studentdemand for Internet connectivity had vastly outstripped that of the uni-versity faculty, and ‘24/7’ terminals were sometimes in continuous use.47 InGhana and Kenya, typing skills are rarely acquired in schools, so thewillingness to devote scarce educational resources on relatively expensiveconnection time was an important indicator of the motivation to utilizethese facilities for university students. In the short term, Internet use is an


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expensive novelty. African students learn how long it takes to download asong – and discover that the music is not free.48 Cohort effects have greaterpotential for structural change in science than any other institution. Iffamiliarization and the routinization of Internet practice not only reducethe necessity of face-to-face contact for the establishment and maintenanceof relationships, but actually eliminate its importance, then electronic com-munication may eventually integrate scientists in distant lands. Currentthinking on the embeddedness of science in place does not offer muchhope of this.

Keeping in touch with relatives in the African Diaspora is anothermatter.49 The Diaspora hypothesis holds that Internet use primarily re-inforces contact between expatriates and their families in the short term. Itis important to discover if the skills and usage habits developed byuniversity students lead to long-term relationships and collaborations. Justas the primary use of the outdated FidoNet email system was to find waysof leaving local conditions for study abroad, the mechanisms for andconsequences of such study generate a small and growing population ofInternet-literate researchers. As a global market for scientists and techni-cally trained researchers begins to develop, what can be viewed as ‘braindrain’ can also be seen to be creating diasporas that provide valuablenetwork resources for the home country (United Nations DevelopmentProgramme, 2001).

Latecomer effects are a way of referring to the bridging of the digitaldivide. While this bridging is often viewed as an unalloyed good, thereduction of inequality in electronic access is not the same as the reductionof economic inequality. For those who have used the Internet for a decadeor more, the novelty is gone. Email communication is a routinized form ofinteraction and web browsing is no longer a form of amusement oramazement. The idea that massive volumes of information are available onthe web is as likely to generate feelings of exhaustion as exhilaration, andweb ‘drop outs’ are already numerous. For science one key issue isrelational timing. By the time that connections become available andreliable in Africa, will scientists in the First World be interested in researchcollaborations of the traditional variety?50

Will the Internet Change the Frequency and Character of Relationships withColleagues Outside the Local Context?51

Beyond the general finding that research networks were localized, twofeatures were significant from the RAWOO study of pre-Internet science.First, the professional networks of researchers educated in the developedworld did not look much different from those educated in Africa and India.University professors who had been educated in the USA and Europe hadno greater contact with Western scientists than those educated locally (Shrum &Campion, 2000). Researchers who went abroad for training were quicklyreabsorbed into the local system. They did not maintain regular linkageswith others they had met or worked with during their graduate training.


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When I mentioned this counterintuitive finding at a conference in early1999, the individual in charge of a US Agency for International Develop-ment (USAID) training program declared that his group actively promotedcontinuing ties with advisors and colleagues in the USA where the in-dividuals were trained. I returned to Kenya that summer with a list of theindividuals trained by the program: scientists scattered at the manybranches of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. I traveled fromstation to station, asking about their professional ties. Very few maintainedcontact with individuals in the USA. Apart from an occasional letter ofrecommendation or a visit by the program supervisor, there were insignif-icant levels of contact. Links to advisors and colleagues were simply lostowing to the difficulty of communication. Scientific Guests often providecommunication funds for transient projects, such that some Kenyans hadexperienced and lost email connections. They were no longer able tocommunicate at all outside their organization except by postal mail orcourier.52

Let me illustrate with the example of a research institute in westernKenya, near Kisumu. Given the nonpayment of bills by the Kenya Agricul-tural Research Institute, many telephone lines to research stations hadbeen terminated and some institutes had no active phones at all. There arevarious ways of assessing communication with a particular organization.The first is to ask those who work there. The second is to ask those whohave tried to make contact. The third is to try to make contact withindividuals at the organization, which often yields the most realistic assess-ment. After sending a letter by courier and traveling most of the day fromNairobi, I arrived at the research station to find that a particular scientist Ihad come to interview was absent. He had gone to Nairobi, while I hadjourneyed in the opposite direction. There were few people present and nophone connections. The Acting Director advised us that if we wished toreturn, the best way to contact them would be to call the District Prisonabout 2 km away, and ask them to deliver a message. There is little need toemphasize that acquiring information or undertaking a collaborative pro-ject in such a place is not simply a matter of Internet chat.

Scientific communication in Africa may be contrasted with the Euro-pean or North American context. First, costs are relatively high and mustoften be covered at or near the access point by the individual who sends orreceives the communication. Second, the ultimate source of funds is oftena Guest through a research project. Many Kenyan scientists have experi-enced email. Many have had relatively better connections in the past,funded by a bilateral donor or one of the World Bank’s attempts to revivenational research systems.53 Natural termination or withdrawal of theseprojects leave the stations without email, fax, or telephone links. Pro-fessionals have such different utilization patterns for these resources thatthey often do not know when connectivity is lost. African scientists oftenhave certain media of communication available. However, the constraintson communication in distant lands are more variable than those experi-enced by Western researchers and remain dependent on the identity of the


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Guest bringing projects from abroad (Ynalvez et al., 2005). In such acommunication environment, the advent of the Internet could have asignificant impact not only on access to information but also on themaintenance of ties to mentors, advisors, and colleagues abroad. However,students of science and technology must come to study these opportunitiesand constraints firsthand. They must be there with thick descriptions ofknowledge production in ‘developing’ areas and digital video method-ologies. Owing to project dependence and temporal variability, it is uselessto read off the level of connectivity from Internet maps.

Will the Internet Change the Inverse Relationship between Internal andExternal Linkages?

The second major finding from the 1994 study was the negative relation-ship between the sizes of local and international personal networks (Shrum& Campion, 2000). For scientists in government and university settings,those with more ties to the developed world had fewer local ties. Con-versely, those who were most strongly embedded in local networks hadfewer linkages outside the national arena. Like most findings, it admits ofmore than one interpretation. It was consistent with Sagasti’s (1973)dependency argument that scientists with international orientations aredrawn away from local problems. It was also possible that time and energyare simply limited and the costs of communication require tradeoffs – themore frequently and intensively one communicates with colleagues locally,the less one interacts with those in the international context.54

In the classic model of scientific communication, scientific networksoperate at three basic levels (Schott, 1991, 1993).55 The micro levelconsists of a reference group or ‘collegial circle’ experienced by an in-dividual scientist. An intermediate or ‘meso’ level is defined in geopoliticalterms by a national scientific community. The macro level of analysis is the‘global scientific community’ or ‘scientific world system’. Writing in theearly 1990s, Schott noted that interpersonal ties were more common at thelocal or national level. For this reason, links between scientists at the globallevel have been viewed more in terms of shared norms than personalcontacts. Will the Internet create communities of knowledge workers thatincorporate Africans in a significant way?56 Putting this question from theAfrican perspective: Can researchers develop synergistic rather than com-petitive relationships between knowledge contexts?

Given the present state of ignorance, we do not know what forms thoserelationships may take. New comparisons of scientists in distant lands withthose in North America and Europe will be important, but it will be moreilluminating to compare scientists within and among countries in Africa,Latin America, and Asia. Consistent with the idea that the context of asocial system affects the characteristics of the social networks, researchtends to show that economic development is related to the way networksare organized and kinds of resources generated (Wellman, 1999). Highlyindustrialized societies are characterized by personalized and specialized


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networks, often based on shared interests. They are less geographicallylocalized and less intensely connected. In less industrialized societies,people must use networks for material resources and daily necessities. Notonly are networks more local and tightly interconnected, direct reciprocityin exchange (the immediate return of favors) may be more common.

Even the false notion of isolation implied that researchers from theleast developed countries were the most isolated. That is, there should besome association between the level of scientific development and thecharacteristics of scientific networks. If scientists in the USA and WesternEurope are viewed as working within a global scientific ‘center’, we wouldnot expect scientists in Africa to maintain professional networks that arestructurally equivalent to individuals in the developed countries. Connec-tions to the center are not the same as connections within it for the simplereason that scientists outside of any particular physical location have feweropportunities for interactions within that place than those within it havewith one another. We must determine what forms of interactivity andpatterns of connectivity characterize networks of knowledge workers in thediversity of scientific contexts that now exist.

Conclusion

Guests have been described as reagentive, given their capacity to take partin or bring about reactions in distant lands. In relations with Hosts, Gueststypically provide project trajectories but lack the ability to control them, orthe resources they require, once emplaced. The character of this reagencymay change, but if so, it will not be because the discourse of developmenthas shifted from technical assistance to partnership.57 Connectivity, ac-cording to most development agencies, is empowerment, but it may be justthe opposite. When Guests deposit programs and leave, they have littleinfluence on the course of events. Connectivity can be viewed as account-ability as easily as empowerment.

How powerful is the connectivity initiative, the ‘great collaboration’ ofthe Internet? At the recent World Summit on the Information Society, theDeclaration of Principles and Plan of Action specified that connecting alluniversities and research institutes to the Internet before the year 2006 isan international priority.58 Declarations and Plans are important forms ofdiscourse, but they are not programs and projects. The question is whetherthe drive to establish connectivity will persist. If so, how rapidly and forhow long? This ‘simple’ issue should be read in the context of the argumentthat Internet technology, by changing the relationship of place and iden-tity, is the only initiative that could accomplish the structural change inscience that this essay set out to address. Initiatives have a finite lifespan,their ‘sustainability’ limited by resources and competing interests, theirprograms and projects fading with the next global emergency. Donors anddevelopment institutions have grown weary of direct investment in scienceand technology, even agricultural research, but the connectivity initiativestill fires imaginations, funds programs, and fills pockets.


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The perceptive reader will note that in 2004 a professional scientist inLatin America, Africa, or Asia would generally be expected by most of hisor her colleagues to possess a mobile phone. The relationship betweenInternet access and mobiles is complex, but some evidence from qual-itative interviews suggests mobiles may reduce Internet use. The advent ofmobile telephony has added a significant new medium of telecommunica-tion and has consequences for the advent of the Internet. Mobile phonesare used almost exclusively for local (internal) communication but areexceptionally valuable where, as in Africa, landlines are expensive anddysfunctional. Scientists in Kenya and Ghana have invested enormouspersonal resources in mobile phones since their widespread introduction in2000, resources that have reduced demand for the Internet as well as theability to afford it. Guests from afar quickly purchase their own mobilephones and communicate with Hosts in the local area. This form ofsynchronous interaction is temporary and place-based. From the stand-point of creating and maintaining relationships across national boundaries,mobile telephony is far inferior to the Internet, a technology that analo-gizes internal and external communication so thoroughly that email to thenext room is virtually equivalent to transmissions to distant lands. Mobiletelecommunication retards the globalizing tendencies of Internet technol-ogy, encouraging the reagency of past initiatives and discouraging newforms of collaboration.

The connectivity initiative (‘collaboration writ large’) unhinges pro-jects (‘collaboration writ small’) from old patterns and requires us todevelop a new problematic for the social analysis of what many view,misguidedly, as ‘peripheral’ science. If low-cost, reliable, and widespreadconnectivity were embedded in the social contexts of distant lands, rela-tionships that depend on co-presence and terminate with projects could bedeveloped and maintained. The orientation of Guests and Hosts mightshift from one in which relationships quickly fade to one in which collab-orations proliferate in new directions, involve new actors, and createinterlocking networks that would alter the orientation of both parties. Newinformation and communication technologies are implicated in a grid ofpeople, organizations, cable, radio waves, and optical fibers, changingfuture imaginings by creating new interactions and possibilities for sus-tained relationships. The promise of the Net is simple: Sema sasa. Wajuayote.59

Will the connectivity initiative last long enough so that scientists inAfrica experience an electronic communication environment similar totheir counterparts in OECD countries? As Guests devolve to the Internetthey are no longer Guests – they are locally situated interactive partners.While it is not easy to define a ‘similar’ environment, one basic feature is adesktop computer with a broadband connection to the Internet andrelatively short intervals of downtime. It is not at all clear that connectivitywill occur quickly, or continue at pace in distant lands. This will haveserious consequences for global scientific integration and for the future ofthe Guest/Host relationship.60


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In many parts of Africa, including Ghana and Kenya, funds are nowavailable for connectivity, but rarely for other components of the techno-logical system that would provide a functional connection and rarely forthe maintenance that is essential for all technical systems. Computers (or‘Internet-compatible’ computers) are rarely provided. In one of our uni-versity projects, carefully planned and locally implemented, a local areanetwork was built that, in the end, connected a single scientist to theInternet! Computer purchases were part of an earlier wave of donorsupport and have begun to taper off. Often, the allocation of computershas been to administrative and secretarial staff. As one of my collaboratorsput it, ‘we treat it like a baby’. What he meant was ‘handled with greatcare’, under lock and key – hence, largely unused. Until familiarization androutinization set in, until the Internet becomes a daily occurrence likereading the newspaper or, in the scientific realm, scanning for informationand downloading papers, the impact will be quite limited. Cyberspace isnot ‘American culture’ (Agre, 2002), but the culture of regularly checkingemail and proficiency in web searches is crucial.61

I am cautious in predicting the effects of the Internet on science inAfrica, because the process of reagency has begun to affect my own tinypiece of the connectivity initiative and because the places I know best arethose about which I am most pessimistic. The argument here problem-atizes the Internet as a technology alleged to shift the way networks ofscientists are organized but which has still done little to change funda-mental patterns in sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, I do not believe it ishelpful to think of the Internet either in terms of ‘cyber neocolonialism’(Polikanov & Abramova, 2003) or as a kind of ‘technoscientific elixir’(Davidson et al., 2002). The day we made our first hardware purchases forKatumani, a student was killed by the police. Our accommodation at theNairobi YMCA became the eye of the hurricane, as students rioted, thepolice fired back and tear gas streamed through the windows.62 If theYMCA only had email! A ‘dustbowl empiricist’ curiosity is important,when one is thick in the middle of it. The consequences of connectivitymay be difficult to predict, and that is why the impact of communicationtechnology on science is beguiling as a subject of study.63

Thus far, the introduction of the Internet has not radically changed theproduction of knowledge in the distant lands of Africa. Science is em-bedded in places. Computer-mediated communication still centers on theacquisition and distribution of funds and projects, the same conditions thatproduced a Guest House that celebrates and segregates an identity linkedto place. Where opportunities are scarce and local obligations are strong,scientific activities are subject to the effects of reagency. Our ‘post-Internet’evidence suggests that collaboration in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala is notassociated with any general increment in productivity, as it is in thedeveloped world (Duque et al., 2005). This result suggests a paradox inwhich the costs of collaboration exceed its benefits. Those conditions thatundermine the relationship between collaboration and productivity in


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‘developing’ areas may undermine the expected benefits of new informa-tion and communication technologies. Why? Because local research condi-tions (micro interactions within a local, personal network) overwhelm theinfluences of extended (extra-local) networks created by Guests.

What this often means, in practical terms, is that new projects and newconsultancies must be pursued even if old projects are still underway,analysis is incomplete and no results have been drafted for publication. Thedissemination of knowledge, in terms of criteria that would be applied inNorth America and Europe, is low priority for scientists in distant lands.64

Where research is driven by initiatives, programs, and projects from afar,access could become ubiquitous without any fundamental shift in theinequities that now characterize Nairobi and New York. Unless scientificwork is grounded in sustained, personal, face-to-face communication, it isunlikely that the value and potential of the Internet will be realized, despitethe pretensions and interests of the donors. The connectivity initiative willnot change the source of funds in any direct way – African research willcontinue to be funded from external sources. Note, however, that with theexception of the private sector, it is relatively unusual for research re-sources to originate in the performing organizations, even in the USA. Thatscientists in distant lands might participate directly in funding programswould be a first, positive step towards scientific globalization.

When computer-mediated communication becomes part of everydaylife, relationships are easier to maintain. The inclusion of researchers indistant lands in global scientific networks would constitute a major struc-tural change in the enterprise of producing knowledge, with unpredictableshifts in orientation. The most important places in our own project arethose in which my collaborators do their email, struggle to produce textsthat describe their experiences, discuss who gets what, when we will seeeach other – and how is your family, by the way? Ten years ago I was animposter, but with Guests the identity is not a guarantee. A phony donor isas good as a real one to set the process in motion and real donors oftencome with promises they do not keep. ‘Success’ will mean I am no longer aGuest, only a collaborator – and the jury is still out.

NotesThis essay had its origin in mid-1999 at various research stations of the Kenya AgriculturalResearch Institute. I am indebted to my collaborators Radhamany Sooryamoorthy in SouthAfrica, Paul Mbatia in Kenya, Dan-Bright Dzorgbo in Ghana, and Antony Palackal inKerala, from whom I learned that: (1) social relations can be different with the Internet; and(2) research problems change through close association with friends. I am particularlyindebted to Rick Duque and Marcus Ynalvez, who have proven to be indispensablecolleagues these past 3 years, to Mark Schafer for discussions about the ideas and institutionsof development, and to Meredith Anderson and Beverly Miller for insightful data analyses.Versions of the reagency concept were presented at the meeting of the Society for SocialStudies of Science in Vienna (2000), the ‘Global Science Forum’ at the World Summit onSustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002), and the World Summit on theInformation Society in Geneva (2003). I am also indebted to sharp critiques by PaoloBrunello, Hideto Nakajima’s group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, the Theory Seminarat Louisiana State University, and the National Advisory Council on Innovation led by Bok


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Marais in Pretoria. Michel Callon and Vololona Rabeharisoa (Centre de Sociologie del’Innovation, Ecole de Mines de Paris) helped with the processual strategies important to thecurrent project. The Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council and the USNational Science Foundation made this work possible through their financial support.

1. Nearly 40 years ago, in his discussion of ‘the isolation of the scientist’, Abdus Salam(1966) quoted this letter from son to father in 1470 AD, comparing Samarkand withBerkeley and Kandhar with Delhi.

2. Internet, Web, and Net are used interchangeably to refer to the interlinked network ofnetworks allowing communication and information exchange between computers.

3. In this essay the term ‘distant lands’ is often used (metaphorically rather thangeographically) in preference to ‘developing areas’ or ‘less-developed countries’ forseveral reasons, including: (1) the avoidance of assumptions about what is, should be,or may not be occurring in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; (2) the argument thatreagency describes the process of intervention better than development; and, not least,(3) the desire to perpetuate the old-fashioned and positively charged image that thedifficulties of research in Africa are more than offset by high romance.

4. By ‘scientists’ I mean those who are engaged in knowledge production as one of theirprimary professional activities. Many of those I call ‘scientists’ could well or better betermed ‘researchers’, given their education levels and relationship to the kinds ofcommunities often viewed as the scientific core, but the term is still not used widely. A‘scientist’ in some developing areas is sometimes a professional with higher education.(For instance, when I sought to visit the curator of a botanical garden I was told, ‘thescientist is not here’.) Generally it is preferable to restrict the term ‘scientist’ asindicated earlier, but even this use has the following consequence: a ‘scientist’ is also anindividual working in a small non-governmental organization, without a bachelor’sdegree, who is engaged in the collection of data on a local problem in organicagriculture. This is a reasonable extension of the term so long as it is made clear.

5. If the Internet does change the structure of science, it would not be the first timescience has flourished in different parts of the globe. It would mark a return to themore diffuse conditions of scientific work that existed before 1100, when China, India,Persia, and Arabia, as well as other centers, were active in the making of legitimateknowledge.

6. The topic is not strictly intellectual. The experience of distant lands is a kind ofcompulsion, evidenced in the tales of travelers and expatriates who have chosen to livethere. Research and development practices in Africa, Latin America, and Asia are moreinteresting than similar work in the USA and Europe.

7. By ‘connectivity initiative’ I refer to the planned actions of organizations related to theprovision of communication and information opportunities throughout the ‘developing’world, as well as discourses pertaining to such action.

8. One important theoretical perspective on this process is provided by Tilly’s (1998:147–69) concept of ‘opportunity hoarding’ and its consequences for socialstratification.

9. A decisive and exemplary criticism was recently leveled at a prominent foundation bythe Director of an institute that tried to provide connectivity in a West African countryfor years: ‘I could kill them’, she said, ‘when our group withdrew because ofnonperformance, the Foundation just gave 3 million dollars more.’

10. The south Indian state of Kerala has formed an important comparative location for thisargument, but is not discussed here. Kerala is known for its unusual ‘model’ ofdevelopment, with relatively high social development combined with moderate to loweconomic development.

11. A useful definition is given by Emirbayer & Mische (1998), who characterize agency asa ‘Temporally embedded process of social engagement informed by its past (its“iterational” or “habitual” aspect), but also oriented toward the future (as a“projective” capacity to imagine alterative possibilities) and toward the present (as a“practical-evaluative” capacity) to contextualize past habits and future projects withinthe contingencies of the moment’ (p. 963).


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12. I use the term ‘initiative’ to refer to broad action agendas within the institutions ofdevelopment (for example, gender, environment, food), ‘programs’ to refer to actionplans that are funded or require funding, and ‘projects’ as the narrowest unit of action(a program consisting of a string of projects).

13. Gieryn (2000) has conceptualized place in terms of location, material form, andmeaningfulness.

14. Though empty of Guests, it is not unused. Staff can watch videos on the largetelevision during the day.

15. As Gieryn indicates, the arrangement of buildings at an agricultural research station inIndia could indicate to visitors what was important. In the case of the Institute of PlantIndustry at Indore this was compost pits (Gieryn, 2002b). In the case of Katamani it isthe Guests themselves.

16. During my visits, I have never seen another team.17. The problem with ‘cyberspace’ as a concept is the implication that it is a placeless

space, which is the wrong starting point for an analysis of two or more actors, eachlocated in different but definite places. When individuals began to interactasynchronously by telegraph or mail they were not tempted to confuse this point, whichis why the term ‘cyberspace’ obscures more than it illuminates.

18. It is noted that the old Visitor’s Book was retired on the occasion of President Moi’svisit to inaugurate the new buildings. His signature requires the entire first page of thenew volume.

19. The matter of segregation and the matter of transience are relative to subtypes ofGuests – the expat, the careerist, the visiting donor. Segregation of identities (in areassuch as Lenana Road in Nairobi) occurs for long-term Guests as well, such as thosewhose careers are spent in one or more countries.

20. Based on research in Togo, Wenda Bauchspies (1998) has argued that the mostimportant distinction is between individuals that come once, and individuals thatreturn. Bauchspies provides a crucial analysis of the identity of the Stranger aboutwhom nothing is known, and the associated search for information in order tocategorize and classify.

21. This internal structure is described by Emirbayer & Mische (1998: 978) in terms ofselective attention, recognition of types, categorical location, maneuver amongrepertoires and the maintenance of expectations.

22. The resources that determine Guest/Host relations are typically provided by theformer, but the identity assumes an independent existence. This is illustrated by thefollowing encounter involving the use of local rather than external funds. A Guestarrived without her own funds for lodging and meals at an institute where the GuestHouse had been taken over as staff lodging. She was provided with meals and a roomat US$50 per night. The Protocol Officer assigned to her carefully observed when shewould not be taking her meals at the Hotel, and came for his own meals there,charging them on the guest room. This occurred at an institute where funds had notbeen available to produce annual reports for approximately 10 years.

23. RAWOO, the Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council. This project isreferenced throughout what follows as the ‘RAWOO study’.

24. The mandatory visit to the Director is not dissimilar to the encounter with chief orheadman described by Bauchspies (1998: 191). While the stranger is expected to bringgifts to the chief, the Guest is expected to bring projects.

25. In the office of a Deputy Vice Chancellor at a Kenyan university, I counted 169 namesbetween two of my own signatures, about 10–12 visitors per month from January of2000 until June 2001. At Katumani, the Visitor’s Book revealed 550 names in 111months or about five per month from President Moi’s entry on 29 October1992 to myown in February 2000.

26. Fortunately, the National Science Foundation is not a usual participant in thedevelopment matrix. The reason is that there is flexibility in the use of funds. Adevelopment project must spend money in certain ways, even when Guests well know,based on their experience, that the funds will be immediately diverted.


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27. Soft loans are provided through the International Development Fund. One recent Bankprogram allocated US$500 million in loans for agricultural research in less-developedcountries (Catlett & Schuftan, 1994). Although the terms of the loan are much betterthan ordinary market rates, they are not grants for the reason that a loan requires agreater recognition of value and a commitment to repay on the part of the recipient.Although the World Bank is the largest, there are many regional Development Banks,such as the African, the Inter-American, the Asian, and the Islamic, in additional to theArab Fund for Economic and Social Development. The European Union and theEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development have recently emerged as majoradditions to the international donor scene.

28. The best known agencies are the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF;children), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization(UNESCO; science and culture), the International Labour Organization (ILO; labor),the World Health Organization (WHO; health), the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP; environment), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO;food, agriculture, research), which receive funding from the United NationsDevelopment Program. A UN officer in a region where a ‘complex emergency’ exists,such as Somalia, may coordinate eight or more agencies.

29. The 1980 Lagos Plan of Action committed African leaders to set aside 1% of theirgross domestic product for research and development by 1990. In mid-2002, the sharefor Kenya was estimated at 0.01% (Daily Nation, 4 July 2002, Section 2: 1–2).

30. Eisemon (1982: 40–41). The donor community in Nairobi is large, because of thenumber of international organizations with bases there. It is even larger because itserves as a regional center for places such as Somalia and the Sudan. Income, even in acity as expensive as Nairobi, goes farther than it does in Europe and the USA.Although international-class hotels are extremely expensive – hence the high per diemsin such places – expatriates are given housing and vehicle allowances as well as livingexpenses. Some who come for a ‘tour’ of 2 to 3 years receive their salary in a foreignbank and never draw on it, saving nearly 100% of their net income. An expatriatecommunity in the thousands (perhaps 3000 for Nairobi) can sustain a large number ofquality restaurants, nightclubs, and retail establishments. Regular functions – parties,receptions, Sunday brunch on the terrace – are more common than in Western cities.In smaller expatriate communities, where each knows all, newcomers may be receivedin a round of parties and functions. It is easier to make friends than in comparablecommunities in Europe and USA, and the boundaries of nationality and age are lessimportant.

31. Walter Alhassan, personal communication. For Kenya, Ochieng’ Ogodo reports the2003 annual budget for the national funding body was US$37,000 (’KenyanParliament Calls for University Research Fund’, SciDev.Net, 20 October 2004,< www.scidev.net > ).

32. The current number is difficult to estimate, but the number of foreign advisors whoworked in the public sector of sub-Saharan African countries in the early 1990s wasbetween 40,000 and 100,000. One source puts the number of expatriates in Kenyaalone at 9000. About 450 were in government positions, while 200 worked inuniversities and other organizations. Cohen (1992, 1993: 474) reports this involvementhas an annual cost of US$3500 million, or 35% of official development aid.

33. Kenya is a paradigmatic example of a predatory state (Evans, 1995) in which kinshipand patronage networks of officials siphon public funds into private purses. Since thisproject began 10 years ago, the donor community has engaged the Kenyan governmentcontinuously with threats and promises related to corruption, which was expected tocease when the first new government in 25 years was elected in late 2002. Within oneand a half years the British High Commissioner rendered his judgment of the newregime in what many observers considered the strongest diplomatic language they hadever heard: ‘gluttons’ who ‘vomited on the feet of the donors’ (‘Donors Dig In’, 20 July2004, East African Standard no. 27088, pp. 1–2).


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34. Francisco Sagasti (1973), writing in this journal when it was still Science Studies, arguedthat science and technology were closely related to underdevelopment and outlined theircontribution to its maintenance, before ‘dependency’ and ‘world systems theory’ werecommon currency. Among the classical authors cited in this essay, only Sagasti remainsactive (Sagasti et al., 2003).

35. Esther Hicks and Wouter van Rossum were responsible for this investigation.36. ICTs, the most common term used in the development context, can refer to

telecommunications equipment or services, Internet service provision, libraries,commercial information provision, broadcasting, and information services.

37. The most comprehensive review of studies in Africa is by Catharine Nyaki Adeya(2001), who identified 62 items during the 1990s. Of nations featured in major casestudies or surveys of ICTs in specific countries, South Africa is most often the focus(represented by fourteen studies), after which are Kenya (twelve), Ethiopia (nine), andGhana and Nigeria (seven each). As indicated at the outset and shown by Adeya’sannotations, major topics continue to have ‘capacity building’ emphases, includinginformation infrastructure, networks, computerization, gender, developing aninformation economy, information management policy, libraries, electronic publishing/CDs/databases, education, and training. Studies with a socio-cultural or political focusare rare.

38. Odhiambo does not discuss the Internet in his 1993 UNESCO report on Africa.However, that omission is not as curious as the single mention in the Report by TitusAdeboye (1998: 179). Though India is now often considered a prime example ofInternet development, the first Report, written in 1992–93, contains only one referenceto telecommunications in South Asia.

39. These include the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), the ThirdWorld Academy of Sciences, and the Third World Network of Scientific Organizations.

40. Salam’s (1993) discussion of the ICTP makes explicit mention of the Guest House for100 built by the Italian government.

41. In the paragraphs that follow I refer to findings from the 1994 RAWOO study.42. The four highest priorities were providing operating funds for field and laboratory

work, expanding and improving libraries, improving communication betweenresearchers and extension, and improving links with international researchorganizations. Apart from operating funds, Internet use has a potential impact on each.

43. This sample included professionals from universities, state research institutes, andNGOs (Shrum & Campion, 2000).

44. Yehouda Shenhav and I reviewed work from 1977 through the early 1990s (Shrum &Shenhav, 1995). Neither of us had spent a great deal of time in less-developedcountries, and our knowledge of these matters was limited to the literature, a classicexample of the ‘view from afar’ (Shrum, 1997).

45. Comparison figures are taken from Shrum (1985: 154–55, 159).46. One important aspect of such change is simple physical mobility in the case of the

‘guest workers’ that occupy low status jobs and or the ‘body shopping’ analyzed byAneesh Aneesh (2001) in reference to the immigration of Indian programmers to theUSA.

47. Polikanov & Abramova (2003: 46) note that ‘Africa follows the global trends . . . withits universities used as locomotives of technological progress’, but seem to feel thatprofessors have better access than students due to costs. While this varies from place toplace, my point here is that access is not use, but if one wishes to generalize, it wouldbe safer to say that students tend to use the Internet more than professors.

48. A survey of telecommunications in the late 1990s, conducted as background for aWorld Bank project on connectivity, examined the use of FidoNet at the Balme Libraryof the University of Ghana, a store-and-retrieve email system. Since it was a centralizedsystem, it was put in a main university library and students were the primary users. Theprimary use of the system at the time was to obtain information about graduate studyabroad (Seini et al., 1998: 4). Early users of new communications technology did not


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plan to remain in place. To the extent that this is changing, it is critical to understandthe dynamics of connectivity projects in local areas.

49. While there are not much data available, one form of evidence comes from the use ofAfrican news sites on the web. For example, AllAfrica.com claimed that while only5–10% of its users were in Africa, most of the users are Africans in the USA, Europe,and Asia (Akwe Amosu, as quoted by Russell Southwood, Balancing Act’s NewsUpdate 113, ‘Allafrica.com carves itself dominant position as African news provider’,< www.balancingact-africa.com/ > ).

50. Once again, the type of collaboration is important. Data-sharing collaborations aredifferent in character than research collaborations.

51. Twenty years ago Michael Moravcsik (1985), whose interest in science in developingareas spanned a quarter century, published a list of research questions in the 4S Review,among which ‘communication among scientists’ featured prominently. Most pertainedto comparisons with ‘scientifically advanced countries’, but several, which remainunanswered to this day, parallel the concerns of this essay.

52. Telephone connections are sporadic even in many African capitals, and worse inoutlying areas. One of the principal inefficiencies in communication is that the ringingsignal is not replaced by a recorded message when the line is disconnected, so thatscientists do not actually know if a failure in connection is due to the fact that anindividual is not in his or her office, due to a temporary system overload, or due to anonexistent phone line. Since lines are connected and disconnected due to the vagariesof payment, and are not reassigned or designated as permanently unavailable, a greatdeal of time may be spent trying to contact people via numbers that are not working.In several cases, I witnessed a secretary or scientist spend hours, on and off, trying tocall someone at a research station without a working phone. This is why mobile phoneshave overtaken all other forms of communication for professionals in Kenya andGhana.

53. The ODA-KARI project in 1995 established the first Internet (dial-up) connectivity inKenya at the agricultural research institutes, connectivity that was all but gone by thetime of my 1999 survey.

54. Inquiring about reciprocal effects of local and international communication involves adifferent question than investigating the effects of email of face-to-face interaction. Itmay be, for example, that email decreases local face-to-face encounters, but increasessuch cross-national encounters.

55. See Shrum & Bankston (1993/1994) for an alternative view.56. In the interests of full disclosure, my own hope is that they will, and I believe that such

incorporation would have a highly beneficial effect on scientific problematics.57. That shift was largely independent of the introduction of new communication

technologies, but participatory ideologies bore a clear affinity with early Internetpractice. Clearly, the relationship between ‘participatory’ style and the ‘connectivity’initiative deserves much further study because they were discursively linked. Theimmediacy and repetition of this linkage has made it quite difficult to disentangle thesephenomena (Uimonen, 2001).

58. The Declaration and Plan were established during Phase I of the two-phase WorldSummit on the Information Society (Geneva, December 2003).

59. Kiswahili for ‘Talk Now. Know All’.60. The reader who has followed the argument so far will appreciate one of the reasons

why: as long as Guests are willing to fund pieces of the connectivity puzzle, there islittle incentive for Hosts to act quickly. The process of connecting a single institute canbe painfully slow. The mutual dependencies of Hosts and Guests are deeplyinstitutionalized.

61. Checking email is an important cultural practice. So long as web relationships are aseparate set of relationships – as implied by the literature on web-based communitiesand online interaction – they are unlikely to play any large part in the scientific world.When they are part and parcel of one’s interpersonal, everyday interaction, theserelationships will be collaborative in the narrow sense.


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62. An account of that episode may be found in Duque (2003).63. It has been four and a half years since I first climbed the water tower at Katumani and

imagined that resources from abroad could connect these scientists to the world. It hasbecome an annual pilgrimage and my efforts have not produced that outcome, thoughthey have produced many other effects. This week the ladder had been blocked bybarbed wire as a precautionary measure, since someone at the station had tried topoison the livestock.

64. Recently there have been many attempts to apply ‘international standards’ to outputsfrom universities and research institutes but it is unlikely they will make muchdifference.

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Wesley Shrum is Professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University inBaton Rouge and Secretary of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Hisprimary research interests center on scientific communication in Africa andAsia, multi-institutional collaborations, and digital video ethnography.

Address: Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge,LA 70803, USA; fax: +1 225 578 5102; email: [email protected]


Documents

Internet Reagency: The Implications of a Global Science for Collaboration, Productivity, and Gender Inequity in Less Developed Areas