Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil

by David Nemer

How Brazilian favela residents engage with and appropriate technologies, both to fight the oppression in their lives and to represent themselves in the world.

Brazilian favelas are impoverished settlements usually located on hillsides or the outskirts of a city. In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of how favela residents engage with technology in community technology centers and in their everyday lives. Their stories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by technology don't just reject it, but consciously resist and appropriate it, and how their experiences with digital technologies enable them to navigate both digital and nondigital sources of oppression--and even, at times, to flourish.

Nemer uses a decolonial and intersectional framework called Mundane Technology as an analytical tool to understand how digital technologies can simultaneously be sites of oppression and tools in the fight for freedom. Building on the work of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, he shows how the favela residents appropriate everyday technologies--technological artifacts (cell phones, Facebook), operations (repair), and spaces (Telecenters and Lan Houses)--and use them to alleviate the oppression in their everyday lives. He also addresses the relationship of misinformation to radicalization and the rise of the new far right. Contrary to the simplistic techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Yet the spirit, love, community, resilience, and resistance of favela residents make possible their pursuit of freedom.

230 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2022

About the author

David Nemer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies and in the Latin American Studies program at the University of Virginia. He is also a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center and Princeton University's Brazil Lab. His research and teaching interests cover the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), Anthropology of Technology, ICT for Development (ICT4D), and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Nemer is an ethnographer whose fieldworks include the Slums of Vitória, Brazil; Havana, Cuba; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia. Nemer is the author of Technology of the Oppressed (MIT Press, 2022) and Favela Digital: The other side of technology (Editora GSA, 2013). He holds a MA in Anthropology from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Computing, Culture, and Society from Indiana University. Nemer has written for The Guardian, El País, The Huffington Post (HuffPost), Salon, The Intercept_, UOL, and CartaCapital.

Reviews

[Ryan Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Technology of the Oppressed

Book 19 of 2023.

Nemer uses Paulo Freire as a canvas on which to paint a critique that has elements of Actor Network Theory and Critical Technology Theory to explain how digital technologies oppress. It’s not enough to bridge a digital divide, we must use tech to liberate. To illustrate this, he studies the digital lives of residents of Brazil’s favelas.

The narrative here could use some refinement, frankly. Lots of “25-cent words” and driving us out of the way to add more citations that don’t support the main arguments.

One aspect that merits scrutiny is that although the book is new (2022), the field work supporting it is not (2012-2013). A lot has happened in that decade (Snowden, Marco Civil, Bolsonaro, COVID, the move from telecenters to mobile, etc); Nemer tries to cover these gaps, but the story in the favelas (as in so many other places) had moved forward.

The favelas are a useful backdrop for this study in ICT4D. They are a world apart; largely self governing and places where terms of citizenship and citizen rights are in contrast to the rest of the city dwellers they look above or around. In brazil, some 12 million people (about 1 in 20) live in a favela. They’re places where government has largely been absent, leading people to do things for themselves - how does that translate to a Search Engine or a Word Processor or other quotidian tech? However, there’s an element of “I’m the enlightened rich guy that ‘gets’ the favelas and you aren’t” that is pretty unhelpful here. (The author come across as someone you’d probably avoid at parties.)

[Matthew Ventures · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated how Technology of the Oppressed jumped straight into serious issues—it felt like I was learning from someone with real insight. One of the most striking ideas was the notion that technology is inherently broken, serving mostly those in power. That reminded me of how systems like policing can be seen as protective or corrupt depending on who you are. The section on repair as a right really stood out—it’s a clear example of injustice that’s easy to understand. I also found the example of the QWERTY keyboard surprisingly compelling; I’ve always preferred rebinding controls, and it hadn’t occurred to me how default design can be a form of control. I connected with the parts about poor internet access in public transit and was interested in the divide between LAN houses and telecenters, especially how those spaces are gendered. While the book felt repetitive at times, I ended up appreciating how it tied everything together. I was especially interested in how people used everyday tech to navigate harassment and how movements were co-opted by more powerful groups for their own agendas. The book was long, but it raised important questions about access, resistance, and the real impact of digital platforms.

[Egídia · Rating 5 out of 5]

O livro me trouxe muitas reflexões sobre o uso da tecnologia nas diferentes camadas sociais, de raça e classe. No início pensei que seria uma visão de como os aplicativos são utilizados e empregados no dia-a-dia de quem mora na favela, mas me trouxe uma visão muito mais ampla me mostrando o que está por trás do uso (ou do "não uso" ) de um smartphone e computador.
Para mim, não foi uma leitura fácil onde lia 2 ou 3 páginas antes de dormir. Precisava estar concentrada no assunto e ler por seções para que entendesse toda linha de raciocínio do autor.
Indicaria para todos, mas em especial àqueles que trabalham na construção de produtos de tecnologia, para que a gente possa ter um olhar mais sensível e humano da nossa sociedade.

[Jemaris1]

The discussion around technology in the favelas of Brazil highlights how digital tools can both empower and marginalize communities. It's fascinating to see how everyday technology shapes lives in these areas, often reflecting broader social inequities. In fact, exploring resources like https://indatalabs.com/blog/big-data-and-forecasting helps to understand how big data and forecasting techniques can be used to address some of these challenges effectively. By leveraging such insights, we can develop better strategies to reduce the digital divide and promote more equitable access to technology for all.

[Fiddler`s Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muito muito bom. Recomendo. E se é bom, gado bolsominion odeiaaaaaaaaaa =D