Radhika Gajjala, author of Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women.

Gajjala explores role of Internet in lives of South Asian women

Historically, people have assumed—perhaps naively—that major new technologies would revolutionize the world. That assumption has been made again in the case of the Internet, says Dr. Radhika Gajjala, interpersonal communication. But, as in the past, it has not turned out to be exactly true, especially for people in the Southern Hemisphere.

In her new book, Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women, published in November 2004 by Altamira Press, Gajjala admits electronic communication's contribution to globalization, but argues that, like most technologies, it has primarily impacted the same class of people who already have access to other amenities.

The term “cyberfeminism” refers to “women using Internet technology for something other than shopping via the Internet or browsing the World Wide Web,” she writes. This form of feminism exists in “cyberspace,” a space that can be thought of as an opportunity for social interaction. Cyberfeminists believe that women should take control of the opportunities offered by the Internet to empower themselves.

But Gajjala cautions that the notion of technology as savior smacks of the missionary-like belief that science can alleviate suffering, while operating under an almost colonial assumption that the West knows what is best for the rest of the world. This belief has plagued attempts at development in the Third World, where efforts to infuse Northern forms of knowledge and progress without an understanding of the culture have fallen short. And the very use of the electronic medium to describe conditions in Third World countries tends to serve as a validation of this assumption, she says.

In Cyber Selves, Gajjala is “trying to make sense of what is happening, but not to say whether it is good or bad,” she said. “There needs to be a careful examination.” The book springs from her own involvement in early and ongoing online communities connecting South Asian women’s communities, including SAWnet.

It is important to see the Internet in its context, she adds. Because the online space is different from physical spaces, users must decide which parts of themselves they will represent in online communications, and yet that decision cannot be separated from one’s own cultural context. “It cannot enable any more freedom or power than they have already negotiated in their own lives,” Gajjala says.

Many of the South Asian women who are proficient at communicating via the Web are living elsewhere, and thus almost by definition are part of the privileged class. The Internet does offer an access point for these dispersed people to connect with their fellow Asians, Gajjala concedes, and helps to link the community.

“Cyberspace is part of society. Its uniqueness is in what happens in that space and the fact that people can connect from all over the world—at least the English-speaking world and the world of those who are trained to connect and to articulate themselves in the lexicon of the North," Gajjala points out.

“There are areas that we perceive as geographically Third World, but there’s a layer of privileged people within that who are already part of the ‘First World,’” she says. "To address only them would be to neglect more than three-quarters of the world’s population.”

There is a corresponding sense that “it’s almost your responsibility, if you’re in a place of privilege, to become a liaison and use your access to speak for those at the bottom level,” she said. "But that raises questions of what is at stake in doing or not doing that.”

One of the difficulties is the illusion that “there is this original, primitive, Third World woman,” she says, and that through the Internet, that woman can somehow be empowered. That is an assumption taken totally out of context, she contends.

But one thing that might be helpful, she says, is dialogue between women in the North and the South as a form of creative exchange and interaction. The book includes portions of a dialogue between Gajjala and Annapurna Mamidipudi, a fieldworker in a nongovernmental organization in south India working with traditional handloom weavers.

Mamidipudi’s viewpoint is rooted in the specifics of her location and the needs of the men and women with whom she works daily. In her case, it is the reviving of “old” technological processes such as vegetable dyeing and handloom weaving that has helped the weavers, through research into production and marketing techniques that increase their business. If the Internet has at all played a role in helping the weavers, that help has come through research and use in careful and specific contextual ways defined by their needs.

It is this kind of engagement, Gajjala contends, that is very important in terms of governmental policymaking decisions, because it is based in contextual needs and provides usable information.

Information, after all, does not come out of "nowhere"—even on the Internet—and it is important to be aware of that when talking about empowerment via the "information society,” she says.

"Without careful scrutiny, the people these policies are designed to help become mere 'cardboard cutouts,' and the solutions are impoverished."