Technology, inequality and subalternity: theorizing technological agency among migrant workers in India

This study is concerned with technology and inequality among the subaltern in contemporary India. It analyses visual material from Jharkhand and empirical work in Bangalore to understand technological engagement among certain subaltern socio-economic groups. The paper theorizes the interaction between subalternity, socio-spatiality and technology, where spatiality (through the ‘proximity principle’) appears to operate at the core of this interactive space. The study argues that spatiality needs to be integrated into the sociology of technology in the understanding of the technology-inequality-development interface. That is, socio-spatiality drives technological praxis and moulds the technological condition. We discover a spectrum of subaltern technological praxis, where the character of the technological engagement (in terms of praxis, outcomes and condition) is discursively shaped (in terms of collectively constructed imaginary, principles, routines and meanings ascribed to the technologies). Technological agency exercised either by informal frugal invention or by external intervention can battle the lived experience of inequality, and perhaps even the condition of subalternity.