My Mobile Phone, My Life: Deconstructing Development ( Maendeleo ) andGender Narratives among the Marakwet in Kenya

Abstract

The increased adoption of mobile telephony for development is based on the assumption that mobile telephonyhas the potential to foster social change. To some, such technology can aid most developing countries to leapfrogstages of development. Yet to others, the technology is at most counterproductive: development has beenunderstood differently by the developed in comparison to the underdeveloped. Missing in this narrative is thepeople’s own conceptualization of the term development as well as their gender roles, often a component ofdevelopment programs. This study presents findings on an alternative conceptualization of development, dubbed maendeleo, a Swahili term that denotes process, participation, progress, growth, change, and improved standardof living—as defined by the people or women themselves as they interact with mobile telephony in rural Kenya.Using Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage theory to analyze interviews, this study proposes an alternativeconceptualization of development. This different perspective on development denotes both process andemergence, through the processes and roles that mobile telephony plays in the techno-social interactions ofusers, context, and other factors as they form social assemblages that are fluid in nature, hence challenging theWestern proposition that new technologies produce development understood as social transformation.