Cultural appropriation: information technologies as sites of transnational imagination

Abstract

The diverse ways in which technologies are modified and appropriated into local contexts are an important theme in CSCW research. Today, translocal processes such as the formation of international corporations and the movement of people and ideas across nation states increasingly shape these local contexts of technology use and design. We draw from prior work on appropriation in CSCW and meld it with work from transnational studies to illustrate appropriation as a cultural phenomenon and as it unfolds in relation to emerging translocal processes. We ground our explorations in findings from ethnographic research on collaborations and exchange among IT professionals in urban China. This work makes two main contributions. First, it expands CSCW's focus on socio-technical systems by taking seriously socio-political and socio-economic processes. Second, it contributes to debates on cross-cultural and global technological development by employing transnational imagination as an analytical tool.