[Air-L] AAG 2015 2nd CFP - From Online Sweat Shops to Silicon Savannahs: Geographies of Production in Digital Economies of Low-Income Countries

[Mark Graham]

Dear colleagues,

As the deadline draws nearer, please consider submitting to the session
below.
(with apologies for cross positing)


*From Online Sweat Shops to Silicon Savannahs: Geographies of Production in
Digital Economies of Low-Income Countries*

AAG Annual Meeting <http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers>,
Chicago, April 21-25, 2015 (sponsored by the Economic Geography and
Development Geographies specialty groups)

*Organizers:*
Mark Graham <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=165>, Nicolas Friederici
<http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=332>, and Isis Hjorth
<http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=169> University of Oxford

Throughout the early 21st century, Internet and mobile phone access in
developing countries has skyrocketed, and today the majority of people on
the planet are connected through information and communication technologies
(ICTs). Yet, while basic ICT access is increasingly level across income
groups and geographies, production in the global digital economy is still,
and maybe increasingly, dominated by incumbent multinational technology
corporations or fast-scaling web startups. These businesses tend to roll
out their products (with some local adaptation) across the globe, but
maintain their coordinating and creative activities in places like Silicon
Valley, Tel Aviv, or London, exploiting both agglomeration and dispersion
economies in digital production (Malecki & Moriset, 2007; Moriset &
Malecki, 2009).

How does digital production in low-income countries fare in the face of
this dominance? Policymakers and the private sector in several low-income
countries (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa) have set out to transform
their economies through ICTs, explicitly emphasizing local digital
production. Two sectors that are often seen as promising are (1)
low-skill/cost-competition, such as business process outsourcing and
digital microwork, and (2) high-skill/entrepreneurial innovation, such as
startups developing and commercializing mobile and online applications.
However, what are the concrete and realistic potentials and possibilities
for low-income countries to become important hubs for digital production?
What are palpable economic outcomes of Kenya’s status as the “Silicon
Savannah” or Lagos as the “Silicon Lagoon,” and who are the winners and
losers of local ICT entrepreneurship and innovation? Do ICTs really deliver
economic inclusion and employment to remote geographies and low-income
groups, or are we witnessing the rise of online sweatshops that further
enhance exploitation of vulnerable populations?

This session will explore these themes, encouraging contributions from a
variety of perspectives. We invite authors to consider digital production
in low-income/developing countries through lenses such as:

   - Empirical or theoretical perspectives on digital production and its
   (uneven) geographies
   - Discourse around digital production and its promises and risks
   - Distributions of value creation and extraction across actor groups
   (winners/losers)
   - Tensions of scaling versus local adaptation in digital production, in
   application to geography and inclusion/exclusion effects
   - Uneven production geographies within countries, in particular,
   differences and divides between rural/peri-urban/urban clusters
   - Socio-demographic analyses of economic actors engaging in digital
   production
   - Case studies of low-skill/cost-competition digital production (e.g.,
   business process outsourcing, microwork, etc.)
   - Case studies of high-skill/entrepreneurial innovation in digital
   production (e.g., mobile/online applications startups, technology
   innovation hubs)
   - Analyses and recommendations for local and international policy
   pertaining to digital production

*Submission Procedure:*

To be considered for the session, please send your abstract of 250 words or
fewer, to: mark.graham at oii.ox.ac.uk, nicolas.friederici at oii.ox.ac.uk, and
isis.hjorth at oii.ox.ac.uk

The deadline for receipt of abstracts is October 1 2014. Notification of
acceptance will be before October 7. All accepted papers will then need to
register for the AAG conference at aag.org. Accepted papers will be
considered for a special issue or edited volume edited by the organizers.



Malecki, E. J., & Moriset, B. (2007). The paradox of a “double-edged”
geography: local ecosystems of the digital economy. In The Digital Economy:
Business Organization, Production Processes and Regional Developments (pp.
174–198). New York, NY: Routledge.
Moriset, B., & Malecki, E. J. (2009). Organization versus Space: The
Paradoxical Geographies of the Digital Economy. Geography Compass, 3(1),
256–274.
------------------------------------------
Dr Mark Graham

Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford

Research Fellow
Green Templeton College
University of Oxford

Visiting Research Associate
School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford

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