Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Campus Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric, Theory and Culture (PhD)
Administrative Home Department
Department of Humanities
Advisor 1
Ronald L. Strickland
Committee Member 1
Andrew P. Fiss
Committee Member 2
Lesley A. Morrison
Committee Member 3
Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed
Abstract
International non-governmental agencies have played an intervening role in mitigating the socio-economic and political hardships faced by many people in postcolonial/decolonial regions in the Global South. Most of the interventions have targeted children in rural areas. Coupled with the dynamic communicative global landscape, philanthropic endeavors necessarily utilize the digital communication space via websites as a primary means of communicating with, advertising to, and soliciting from the public. This complex relation results in similarly complex representations of post/decolonial child identities in spaces where children as agents are limited.
To understand and actively mitigate avenues of possible violence against children as agents and children as subjects, this dissertation explores the digital spatial communication practices of five philanthropic organizations. Specifically, it investigates multifaceted communication strategies such organizations employ in constructing their websites. Knowing this leads us to understand how childhood identities emerge through technical communicative acts controlled by powerful entities that have neoliberal backing.
Using Foucault’s spatial theory of heterotopia, the dissertation finds that despite complying with international philanthropic digital laws on the depiction of children, children within the post/decolonial regions continue to be depicted as subjects of crisis and objects of deviation within the global rhetoric of childhood and child discourses. This depiction contributes to the continuous perpetuation of the narrative that children in the de/post-colonizing Global South are devoid of agency.
The findings and conclusions of the dissertation have implications for theory, technical communication practice, and activist work aimed at socially just practices that engage children. Theoretically, it is proposed that the heterotopia framework should be decolonized and expanded into a space that centers the African child’s lived experiences. The spatial theorizing of the African child’s lived experiences allows us to focus on the lived experiences of subjects rather than their assumed identities, which may be violently transferred to the new digital spaces. In technical communication, there is the need for research to inform practice where the technical communicator shows an awareness of the complex results of digital space creation and habitation. While digital spaces can be liberating, the results show that for children who are in the margin, they can be confining. Overall, the proliferation and incessant opening of new digital spaces require formulating just policies that protect emergent childhood identities.
Recommended Citation
Markson Eduaful, Fredrica, "CONSTRUCTING CHILDHOOD JUSTICE WITHIN POSTCOLONIAL/DECOLONIZED DIGITAL AFRICAN CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES: PHILANTHROPIC WEBSITES AS SITES OF POSSIBILITY", Campus Access Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2024.