Technology of the oppressed: inequity and the digital mundane in favelas of Brazil

David Nemer conducts an ethnographic study to analyze how favela residents appropriate everyday technologies, not only artifacts but spaces and processes, in order to alleviate oppressions in daily life. Nemer applies the concept of Mundane Technologies, which encompasses everyday, non-productive activities and desires that engage people. Embedded in the appropriation of these technologies are the processes of how people exercise their agency and consciousness, to mobilize towards a better quality of life, i.e. how they critically and consciously reinvent technology. According to the author, this constitutes acts of hope in the search for liberation. The book is grounded in Freirean theory, and Nemer brings several concepts of Paulo Freire to support his argument, such as the notion of oppression, consciousness, generative themes, culture of silence, becoming, liberation, false consciousness, banking education, and problem-solving education.

One of the Mundane Technologies discussed is the act of repair, which goes beyond the limits of maintenance actions, encompassing actions of care, zeal, creativity, skills, strategy and even cleverness deposited in technologies important to the community. It is a practice that emerges from the need for survival. An act of repair well known in Brazilian urban communities are “gatos” and “gambiarras,” which as the author himself defines are: “piecemeal process of overcoming precarious conditions through improvisation, bricolage, and adjustments” (Nemer, 2022, 45). Examples of “gambiarras” aimed to make the Internet reach the favelas are Internet sharing between residents or alternative, improvised, and even illegal electrical connections. It should be emphasized that this reality was imposed on residents by the negligence of public authorities, which makes it impossible to have broad internet access in favelas. Residents must think and build palliative tactics.

Spaces are also analyzed as Mundane Technologies, whose appropriation by the community has a meaning that goes far beyond their technical function. Community Technology Centers (CTCs), for example, represent almost sacred places for favela residents, including for local drug traffickers. The CTCs are like public internet facilities, provided by the state government. As such, they are considered safe and protected spaces. Residents of various ages use the CTCs on a daily basis, to write CVs, to apply for jobs, to access social media, and even to socialize. Many teenagers go to the CTCs to meet their friends, do homework, and spend time together. In these centers, there are people who coordinate and help users to use the computer. These people are called inclusion agents. The CTCs also offer workshops on various subjects, such as hints for writing and formatting a CV, photo editing, and how to prepare for job interviews. Lan Houses are also seen as protected places by the community. Lan houses are private stores that offer computers with internet access, printers, and even technical repairs. Some Lan House owners have acquired computer repair skills and offer these services at a cheaper and more affordable price to community residents. Some mothers see Lan Houses and CTCs as safe points that keep teenagers entertained and, thus, away from drug cartels. Lan Houses also serve as spaces with addresses that residents can use to receive mail and documents. This is a relevant assignment for the community since it is very common in the favelas of Brazil not to have a defined address and postal code. These are examples that show how everyday use, inserted in the local context and permeated by individual and collective social practices, reinvents spaces and technologies.

It is noteworthy that the importance of Lan Houses in the favelas is a portrait of socioeconomic and spatial inequalities, since, in more developed locations, it is a space that has already been overcome. This can be corroborated through empirical observation of the city, where it is possible to notice that technologies and transformations spread at different speeds in the most diverse regions of the city.

Santos (1996), when discussing the urban space, states that it is characterized by an uneven accumulation of times because materialities and actions of the past coexist and are added to the current ones – when we walk in a city, we will come across constructions from a past historical period coexisting with forms from the current historical period. However, the manifestation of different times is also expressed in the actors that have the city as a stage: people, companies, and institutions. The materiality is crossed by actors, according to the time in which they move around, which is slow or fast. Fast time is related to hegemonic firms, individuals, and institutions, and slow time is associated with the hegemonized (Santos 2001).

Despite this notion of Santos addressing the mobility of actors, the idea of slow and fast time can also be applied to discuss the speed of transformations and diffusion of technologies within the city, and consequently, it is also useful to understand the reasons that make technologies mundane ones, such as Lan Houses and CTCs, in elements already outdated in more favored regions. It is highlighted that income is an essential element in determining the time for diffusion and overcoming of these technologies; we can argue that in the city, all actors find at their disposal the same set of technologies, goods and services, however, the financial conditions of the subjects directly influence access and the way in which technologies, goods and services are disseminated.

Social media also constitutes a Mundane Technology. Nemer states that the use of social media worked as an alternative way to survive in the communities, escape street violence, a place to socialize, improve digital literacy, and consciously express emotions. Favela residents liked to post pictures on social media to show their family that they were fine, without having to write a caption. Selfies were a resource used to express feelings without clearly evidencing discontent with social inequalities. In this sense, selfies were also appropriated as Mundane Technologies, to show messages that only people who shared that same reality could understand. By making people who had difficulty using the keyboard able to expose their feelings without writing, the author classifies the selfie as the process of becoming, defined by Paulo Freire. According to Nemer (2022, 97) “the process of becoming is when a person understands their limitation but continues to engage with their reality in order to consciously become fully human” and, in the case of selfies, becoming voiceful. It is important to emphasize that the process of becoming or “estar sendo,” refers to the consciousness that men and women are inconclusive and historical beings, that is, they are constantly evolving, so they are becoming. The perception of being in an unequal and unfair world means that reality is not a fixed fact, but it is something under construction, unfinished, which can be transformed. Authentic liberation or the process of humanization is the act of becoming the Subject of your own transformation. In this sense, Freire points out (2018, 102): “the problem-posing education, which accepts neither a ‘well-behaved’ present nor a predetermined future, roots itself in the dynamic present and becomes revolutionary.”

Despite discussing how digital platforms have been important in alleviating the oppressions suffered by favela residents, the author has reservations about the dangers associated with their use. In addition to surveillance and unknown data mining and sharing, these platforms were used as tools to disseminate false information, especially during the 2017 election period, which ended with the victory of the far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro. The lack of regulation of these platforms allows them to have great power over people. They favor the spread of misinformation as they are more interested in people's engagement with content and, therefore, false content is more likely to be shared. Controversial issues, especially those affecting moral values, and conspiracy theories engage a lot on social media, and malicious groups know very well how to play with them.

In Bolsonaro's electoral campaign, the platform most used to spread disinformation was WhatsApp. Nemer joined some pro-Bolsonaro groups to continue his ethnographic research, highlighting the human infrastructure behind the fake news dissemination scheme. His work has made him a target for extremists. Nemer was threatened and was forced to return to the US for his own protection. Threats and violence were widely used in Brazil, not restricted to election periods, but far beyond. It was as if bolsonarism had opened the doors to a parallel world, where people were no longer afraid to be openly racist, sexist, xenophobic, and violent. These were hard periods in our history, which will still take us a long time to recover from.

Nemer analyzes some social movements that took place in Brazil between 2013 and 2020. One of them became known as rolezinhos (little strolls), in which many young favela residents organized meetups in shopping malls to have fun and hang out. The meetings were planned mainly through Facebook platforms. Since shopping malls are spaces built for upper-class populations, the rolezinhos represented actions of resistance that came from the peripheries to appropriate spaces that, theoretically, should be for everyone. Rolezinhos unveil the structural racism and inequalities in our society. The institutional response was marked by police brutality. Another social movement discussed was Breque dos Apps (Break from Apps), whose actors were delivery drivers who work for digital platforms. The majority of these workers are from the periphery. They organized collectively and held two major strikes in July 2020 to demand better working conditions. The social movements discussed in the book are great examples of how people appropriated digital technologies and spaces to organize themselves. They represent the construction of new forms of resistance and collective organization. In this sense, the appropriation of digital technologies and their approximation with social movements constitute paths to liberation from systems of oppression. Collective paths are subversive.

This book is very interesting for academics of Social Studies of Science and Technology, linked to topics such as resilience and favelas in Brazil. As stated before, the purpose of the book was to show how favela residents, by appropriating everyday technologies, spaces and processes, creatively and consciously construct new paths in the search of liberation from the systems of oppression to which they are subordinated. The transformation of reality represents, then, an act of hope. However, the book fails to critically analyze this liberation. Race, class, and gender relations are structural in our society and are not easily dissolved, on the contrary. They involve unequal power relations that structure the way our society is organized. It is an extremely complex process that requires profound transformations, including in our unsustainable model of national development based on consumption, our way of organizing social production and reproduction, and our notion of progress that neglects the preservation of natural resources and excludes and violates other ways of life of indigenous and quilombola peoples. We need to ensure decent living conditions for all people (health, education, housing, food, sanitation), regardless of race, gender, and work status. For this to happen, affirmative actions, equality public policies, anti-racism and anti-gender violence laws are imperative. As Freire points out, “the oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creation of individuals, people themselves, time, everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal” (Freire 2018, 63).

Favelas represent the materialization of the resistance of peoples who have been despoiled and dispossessed of their territories and their sources of subsistence, being forced to build their homes in places unwanted by the rest of the population. They are descendants of peoples who were enslaved and colonized, and who today suffer from racism and necropolitics. Urbanization reforms and public policies to ensure decent living conditions for urban communities are achieved when residents organize collectively and politically, otherwise, their claims, needs and desires will rarely be considered in public planning. Together, they have immense strength. Freire points out that education for liberation implies political power, a political action that is also a cultural action, which must begin by the oppressed, “it is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation that they begin to believe in themselves” (Freire 2018, 72).

Class, race, and gender oppression systems are expressed through government neglect of the favelas, perpetuating these systems. Poor infrastructure and violence are part of the communities’ reality. Favela residents build creative strategies to overcome this situation. Repair actions as gatos and gambiarras allow access to the internet which would not be possible otherwise. Social media have allowed access to a digital culture, already widespread outside the communities, as well as stimulating socialization. Lan Houses and CTCs represent safe places for internet browsing, especially for those who do not own computers or mobile phones. The appropriation of these technologies and repair actions have transformed the reality of the favelas. They emerge as acts of resilience to systems of oppression, but may not bring liberation, as they remain immersed in structural and extremely unequal power relations. It is essential that liberating action recognizes the situation of dependence of the oppressed, aiming at transforming it into independence and autonomy. Liberation is generated to the extent that the revolutionary actions of the oppressed succeed in preventing the return of the oppressor regime. It is a struggle that

they are fighting not merely for freedom from hunger, but ‘for freedom to create and to construct, to wonder and to venture’. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible, not a slave or a well-fed cog in the machine. (Freire 2018, 76)

In this regard, it is necessary to believe in the power of the people and social movements, and “trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change” (Freire 2018, 66).