[ 3] Rangaswamy, N. “Disruptive IT in South India.” SARAI reader 2003: Shaping Technologies. Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, 2003.

[ 4] Chavan, A., Munshi, S., Emotion in a Ticket, CHI 2004.

November + December 2009

[ 5] Mankekar, P.,
Screening Culture,
Viewing Politics:
An Ethnography of
Television, Womanhood,
and Nation in
Postcolonial India,
Durham, N. C.: Duke
University Press, 1999.

interactions

community—what do they consider empowering, progressive, upwardly mobile, or beneficial? Should the aim of introducing the Internet be to push digital literacy at any cost, or to make literacy relevant for community needs? Do information kiosk users downloading MP3s and wallpapers of film stars and watching You Tube videos counter development goals? Rangaswamy studied a state-sponsored telecenter for community development, which survived power crunches and unstable Internet infrastructure, by using a PC for offline copying, publishing, and digital photography [ 3]. Through a PC, the telecenter transformed traditional services to a more diverse, efficient, and sophisticated practice.

Understand scope. Most development projects are limited by funding and scale. The effects of interventions, however, have a longer life than their funding sources. Any HCI4D project needs to allot significant care to understanding local social arrangements, including those that may seem exploitative. It is one thing to be appalled by the degree of injustice in the field, and another to attempt to intervene without understanding cultural mechanisms of injustice. Development interventions may sometimes exacerbate existing social divides and inequalities. In one of our field sites, we were dismayed by high rates of alcoholism and domestic violence, and the community acceptance of these practices. We were tempted to include video episodes to counter domestic violence in our participatory video-exchange program. But on deeper introspection, we turned our focus from domestic violence to raising nutritional and educational awareness. This worked on two counts—it generated a positive response from our audience, and it avoided a serious and controversial community issue that our short-term design intervention was ill equipped to address. A humble approach toward development research goals— and sensitivity to local context—aided in creating impact within the scope of the project.

Understand internal politics. Access to informants is critical when conducting research in any community. In our case, we snowballed our pool of informants initially recommended by our key informant—an active member of the local NGO. While the snowball sample ensured a trusted path for obtaining informants, it precluded our interviewing those unknown to or hostile toward the key informant. This generated heated reac-

tions from members of the community whom we did not approach. In response, we redesigned field schedules to interview a wider range of members and make peace in the community. Spending time over casual conversations with the local NGO helped in understanding internal politics, local dynamics, and historical changes in the community. We learned that it is important to stay alert to tensions within the community.

Understand the moral economy. Gift giving is a characteristic research incentive, but it can have unintended consequences. Choosing the appropriate gift is important in avoiding creation and escalation of tensions between study participant and nonparticipants. A seemingly innocuous gift of a school bag for an informant’s child proved disproportionately valuable in relation to the family and community’s income standards. While everything was fine when we were in the field, the local NGO reported ill feelings among those who did not get a bag. Fortunately, we spotted gift-giving tensions early in the research, and assuaged community sentiments. Ultimately, we gifted our informants with bed sheets and stainless-steel utensils.

Remix the method. Certain field techniques elicit rich data, while others lead to cul-de-sac. Ethnography is concerned with responding to the immediacies of the situation. Our informants did not provide us with detailed responses on health and educational issues when we posed direct questions. We modified our method to reflect the contemporary idiom, similar to the Bollywood technique [ 4]. Popular TV soap operas function as yardsticks to assess reaction and response to existing and changing social environments [ 5]. A persona modeled on a character in a popular Tamil TV soap opera—“Kolangal”—however, elicited revealing data. The character, Abhinaya, a brave young middle-class woman who faces a slew of difficulties, mirrored the aspirations and day-to-day struggles of the informants. Participants were asked to guess the persona’s reaction to specific health issues. By speaking for a third person, they were able to simultaneously situate and distance themselves, providing concrete details on these issues, making the exercise extremely enjoyable.

Socioeconomic analysis of subjects is a vital methodological aspect of most projects. However, directly asking about an informant’s income, assets, or business practices can result in make-believe responses to “save face.” Looking for physi-