Analyze

This text builds from earlier conceptions of the term “land dispossession” and “land grab”. As defined by the 2011 International Land Coalition, land grabbing specifically refers to large scale land acquisitions that are “ in violation of human rights, without prior consent of the preexisting land users, and with no consideration of social and environmental impacts”. Characterization of land grabs and their resulting harms most commonly considers the effect of physical displacement and harms within the articulated “grabbed” area (Nyantakyi-Frimpong, 2017;Ogwand, 2018;  huaserman, 2018). Li and Pan seek to expand the frame of analysis for land grabs beyond the site of grabbed land to consider the full extent of harms associated with land grabs both geographically (via pollution spillover to areas outside of “grabbed land”) and temporally (via latent “expulsion by pollution). 

 “While the villagers are not passive victims and have adopted various resistance strategies, the space for them to struggle and achieve success is confined and shaped by the existing power asymmetry in which local villagers, capital and local government are embedded.”  (Li and Pan, 2021, p 418). 

“...this framing of land dispossession is problematic in two aspects. Firstly, it obscures an invisible form of land dispossession in which people still maintain control of their land but its use value is damaged by pollution. This kind of indirect land dispossession could lead to expulsion, not due to the direct loss of control over land but by it being rendered useless by pollution.” Li and Pan, 2021, p 409). 

 This text employs a case study approach to characterize how villagers in a village in China have been displaced “in-place” as a result of new industrial activities within the area  (all specific details have been hidden within the publication, wherein the names of villager groups and the site of study itself is referenced only by coded letters). The scale of analysis primarily centers at the village level, though analysis of the case study itself extends towards the country level specifically when analysis of state actors are involved. 

Authors Hua Li and Lu Pan are scholars from China. Li is  affiliated with the College of Humanities and Law at Taiyuan University of Technology, wherein her research focuses specifically on water politics, environmental justice, and rural development and agrarian change. Pan is affiliated with the College of Humanities and Development at China Agricultural University. Her research interests include marginalized communities, rural development, and agrarian change.

N/A, but when I looked up Telefonica, their homepage is all COVID-19 stuff which is pretty much what everyone is doing but I may look more closely at this particular case and continuity with the current situation

The initiative forecloses a serious discussion about the harms caused by transnational capital and privatization of the telecom industry

And it forecloses more meaningful connections across difference/ more meaningful activism by putting people into a happy shallow self-centered kind of activism

It forecloses a deeper engagement with issues and inequalities that cause child labor and make it harmful for the children and their families

It forecloses more radical conclusions for tech workers hoping to contribute to ‘social good’

The “free press” generated by social media sharing of the gamified achievements of the app users, which were branded with Telefonica

The publicity video for downloading the app was also shared on social media and was posted to the author’s facebook by her presumably nonacademic friend; the video is also on Telefonica’s YouTube channel, perhaps it was an ad on TV or internet as well? The project was also described on the company’s website, although I think that is no longer available.

All users of their prepaid phones being invited to “symbolically vote” against child labor when refilling, by sending a text - 1 million votes was to trigger the “campus party” (hackathon), which then brought together people who came up with the surveillance app

Denuncia-thon which enforced offline connections of the ‘digital activists’ - euphoric

Statements to the academics about moving beyond philanthropy, and about sustainability and leadership, naturalizing their goodness, in contrast to mining companies

Life-changing, according to the tech contractor: "able to make his work count toward a 'social good'" 674 - euphoria described by the otherwise formal corporate overseer of the project, cyber-optimism described by the tech worker - but the beneficiary is abstract to the point of the “activists” not having any idea how the app impacts them (which it doesn't); the distance is emphasized by the author, you see the child worker on the street but you don’t interact with them. The closeness of the online/offline relationship among “geeks with a heart” intensifies the Othering and abstracting of the beneficiary. 

Continuing the development orthodoxy - the ethical is defined in terms of universalized values like “children’s rights” without any deeper understanding of local context than that child street vendors exist. 

Responsibility is twisted around to work with the exit narratives - failed or quickly terminated programs are ok because they are responsible for enabling other actors who are really responsible for the outcomes. They enact the ethical and responsibility by platforming it for others to participate in and carry out - through the interactive apps, the hackathons, and the immediate handoff of all collected data to an overworked government agency

They also redefine the ethical and responsibility to line up with their corporate plans anyway - market expansion becomes the right thing to do because they bring digital access to information

Rather than trying to replace the government, they keep the responsibility with the government, but say they are partnering and enabling/enhancing what the government is doing. 

They are shaping conditions for what counts as democratic order, etc. with their creation of shallow and ineffective “activists” doing a corporate-defined action for a corporate-defined cause