This paper addresses a set of emerging questions regarding the history of technology in the peripheral regions like the Middle East. Namely, how does the proximity of technological innovation to the Western-controlled global state-system and market shape this conflict in the Middle East? How do the geopolitics of technological advancement shape the sharp divide in social intercourse between the haves and have-nots, the exploiter and exploited? How are digital technologies mitigating, rupturing or intensifying social relations? These questions require us to understand the dialectical interaction between technology and power in the Middle East, by placing the phenomenon at the intersection of history, transnational production and modes of ownership and labor.
Period
30 May 2023
Held at
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation