This book explores how information and communications technologies are adapted, governed, and reinterpreted in areas where the state has limited reach.
The governance and regulation of new technologies, from social media to AI, has never seemed more urgent. Efforts to harness the potential benefits, to encourage innovation and novel applications, yet restrain the known and unknown harmful aspects of these technologies, have posed unprecedented challenges. This book brings together an eclectic collection of cases from around the world – from the favelas in Brazil to the border regions of Ethiopia and Somalia and to markets in Thailand – to tease out the broader arguments and logics about how diverse enabling environments for technology and innovation may evolve and the wide range of public authorities that may be involved in providing governance and security for such innovation, beyond the state. The term ‘the rule of non-law’ refers to the breadth and array of rules, norms, and systems that enable novel technological assemblages and uses. By looking at technologies and the rule of non-law in areas that are often seen as marginal or at the peripheries (from a profit and business perspective), this book reflects new insights back to more Western-dominated mainstream debates about law, technology, and innovation.
This book will be of great interest to students of Socio-Legal Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Critical Security Studies, and International Relations.
List of Contributors Acknowledgements Chapter 1 Non-State Law and Technology: Theory and Themes Section I: Tradition and Modernity Chapter 2 Digitalising Traditions: Custom, Land, Biodiversity and Resource Management in Vanuatu Chapter 3 Tradition, Tussle, and Technology: the Khap Panchayat’s guide to regulating mobile phones in India Chapter 4 ‘Crowdfarming’ in South Africa: Using Platform Technology to Connect Tradition and Modernity Section II: Borderlands Chapter 5 The Regulation of Cross-border Trading of Mobile Phones in the Ethio-Somaliland Corridor Chapter 6 Ambivalent state governance and counter-governance: Migrants on the move in the France-UK techno-borderscape Chapter 7 Moderating Digital Communities in Hybrid Governance Contexts: The case of refugees’ digital inclusion and communication in Nairobi Chapter 8 The Legal Geographies of Thailand’s Technology Markets Part III: Challenges to the State Chapter 9 Performative State building in the Digital World: ISIS and Monetary Economics Chapter 10 The role of the mobile network operators in conflicting governance systems: A case study of the mobile telecommunications industry in Afghanistan Chapter 11 Informality and the Internet: Alternative Versions of Technological Governance in Brazil Part IV: Digital Spaces Chapter 12 Decentralized governance opportunities in the energy sector: Examples from blockchain-based initiatives Chapter 13 Manufacturing legitimacy: Content Moderation and the Absence of the State Chapter 14 Conclusions and Reflections on the Future of Technology and Regulation in Areas of Limited Statehood Index
Nicole Stremlau is the Head of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and Research Professor in the School of Communications at the University of Johannesburg. Clara Voyvodic Casabó is a Lecturer in Peace Studies and International Development in the Department of Peace and International Development, University of Bradford.
