‘Development, Development, Development’: Rules and Norms Performed at a ‘Community’ Multimedia Centre in South India

Abstract

There has been increasing discussion on the constant yet dynamic intertwining of the artefact and the social construction of rules and regulations creating these material objects and organizations (Barad, 2003; Dale, 2005; Orlikowski and Iacono, 2001). Namma Dhwani is a community multimedia centre (community radio and IT centre for skills learning) established by UNESCO in rural South India in 2002. This chapter draws on ten years of fieldwork at Namma Dhwani and the created, performed and subverted concept of ‘community’ and the community multimedia centre with its attendant rules and regulations (apparently unwritten) from many different stakeholders and discourses. The chapter starts with a brief review of literature on sociomateriality, rules and norms. Next, we discuss how language and space create and are created and constrained by rules. The site of Namma Dhwani is introduced as well as the use of narrative analysis as a method to analyse language. Key examples of how performance occurs through rules are discussed at the centre. Namma Dhwani means ‘Our Voices’ in the local language, Kannada. Yet what emerges is that there is no cohesive ‘our’ and that these voices are constantly being performed.