This paper presents a study that was designed to examine efforts undertaken by two cities- Atlanta and LaGrange, Georgia-to

No abstract

In this ethnographic study, I examine the discourses that social agents enact as they increase their awareness of information technology (IT) and the digital divide. The social agents in this study are authorities in the municipal government and African‐American adults taking part in a community technology initiative in an urban, working‐class neighborhood. The findings suggest that both participants and authorities adopted a narrow perspective on IT as a production tool to support business‐related skills such as word processing and spreadsheets, which were believed to broaden access to employment opportunities. Despite the rapid growth in Internet‐based applications and services as a justifying discourse of the authorities who create and manage the community technology training program, computer networking was not an important part of the program curriculum. The habitus is used as a theoretical lens for explaining the prevailing perceptions of IT as a production‐oriented tool, why these perceptions reflect the social milieu of urban working‐class communities, and how these perceptions engender discourses that may unwittingly reinforce social inequities that structure the digital divide.

This paper introduces the critical social theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The objective of Bourdieu's theoretical framework is to uncover the buried organizational structures and mechanisms that are used to ensure the reproduction of social order. This theoretical framework will be used in a research program that examines the structural processes by which information technology may be constrainedfrom emancipating humankind, and may actually be disempowering and abandoning significant numbers of societal members.