Digital practices of e-waste businesses in the Global South – The case of Cape Town South Africa

南方国家电子垃圾企业的数字化实践——以南非开普敦为例

• 批准号: 532555586
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Peter Dannenberg
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Clark University
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/532555586?language=en
• 关键词: Digital; practices; waste; businesses; Global

Large amounts of e-waste in the Global South are handled by small enterprises and survivalist self-employed, often under precarious conditions. To overcome these challenges, the deployment of information and communication technologies (ICT) is seen as a possible solution. Indeed, different studies on small enterprises in the Global South have outlined the benefits of ICTs for developing digital practices, like digital payment, digital marketing and digital knowledge exchange as they can lead e.g., to reduced transaction costs, better supply chain connections and market access (e.g. Mbuyisa and Leonard 2017). On the other side, different scholars (e.g. Murphy et al. 2014) argue that, the use of ICTs does not help small businesses to overcome the structural inequalities and the related problems. However, given the current rapid spread of modern forms of ICT usage (in particular, smart phones and social media), new studies indicate that digital practices have now significantly changed (e.g. towards complex social media based practices and platform economies; Tang and Konde 2020). Therefore, earlier conclusions (e.g. by Murphy et al. 2014; Mbuyisa and Leonard 2017) need to be revisited. Furthermore, studies on ICT usage in the e-waste economy are rare, and may differ from other small business economies, as they depend strongly on up-to-date knowledge (Corwin 2018). Studying e-waste businesses therefore holds strong potential for early analyzing new digital practices and their related outcomes. By using the example of e-waste economies in South Africa, this project follows the overall research question: To what extent and under which conditions are digital practices influencing e-waste businesses in the Global South? To do this, this project uses a mixed method approach based on primary quantitative and qualitative data which are jointly collected and analyzed with partners in the region.

在全球南部，大量的电子垃圾由小企业和生存主义者个体经营者处理，通常情况下条件不稳定。为了克服这些挑战，部署信息和通信技术被视为一种可能的解决办法。事实上，对全球南方小企业的不同研究已经概述了信通技术对发展数字实践的好处，如数字支付，数字营销和数字知识交流，因为它们可以导致，降低交易成本，改善供应链连接和市场准入（例如Mbuyisa和伦纳德2017）。另一方面，不同的学者（例如Murphy et al. 2014）认为，信息通信技术的使用并不能帮助小企业克服结构性不平等和相关问题。然而，鉴于目前信通技术使用的现代形式（特别是智能手机和社交媒体）的迅速普及，新的研究表明，数字实践现在已经发生了重大变化（例如，朝着基于复杂社交媒体的实践和平台经济发展; Tang和Konde 2020）。因此，需要重新审视早期的结论（例如Murphy et al. 2014; Mbuyisa and伦纳德2017）。此外，关于电子废物经济中ICT使用的研究很少，并且可能与其他小企业经济体不同，因为它们强烈依赖于最新知识（Corwin 2018）。因此，研究电子废物业务对于早期分析新的数字实践及其相关成果具有很大的潜力。通过使用南非电子废物经济的例子，该项目遵循总体研究问题：数字实践在多大程度上以及在何种条件下影响了全球南方的电子废物业务？为此，该项目采用了一种基于主要定量和定性数据的混合方法，这些数据是与该地区的合作伙伴共同收集和分析的。