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Short abstract:

Women in southern Colombia have been able to transform their lives and their context through "mutant" uses of ICT tools, searching for the buen vivir. These uses are made to improve access to knowledge, strengthening the agency, as in the work of a bricoleur, working with what is at hand.

Long abstract:

This research looks at the use of some ICT tools by a group of women in Putumayo and Nariño; these uses are characterized as ‘deviant’ (Oudshoorn and Pinch (eds.), 2003), ‘mutant’ (Barreneche, 2018), tactical (De Certeau, 1990) or part of a mental revolution (Baricco, 2019). These women use digital tools as a bricoleur (Levi-Strauss, 1964), picking up various fragments to break down barriers of access, to find information and knowledge, to apply informal employment tactics, among other uses.

The main question is, what transformations in the capacity of agency do these ICT tools create when implemented in a particular community? Official figures show that using ICT tools has not significantly improved women's 'formal' working and economic situation in the South. However, in this research fieldwork, we found that ICT tools were being appropriated, transformed, and used in communities boosting the informal economy; promoting agency, helping in the creation of networks, acting as a trainer, as an informer, and also as a transformer of social dynamics, not always in ‘legal’ ways. This way of acting is studied by approaches such as those of diverse economies (Escobar, 2014) and shaped by the worldview of ancestral communities expressed in the buen vivir.

This presentation looks at some of these 'mutant' uses and how they affect some women's daily lives in southern Colombia.