Paper short abstract:

This paper conceptualizes traveling technologies through an ethnographic case study of Rwanda's health infrastructure. I argue that by tracing the transfer of new technologies the shifts of existing global political, economic and societal orders can be described and analyzed in novel ways.

Paper long abstract:

The last decades witnessed a global proliferation of medical data in order to plan and organize health care. As part of this process, decision making in health and therapeutic interventions are becoming data problems, where health statistics, standardized protocols or measuring impacts become major concerns. Moreover, the emerging data infrastructures connect a larger therapeutic apparatus - global health - to medical practices and the organization of health to so called low resource settings. The paper traces this process by providing an ethnographic case study on the use of information and communication technologies (i.e. cell phones, software, digital lists) to enhance maternal child-health in a rural health sector in Rwanda. I show that this health development initiative is not just a direct translation of the Millennium Development Goals but also mirrors the huge expectations that appear around new digital technologies for development in Africa. To understand this, the paper analytically focuses on how (new) relations between people, things and ideas are constituted and institutionalized when a technology is being transferred. As a promising analytic concept Traveling Technologies are conceptualized for tracing biomedical technologies in different global and local contexts. This enables to ask wide-reaching questions on the ways knowledge and society are relocated in global orders and networks of exchange. The conceptualization of traveling technologies also implies that something needs to be creatively adapted when being transferred. This processes of transfer and contextual reconnection of new technologies helps to reveal shifts of existing global political, economic and societal orders.