Welcome to the Digital Village: Networking Geographies of Agrarian Change

Hilary Oliva Faxon

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2022, vol. 112, issue 7, 2096-2110

Abstract: Almost 5 billion people—two thirds of the global population—now go online. The Internet has changed how we work, learn, govern, and fall in love. Yet despite its digital turn, geography has failed to grapple with the patterns and significance of Internet connection for rural people and places, particularly in the Global South. This article brings together agrarian studies and digital geography to situate emergent online practices within longer trajectories of agrarian change. To do so, I advance the concept of the digital village, a networked social space in which online practices emerge from existing agrarian relations to reconfigure the strategies of economic survival, the landscapes of home, and the tactics of politics. Drawing on ethnographic research in Myanmar, I show how agrarian relations shape patterns of digital connection and how farmers, migrants, and grassroots activists incorporate Facebook into daily efforts to secure livelihoods, support communities, and mobilize in struggles over land. This analysis yields two key insights: first, digital geographies are embedded in rural relations; second, agrarian questions increasingly play out online.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24694452.2022.2044752 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:raagxx:v:112:y:2022:i:7:p:2096-2110

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/raag21

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2022.2044752

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of the American Association of Geographers is currently edited by Jennifer Cassidento

More articles in Annals of the American Association of Geographers from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().