research-article

Re-placing faith: reconsidering the secular-religious use divide in the United States and Kenya

Authors:

Susan P. Wyche,

Rebecca E. GrinterAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '08: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 11 - 20

https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357057

Published: 06 April 2008 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper, we report on design-oriented fieldwork and design research conducted over a six-month period in urban centers in the United States and Kenya. The contributions of this work for the CHI/CSCW community are empirical and methodological. First, we describe how recent design discourse around "designing technology for religion" creates an artificial distinction between instrumental and religious ICT use, particularly in developing regions. As illustrative examples, we relate three themes developed in the course of our fieldwork, which we term mindfulness, watchfulness, and embeddedness, to both "secular" and "religious" aspects of life in the communities studied. Second, we make a methodological contribution by describing how we used design sketches of speculative design concepts to extend and complement our fieldwork. By producing these sketches and soliciting feedback, we elicited additional data about how participants viewed the relationship between religion and ICT and prompted self-reflection on our own ideas.

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Index Terms

Re-placing faith: reconsidering the secular-religious use divide in the United States and Kenya
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '08: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2008

1870 pages

ISBN:9781605580111

DOI:10.1145/1357054

General Chairs:
Mary Czerwinski
Microsoft Research, USA
,
Arnie Lund
Microsoft, USA
,
Program Chair:
Desney Tan
Microsoft Research, USA

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 06 April 2008

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Ibrahim ZNurain NClawson J(2024)Tracking During Ramadan: Examining the Intersection of Menstrual and Religious Tracking Practices Among Muslim Women in the United StatesProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642374(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
Ibrahim ZPanchpor PNurain NClawson J(2024)"Islamically, I am not on my period": A Study of Menstrual Tracking in Muslim Women in the USProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642006(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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