Summary Hybrid Technologies in the Era of HIV and AIDS: Hoes and Mobile Phones in Rural Africa. The study will examine how individuals and social groups in rural Africa today are integrating the cell phone, a global technology; into hybrid technology systems revolving around the hand-hoe, used or small-scale farming and gardening. The crude hand hoe is still an important tool for livelihood security for rural Africans, whose farming activities rely on informed, healthy adult labor and indigenous knowledge, two forms of capital that are depleted with AIDS-related illness and death. Meanwhile, the complex cellular phone (the mobile is increasingly an essential communication device used for planning HIV/AIDS projects, running rural AIDS group activities, and nurturing family affections and bonds which span many localities. The hoes and handsets reflect unique local translations of global technologies into rural, agrarian realities, into which HIV/AIDS has become inextricably enmeshed. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has been a powerful social, economic, demographic force altering access to labor, land, and resources. The responses of people, institutions and other actors help shape grass-roots technology changes, posing new burdens and channeling flows of resources through networks formed and strengthened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Hybrid technology systems such as the hoe/mobile phone represent open new doors to the marginalized, rural poorespecially women-- to healthier and longer lives, more informed representation, and more equitable engagement with the commercial sector. They close other doors through high opportunity costs for uses of scarce cash (the expensive mobile phone) and adult labor (using the hoe for bio-intensive crops). Social and technical change is channeled in specific directions that systematically favor some and exclude others. The persistent stigma attached to HIV/AIDS helps shapes their enrollment into networks of technical assistance for HIV prevention and AIDS mitigation. The hoe and the mobile are combined by different users for new uses; this will be studied and mapped for an AIDS-affected village in western Kenya. Rural, poor users, partial users, and non-users (both individuals and in groups) lie at the heart of the study, which will document their history and explain motivations behind interconnected applications. These will be linked to HIV/AIDS-affectedness, household assets and external flows and influences, such as local development and HIV/AIDS projects. Techniques include participatory village mapping, a household survey, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, conversations with key informants. Intellectual Merit: The study will enhance our appreciation of the gendered, dynamic, and cross cultural dimensions of the social shaping of technology change at the local level in a globalizing world. The study extends concepts from scholarly, intellectual movements and the study of science, technology and society to a generally understudied people, place and topic: rural Africans and their hybrid technologies to deal with HIV/AIDS. Scholarly research has neglected less developed nations; international development agencies have produced applied research lacking theoretical clout. Study outputs include case studies of hybrid technology uses by HIV positive widows and AIDS orphans; maps of networks through which global technologies are diffused and translated into the local realities of a Kenyan village; and discussion of the interpretive flexibility of the hoe and mobile phone from the village to Motorola corporation and international donors. Broader Impacts: The study will be integrated into professional training of a diverse group of graduate students in international health and development (80% female, including Africans): students will visit the village during an intensive field course in Kenya; local research assistants and study participants will enhance their research capacity. Larger impacts of the study include its potential to help health and development agencies to be more effective in their attempts to mitigate the impact of the AIDS epidemic.
