Stone Chips to Silicon Chips: A Grounded Theory of Information and Communication Technology adoption in Australian Indigenous households rural, urban and remote.

Abstract

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become an everyday part of life. Communication networks within Australia link financial, educational, government and non-government services to Australian households. Both the 2001 and 2006 Australian Census data demonstrate that Indigenous Australians are 69% less likely to access the Internet at home than the rest of the Australian population. This study examines the factors affecting the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies in Australian Indigenous households and provides a plausible explanation as to why this gap exists.

This study uses a multiple case study approach and draws on the Glaserian Grounded Theory Methodology to examine Indigenous household ICT adoption in a rural Indigenous community, an urban Indigenous community and a remote Indigenous community, to identify differences and commonalities of ICT adoption and non-adoption in diverse cultural and geographical locations across Australia.

The theoretical lens draws on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus to develop a practice perspective of household ICT adoption established through the habitus concepts of structures and agency or society and individual. The research establishes the existence of the Indigenous substantive field and postulates that new practices are formed with the intersection of the Indigenous field and external fields. Through the development of substantive fields this thesis develops a theoretical framework of Indigenous household ICT adoption. The findings suggest that a single model of ICT adoption can be applied to all Indigenous communities across Australia.The results could have considerable practical and policy significance.