Conceptions of ‘Information Poverty’ in LIS: An Analysis of Discourses

Notions of 'information poverty' and the ’information poor’ in LIS are examined from a discourse analytical perspective. Foucault's understanding of discourse, as forming the social reality to which it refers, is outlined and the related concept of the statement, as the basic element of discourse, is introduced. 'Information poverty' is examined as a statement in its relation to other statements in order to highlight assumptions and factors contributing to its construction. The analysis is based on close reading of 35 articles published in LIS journals between 1995 and 2005. Four groups of especially productive discursive procedures and themes are identified and discussed: 1. economic determin­ ism, 2. technological determinism and the 'information society', 3. historicising the 'in­ formation poor', 4. the library profession's moral obligation and responsibility. Introduction 'Information Poverty' and with it the category of the 'information poor' as a concept in Library and Information Science (LIS) can be traced back at least as far as the 1970s. More recently it emerged as an integral element of the information society debates and frequently appears paired with references to ICTs and allusions of the digital divide. It has come to subsume a curious mix of groups, all of which are primarily thought of as afflicted by other forms of deprivation or deficiency, and which are constructed on the basis of this “lack”. Among them are rural people, the working class, elderly women, the unemployed, the handicapped, the homeless, ethnic minorities, and most promin­ ently developing countries ­ either individually or imagined as a homogeneous cat­