Contemporary adaptations of Marxism, and related theories that are critical of capitalism and based on class struggle, can make a difference in information and communications technology (ICT) research. This paper examines potential areas for critical research.

Owing to its strong theoretical grounding in critical research (mind the special meaning that has almost no overlap with the common definition of critical), this paper is of rather limited use outside the critical research community. However, even if you do not subscribe to this particular type of research, there are some nuggets hidden in this paper where the critical research jargon is stripped away.

For instance, the idea that participants in a social system construct their social reality, and that ICT can enable emancipation (a core concept of critical research is that ICT can help overcome external constraints), can be translated into more participative designs of ICT systems.

For critical researchers, this paper examines potential ways to apply critical research on ICT in cross-cultural contexts. While the introduction on foundations of critical research was fairly convincing, critical research is apparently not capable of resolving the conflicting views of universality versus particularity (regarding culture); this is due to its constructivist-based relativism. As might be expected, this relativism is exacerbated when applied to the real research domain: ICT in cross-cultural contexts (credit should be given to the author for explicitly acknowledging this).

In the end, the author falls back on a pragmatic justification for his belief that critical research can, indeed, make a difference in this particular domain: “We interact with other cultures anyway.”