Translating Technology in Africa. Volume 2: Technicisation

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-90-04-68827-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 198 Seiten, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 295 g

This volume revisits one of the great challenges of our time - the global circulation of technology and the resulting technicisation. Together, the introductory essay and six case studies argue that while circulation inevitably leads to the global standardisation of some forms, successful technicisation depends on local appropriation that takes place in the interstitial zones of translation. These zones, characterised by their asymmetrical power relations, need to be constantly renegotiated, recreated, and maintained in order to sustain decolonial translations. The aim of this volume is to stimulate further experimental praxiographic studies of decolonial translation in processes of technicisation, and thereby ignite novel, forward-looking theoretical debates.

Contributors are Sarah Biecker, Marc Boeckler, Jude Kagoro, Jochen Monstadt, Sung-Joon Park, Eva Riedke, Richard Rottenburg, Klaus Schlichte, Jannik Schritt, Alena Thiel, Christiane Tristl, Jonas van der Straeten.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Rottenburg, Richard

Riedke, Eva

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Naturwissenschaften, Technik, Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Notes on Contributions

Translating Technology in Africa

Richard Rottenburg

1 Technicisation: How to Create a Zone of Decolonial Translation? an Introductory Essay

Richard Rottenburg and Eva Riedke

2 PAYGo Water Dispensers and the Lifeworlds of Marketisation

Christiane Tristl and Marc Boeckler

3 Crude Texting: Mobile Phones and the Infrastructuring of Protest in Oil-Age Niger

Jannik Schritt

4 Between Providers and Users: Redistributors in Nairobi’s Fragmented Landscape of Electricity Provision

Jonas van der Straeten and Jochen Monstadt

5 The Measuring State: Technologies of Government in Uganda and Elsewhere

Sarah Biecker, Jude Kagoro and Klaus Schlichte

6 Biometric Data Doubles and the Technicisation of Personhood in Ghana

Alena Thiel

7 Project Time, Lifetime, and Extra Time: Technicisation of Mass HIV Treatment Programmes and the Acceleration of Pharmacy in Uganda

Sung-Joon Park

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Richard Rottenburg is professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (WiSER), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The main objects of his inquiries are assemblages of evidence-making, their dependency on knowledge infrastructures and their entanglement with narrative forms of sense-making and technopolitics. Rottenburg is best known for his 2009 book Far-fetched Facts (MIT Press).

Eva Riedke is assistant professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Konstanz. Her work has focused on post-apartheid controversies and their publics; exploring the entanglements of infrastructures with processes of financialisaton; and questions of “ethics” and “values” in energy transitions. She is currently pursuing a research project on solar off grid products and lived off the grid in rural Kenya. She has contributed a series of publications on the topic.