[STS-Africa] Africanizing Technology, Wesleyan University, March 5-6, 2015

[Norman Schräpel]

FYI!

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Deadline Approaching (1/20): Africanizing Technology, Wesleyan University, March 5-6, 2015 <https://networks.h-net.org/node/28765/discussions/57434/deadline-approaching-120-africanizing-technology-wesleyan>
by Laura Ann Twagira <https://networks.h-net.org/users/laura-ann-twagira>
Africanizing Technology

Wesleyan University, March 5-6, 2015

Keynote: Julie Livingston (Rutgers University) author of Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic (2012)

Africa has long been a space of technological innovation and adaptation despite popular Western media depictions to the contrary.  In fact, Africa is at the center of global technology stories such as the history of nuclear proliferation (Hecht, 2012).  Recently scholars have documented novel uses of contemporary media technologies on the continent, as well as older adaptations of hi-fi stereo systems, all of which have had rich and complicated social impacts (Larkin, 2008; Jaji, 2014).  Artisans and industrial workers have also created new technological cultures, while many African medical professionals have responded to technologically 'poor' environments by improvising basic solutions (Livingston, 2012).  Africanizing Technology aims to highlight and interrogate these and other technology stories on the continent from an interdisciplinary perspective.

The inspiration for the conference theme comes from the concept of Africanizing Anthropology elaborated by Lyn Schumaker (2001).  Schumaker asserted that colonial knowledge production about Africa was rooted in the collaborative research process of European Anthropologists and African research assistants; the European discipline of anthropology was transformed as a result of this shared practice.  Moreover, this intellectual move placed Africans at the center of knowledge production about Africa.

Africanizing Technology will play on this idea by looking at the ways in which technology in Africa has been Africanized.  The production and use of technology is similarly rooted in knowledge production.  Moreover, technology has been central to histories of development in the 20th century.  Similar to scholars of development, recent researchers working on technology in Africa have argued for a shift from a previously dominant Euro-centric frame of analysis to one starting with the experiences of Africans. 

Several crucial questions will be addressed: How is technology rooted in a longer history of African experiences?  How do the emerging technological cultures on the continent contribute to our broader understandings of health, education, and social change?  How does Africanizing Technology reshape our scholarly understandings of development?  Can we speak of a broader pattern of Africanizing Technology in the current global circulation of digital media and other technologies?

We welcome papers that address the following themes in particular:

Medical Technologies and Improvisation

Digital Humanities and Communication

Gender, Technology and Social Innovation

Development and Technologies of Mobility

Please submit a 300-word abstract and C.V. to Laura Ann Twagira, Assistant Professor of History (ltwagira at wesleyan.edu <mailto:ltwagira at wesleyan.edu>) no later than January 20, 2015.  Limited funding is available to help defray travel and accommodation expenses for invited presenters.

Co-sponsored by the African Studies Cluster, the History Department, and the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Wesleyan University.

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