Download or read book Mobilities ICTs and Marginality in Africa written by Francis B. Nyamnjoh and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobility has become a prominent feature in African societies. Populations all over Africa are both mobile and politically and economically marginal. Yet these populations are actively engaged in maintaining social networks across localities. Mobilities, ICTs and marginality in Africa looks at the dramatic changes brought about in socially marginal populations by new ICTs in general and mobile phones in particular. The book aims to situate the cultural, social and, in some cases, transnational context of ICT appropriation and virtual connectivity so as to reposition Africans from various countries and contexts as active agents of social change. The intricacies of local ICT use and the dynamics of mobility in the African context enables us to better understand material cultures, relationships between people, new media and social networking. Equally explored in relation to ICTs are the social and spatial dynamics of communication, association and belonging across spaces - particularly physical borders, social boundaries and confines and possibilities informed by the habits of bodies and practices. Mobilities, ICTs and marginality in Africa is rich in theoretically informed case studies that lend themselves to comparative perspectives and to ethnographies from beyond Africa.

Download or read book Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality written by Francis Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to the Jensen Memorial Lectures 2023 is an invitation to take incompleteness seriously in how we imagine, relate to and seek to understand a world in perpetual motion. Despite our instinct for and obsession with completeness, we are constantly reminded that the sooner one recognises and provides for incompleteness and the conviviality it inspires as the normal way of being, the better we are for it. Fluidity, compositeness and the capacity to be present in multiple places and forms simultaneously in whole or in fragments are core characteristics of reality and ontology of incompleteness. How would we frame our curiosities and conversations about processes, relationships and phenomena with an understanding of the universality of incompleteness and mobility? West and Central Africa, for example, are regions where it is commonplace to embrace and celebrate incompleteness in nature, the suprasensory, human beings, human actions, human inventions and human achievements. The lectures indicate how we could draw inspiration in this regard to inform current clamours for decolonisation and the growing ambivalence about rapid advances in digital technologies (artificial intelligence (AI) in particular), as well as with twenty-first century concerns about migrants and strangers knocking at the doors of opportunities we feel more entitled to as bona fide citizens and insiders. The lectures draw on the writings of Amos Tutuola as well as from popular ideas of personhood and agency in Africa, to make a case for sidestepped and silenced traditions of knowledge. They highlight Africa’s possibilities, prospects and emergent capacities for being and becoming in tune with the continent’s creativity and imagination. They speak to the nimble-footed flexible-minded frontier African at the crossroads and junctions of myriad encounters, facilitating creative conversations and challenging regressive logics of exclusionary claims and articulation of identities and achievements. The traditions of knowledge discussed in these lectures do not only speak to Africans, but to the world, as the philosophies explored have universal application. “The crucial anthropological question of relationality and othering is at the heart of this original and enlightening book. Nyamnjoh cautions the missionaries of decoloniality against the risk of substituting one illusion of completeness with another. For him, incompleteness is the basis of any healthy exchange. He therefore recommends embracing the universality of incompleteness in motion and taking seriously an ancestral tradition of self-extension through creative imagination in this anxious age of artificial intelligence. Forcefully argued and abundantly substantiated – with finesse and laughter that run through it – this book will be a milestone by making us rediscover the demands and the magic of fieldwork.” Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt/Main Point Sud, Bamako, Mali

Download or read book Digitalization and the Field of African Studies written by Mirjam de Bruijn and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2019-02-25 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urbanization in Africa also means rapid technological change. At the turn of the 21st century, mobile telephony appeared in urban Africa. Ten years later, it covered large parts of rural Africa and thanks to the smartphone became the main access to the internet. This development is part of technological transformations in digitalization that are supposed to bridge the urban and the rural and will make their borders blurred. They do so through the creation of economic opportunities, the flow of information and by influencing peoples definition of self, belonging and citizenship. These changes are met with huge optimism and the message of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) for Africa has been one of glory and revolution. Practice, however, reveals other sides. Increasingly, academic publications show that we are facing a new form of digital divide in which Africa is (again) at the margins. These technological transformations influence the relation between urban and rural Africa, and between Africa and the World, and hence the field of African Studies both in its objects as well as in its forms of knowledge production and in the formulation of the problems we should study. In this lecture, Mirjam de Bruijn reflects on two decades of research experience in West and Central Africa and discusses how, for her, the field has changed. The author was forced to decolonize her thinking even further, and to enter into co-creation in knowledge production. How can these lessons be translated into a form of critical knowledge production and how does the study of technological change inform the redefinition of African Studies for the 21st century?

Download or read book Rethinking Marginality in South Africa written by Crystal Powell and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be marginal? For residents of Cape Towns Langa Township, being considered marginal is subject to a host of social, physical and sometimes materialistic qualifications not least of which is owning a mobile phone. Through various presentations of unique aspects of township life revealed through ethnographic snapshots, this book reveals the complex realities of marginalization experienced by some residents in Langa Township, located in Cape Town, South Africa. Mobile phones have been embraced and accommodated by both local South Africans and African immigrant residents living and working in Langa. Among other things, the technology has become a way of challenging (real and imagined) marginalities within the township in particular and South Africa in general. The book provides empirical data on the role of technology in regards to migration and notions of belonging; specifically the ways that technology has mitigated distance for residents, provided opportunities for development, facilitated the negotiation of various marginalities, and offered new ways of belonging for Langa residents.

Download or read book Side Ways Mobile Margins and the Dynamics of Communication in Africa written by Mirjam Elisabeth Bruijn and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2013 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marginality does not mean isolation. In Africa where people are permanently on the move in search, inter alia, of a 'better elsewhere', marginality means disconnection to obvious possibilities and the invisibility of the myriad connections that make life possible for the ordinarily sidestepped. This book is about the workings of networks of the mobile in Africa, a continent usually associated with the 'global shadows' of the world. How do changes in the possibilities for communication, with the recent hype of mobile technology, influence the social and economic dynamics in Africa's mobile margins? To what extent is the freedom associated with new Information and Communication Technologies reality or disillusion for people dwelling in the margins? Are ordinary Africans increasingly Side@Ways? How social are these emergent Side@Ways? Contributions to answering these and related questions are harvested from ethnographic insights by team members of the WOTRO funded 'Mobile Africa revisited' research programme hosted by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Download or read book Social Im mobilities in Africa written by Joël Noret and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounded in both theory and ethnography, this volume insists on taking social positionality seriously when accounting for Africa’s current age of polarizing wealth. To this end, the book advocates a multidimensional view of African societies, in which social positions consist of a variety of intersecting social powers - or ‘capitals’ – including wealth, education, social relationships, religion, ethnicity, and others. Accordingly, the notion of social im/mobilities emphasizes the complexities of current changes, taking us beyond the prism of a one-dimensional social ladder, for social moves cannot always be apprehended through the binaries of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’.

Download or read book Gender and Mobility in Africa written by Kalpana Hiralal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines gender and mobility in Africa though the central themes of borders, bodies and identity. It explores perceptions and engagements around ‘borders’; the ways in which ‘bodies’ and women’s bodies in particular, shape and are affected by mobility, and the making and reproduction of actual and perceived ‘boundaries’; in relation to gender norms and gendered identify. Over fourteen original chapters it makes revealing contributions to the field of migration and gender studies. Combining historical and contemporary perspectives on mobility in Africa, this project contextualises migration within a broad historical framework, creating a conceptual and narrative framework that resists post-colonial boundaries of thought on the subject matter. This multidisciplinary work uses divergent methodologies including ethnography, archival data collection, life histories and narratives and multi-country survey level data and engages with a range of conceptual frameworks to examine the complex forms and outcomes of mobility on the continent today. Contributions include a range of case studies from across the continent, which relate either conceptually or methodologically to the central question of gender identity and relations within migratory frameworks in Africa. This book will appeal to researchers and scholars of politics, history, anthropology, sociology and international relations.

Download or read book Media Practices and Changing African Socialities written by Jo Helle-Valle and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deriving from innovative new work by six researchers, this book questions what the new media's role is in contemporary Africa. The chapters are diverse - covering different areas of sociality in different countries - but they unite in their methodological and analytical foundation. The focus is on media-related practices, which require engagement with different perspectives and concerns while situating these in a wider analytical context. The contributions to this collection provide fresh ethnographic descriptions of how new media practices can affect socialities in significant but unpredictable ways.

Download or read book African Politics of Survival Extraversion and Informality in the Contemporary World written by Mitsugi Endo and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume addresses two primary research concerns: first, considering extraversion (or extroversion) as a term for characterizing a region that is "mobilizing resources from their (possibly unequal) relationship with the external environment", a dynamic that constitutes a possible African potential; and, second, a survey of competing systems and strategies with a focus on relationships between formal and informal institutions in terms of their collaborations and conflicts. In addition, this volume contains three chapters examining very recent African responses to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic from a variety of perspectives. The final part of this volume contains an important contribution to the conceptualization of 'African Potentials'. This has proven to be a significant conceptual innovation, that allows intellectual access to alternative ways of thinking about latent ideas of universality.

Download or read book Borders Media Crossings and the Politics of Translation written by Pier Paolo Frassinelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines concepts of the border and translation within the context of social and cultural theory through the lens of southern Africa. Borders, Media Crossings and the Politics of Translation studies a diverse range of media representations of borders, imagined borders, border struggles, collectivity boundaries and scenes of translation: films, documentaries, literary texts, photographs, websites and other media texts and artistic interventions. The book makes a case for bringing together media texts and sociocultural experiences across multiple platforms. It argues that this transdisciplinary approach is singularly suited to the age of media convergence, when words, speech, music, videos and images compete for attention on the screens of digital devices where the written, oral, aural and visual are constantly mixed and remixed. But it also reminds the reader of the digital divides linked to socioeconomic, cultural, language and geopolitical borders. With its focus on sociocultural borders and translation, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of media studies, African studies and cultural studies.

Download or read book Young People s Daily Mobilities in Sub Saharan Africa written by Gina Porter and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-11-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the daily mobilities and immobilities of children and young people in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors draw on findings from rural and urban field research extending over many years, culminating in a 24-site study across three African countries: Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa. Wider reflections on gender, relationality, the politics of mobility, and field methodology frame the study. By bringing together diverse strands of a complex daily mobilities picture-from journeys for education, work, play/leisure and health, to associated experiences of different transport modes, road safety, and the virtual mobility now afforded by mobile phones-the book helps fill a knowledge gap with crucial significance for development policy and practice.

Download or read book Nomads and the State in Africa written by Victor Azarya and published by Ashgate Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book analyses the implications of state-formation or 'statelessness' on the economy of nomadic pastoralists, on their social stratification, on the extent of sedentarization and on transformations in their ethno-cultural identity. It also examines the effects of such pre-colonial changes on different groups' relative incorporation or marginalization in the colonial system and in the successor post-colonial states.

Download or read book National Identity and State Formation in Africa written by Bernard Lategan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how the interplay between globalization and the assertion of local identities is reshaping the political landscape of Africa. While defending their values against external forces, people simultaneously – and paradoxically – use the interconnectivity of global networks to maximize their particular interests. Focusing on the relation between national identity and state formation, the authors explore the far-reaching consequences of these contradictory dynamics. Although Africa shares many common trends with other parts of the world, it also displays distinctive features. A region characterized by the increased mobility of people, goods and ideas challenges some conventional assumptions of statecraft and also highlights the advantages of federalism – not merely as a constitutional option, but as a pragmatic device for managing diversity and holding fragile states together. The book further explores emerging types of state formation in the same political space, as exemplified by the combination of elements of a kingdom, an independent state and a national power base in the province of KwaZulu-Natal and the careful crafting of an alternative state within a state by the Solidarity Movement in South Africa. Informed by examples and case studies drawn from different parts of Africa, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Africa, politics, sociology, media studies and the social sciences more generally.

Download or read book Re imagining Communication in Africa and the Caribbean written by Hopeton S. Dunn and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-30 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advances alternative approaches to understanding media, culture and technology in two vibrant regions of the Global South. Bringing together scholars from Africa and the Caribbean, it traverses the domains of communication theory, digital technology strategy, media practice reforms, and corporate and cultural renewal. The first section tackles research and technology with new conceptual thinking from the South. The book then looks at emerging approaches to community digital networks, online diaspora entertainment, and video gaming strategies. The volume then explores reforms in policy and professional practice, including in broadcast television, online newspapers, media philanthropy, and business news reporting. Its final section examines the role of village-based folk media, the power of popular music in political opposition, and new approaches to overcoming neo-colonial propaganda and external corporate hegemony. This book therefore engages critically with the central issues of how we communicate, produce, entertain, and build communities in 21st-century Africa and the Caribbean.

Download or read book The Glocalization of Mobile Telephony in West and Central Africa written by Smith, Max A. and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ‘glocalization’ – the adaptation of a global telecommunication technology to local particularities – in West and Central Africa. Through case studies in Cameroon and Guinea, the research presented evinces how local agency leads to the appropriation of mobile telephony, and the extent to which telecommunication companies acculturate their marketing strategies to consumer preferences and local realities. The book interrogates the presumptive neutrality of technology and presents evidence of agency superseding supposedly fixed limitations of use for mobile phones. In opposition to the notion of an Africa ‘lagging’ behind, the book also nuances the development discourse so often associated with the ‘leapfrog’ and spread of mobile telephony south of the Sahara. Overall, this study highlights ways in which agency leads to modernity being refracted locally in West and Central Africa and reflects on the tension at play between ‘globalizers’ and ‘globalized’.

Download or read book Elgar Encyclopedia of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity written by Frédéric Darbellay and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia presents a comprehensive overview of the ever-evolving field of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity across the Sciences. Authored by over 150 experts, it provides a vision of the Sciences in which scholars push boundaries and promote collaboration across diverse disciplines, scientific cultures and practices. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of African Popular Culture written by Grace A Musila and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-15 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook brings together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to reflect on African popular cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries – in the sense of cultural productions, contexts, consumers, producers, platforms, and the material, affective and discursive resources they circulate – are influential in shaping African realities. Collectively, the chapters assembled in this handbook index the genres, methods, mediums, questions and encounters that preoccupy producers, consumers and scholars of African popular cultural forms across a range of geohistorical and temporal contexts. Drawing on forms such as newspaper columns, televised English Premier League football, speculative arts, romance fiction, comedy, cinema, music and digital genres, the contributors explore the possibilities and ambiguities unleashed by the production, circulation, consumption, remediation and critique of these forms. Among the questions explored across these essays are the freedoms and constraints of popular genres; the forms of self-making, pleasure and harm that these imaginaries enable; the negotiations of multiple moral regimes in everyday life; and, inevitably, the fecund terrain of contradictions definitive of many popular forms, which variously enable and undermine world-making. An authoritative scholarly resource on popular culture in Africa, this handbook is an essential read for students and scholars of African culture, society and media.