Download or read book Mobile Phones The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa written by Mirjam de Bruijn and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2009 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'We cannot imagine life now without a mobile phone' is a frequent comment when Africans are asked about mobile phones. They have become part and parcel of the communication landscape in many urban and rural areas of Africa and the growth of mobile telephony is amazing: from 1 in 50 people being users in 2000 to 1 in 3 in 2008. Such growth is impressive but it does not even begin to tell us about the many ways in which mobile phones are being appropriated by Africans and how they are transforming or are being transformed by society in Africa. This volume ventures into such appropriation and mutual shaping. Rich in theoretical innovation and empirical substantiation, it brings together reflections on developments around the mobile phone by scholars of six African countries (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania) who explore the economic, social and cultural contexts in which the mobile phone is being adopted, adapted and harnessed by mobile Africa.
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 Me and My Cell Phone written by Crystal Powell and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2012 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kindled by her own intimate history with her cell phone and a growing curiosity about information and communication technologies in general, Powell discusses her thoughts, reactions to and interpretations of some of the literature on these technologies. She draws on and reviews contributions by some authors on the social shaping of ICTs and social media to offer a more complete understanding of technology in relation to those who use and are used by it. From publisher description.
Download or read book Message in a Mobile written by Siri Lamoureaux and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This detailed, meticulous ethnographic study on mobile phone use among Nuba students at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, distinguishes itself from other studies by taking a focused look at the linguistic content of mobile phone interactions via text-messaging, portraying it as a site for the expression of personalized and affective language. While men and women appear to be equally aggressive consumers and producers of text-message poetry, women are formally discouraged in using the phone for relations that go beyond the publicly acceptable norms of keeping in touch and making arrangements. Nonetheless, women use it for such purposes and many manage it discreetly, showing how this technology can serve to subvert discursive norms on gender and marriage. The mobile phone in Sudan enhances individual autonomy over interactions, making possible the extension and creation of social spaces. It simultaneously enlarges private space and trespasses into public space. Poetic themes and language, previously limited to elite producers those both more literate and who had control over mass media domains, radio and newspapers are exposed to anonymous recipients, who draw from, copy or forward them in continuous circulation, thereby staking a claim in the public sphere. Similarly, the mobile phone serves as a site for the exercise of several layers of identity in negotiation, and reflects or creates alternative identities and the contestation of existing discourses, communities in physical space and notions of belonging.
Download or read book Everyday Media Culture in Africa written by Wendy Willems and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African audiences and users are rapidly gaining in importance and increasingly targeted by global media companies, social media platforms and mobile phone operators. This is the first edited volume that addresses the everyday lived experiences of Africans in their interaction with different kinds of media: old and new, state and private, elite and popular, global and national, material and virtual. So far, the bulk of academic research on media and communication in Africa has studied media through the lens of media-state relations, thereby adopting liberal democracy as the normative ideal and examining the potential contribution of African media to development and democratization. Focusing instead on everyday media culture in a range of African countries, this volume contributes to the broader project of provincializing and decolonizing audience and internet studies.
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 Encyclopedia of Mobile Phone Behavior written by Yan, Zheng and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 1604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of mobile phones has brought about a new era of technological attachment as an increasing number of people rely on their personal mobile devices to conduct their daily activities. Due to the ubiquitous nature of mobile phones, the impact of these devices on human behavior, interaction, and cognition has become a widely studied topic. The Encyclopedia of Mobile Phone Behavior is an authoritative source for scholarly research on the use of mobile phones and how these devices are revolutionizing the way individuals learn, work, and interact with one another. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a variety of topics relating to mobile phone use, behavior, and the impact of mobile devices on society and human interaction, this multi-volume encyclopedia is an essential reference source for students, researchers, IT specialists, and professionals seeking current research on the use and impact of mobile technologies on contemporary culture.
Download or read book African Modernities and Mobilities written by Gam Nkwi and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Walter Gam Nkwi documents the complexities and nuances embedded in African modernities and mobilities which have been overlooked in historical discourses in Africa and Cameroon. Using an ethnographic historical approach and drawing on the intricacies of what it has meant to be and belong in Kom an ethnic community in the Northwest Region of Cameroon since 1800, he explores the discourses and practices of kfaang as central to any understanding of mobility and modernity in Kom, Cameroon and Africa at large. The book unveils the emic understanding of modernity through the history and ethnography of kfaang and its technologies and illustrates how these terminologies were conceived and perceived by the Kom people in their social and physical mobilities. It documents and analyzes the historical processes involved in bringing about and making kfaang a defining feature of everyday life in Kom and among Kom subjects.
Download or read book Pastoralism and Socio technological Transformations in Northern Benin written by Georges Djohy and published by Göttingen University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pastoralists throughout Africa face increasing pressures. In Benin, governmental development policies and programmes in crop farming are changing power relations between herders and farmers to favour the latter. How are the Fulani pastoralists responding to these threats to their existence? Georges Djohy explores the dynamics in local use of natural resources and in inter-ethnic relations resulting from development interventions. He combines the approaches of science and technology studies – looking at the co-construction of society and technology – and political ecology – looking at the power relations shaping the dynamics of economic, environmental and social change – so as to throw light on the forces of marginalisation, adaptation and innovation at work in northern Benin. Having worked there for many years, Djohy has been able to uncover gradual processes of socio-technological change that are happening “behind the scenes” of agricultural development involving mechanisation, herbicide use, tree planting, land registration and natural resource conservation. He reveals how farmers are using these interventions as “weapons” in order to gain more rights over larger areas of land, in other words, to support indigenous land grabbing from herders who had been using the land since decades for grazing. He documents how the Fulani are innovating to ensure their survival, e.g. by using new technologies for transport and communication, developing new strategies of livestock feeding and herd movement, and developing complementary sources of household income. The Fulani are organising themselves from local to national level to provide technological and socio-cultural services, manage conflicts and gain a stronger political voice, e.g. to be able to achieve demarcation of corridors for moving livestock through cultivated areas. They even use non-functioning mini-dairies – another example of development intervention – to demonstrate their modernity and to open up other opportunities to transform their pastoral systems. This book provides insights into normally hidden technical and social dynamics that are unexpected outcomes of development interventions.
Download or read book EFieldnotes written by Roger Sanjek and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how anthropological fieldwork has been affected by technological shifts in the 25 years since the 1990 publication of Fieldnotes : the making of anthropology, edited by Roger Sanjek, published by Cornell University Press.
Download or read book Impacts of the Knowledge Society on Economic and Social Growth in Africa written by Amoah, Lloyd G. Adu and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world that is essentially digitizing, some have argued that the idea of the knowledge society holds the greatest promise for Africas rapid socio-economic transformation. Impacts of the Knowledge Society on Economic and Social Growth in Africa aims to catalyze thinking and provide relevant information on the complex ways in which the information age is shaping Africa and the implications that this will have for the continent and the world. This premier reference volume will provide policy analysts, policymakers, academics, and researchers with fresh insights into the key empirical and theoretical matters framing Africa's ongoing digitization.
Download or read book Disruptive Technologies Innovation and Global Redesign Emerging Implications written by Ekekwe, Ndubuisi and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book provides case studies as well as practical and theoretical chapters on the issues surrounding disruptive technologies, innovation, and global redesign"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Disillusioned African written by Francis B. Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This humorous tale of the naïve and curious African student-cum-philosopher wandering between North and South, the rural and the urban, has been in gestation for a period of nearly two decades. With allusion to traditions of the philosophical novel and the picaresque, Nyamnjoh's protagonist travels from his African village to the sharply divided and socially cruel world of 1980s Britain. By casting aside his disillusion and the traps of servitude and victimhood, The Disillusioned African reveals his creative potential for curiosity and adventure. He brings a bird's eye view, always affectionate, gently mocking, to the cultural idiosyncrasies of the new world he encounters, which throws his own African culture, politics and socio-economic realities into light relief. Praise for The Disillusioned African 'Whatever the imagined future for Africa, this courageous book will certainly provide, for both its foreign readers and the young generation of Cameroonians, a provocative insight into the complex web of despair, frustration, paradox and hope . on the eve of the 21st century.' - Louise Cuming, Catholic University of Central Africa 'In his characteristically humorous style, Nyamnjoh portrays the various social ills in society and castigates the political elite he holds largely responsible.' - Piet Konings, African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands. 'Francis Nyamnjoh . has a particular way of saying very serious things in the most unserious manner. He entertains, and in the process he moralises, he teaches, he gives you lessons. learning experience and philosophy to give you a view of the dilemma of the African.' - Sammy Beban Chumbow, Professor of Linguistics, University of Yaounde I
Download or read book Sociality Revisited The Use of the Internet and Mobile Phones in Urban Cameroon written by Bettina Anja Frei and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2013 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on the perspectives of non-migrants and urban youth in Bamenda, in the Northwest region of Cameroon, as well as on the views of Cameroonian migrants in Switzerland, to explore the meaning and role of New Media in the negotiation of sociality in transnational migration. New Media facilitated connectedness serve as a privileged lens through which Cameroonians, home and away, scrutinise and mediate sociality. In this rich ethnography, Bettina Frei describes how the internet and mobile phones are adopted by migrants and their non-migrant counterparts in order to maintain transnational relationships, and how the specific medialities of these communication technologies in turn impact on transnational sociality. Contrary to popular presumptions that New Media are experienced as mainly connecting and enabling, this study reveals that in a transnational context in particular, New Media serve to mediate tensions in transnational social ties. The expectations of being connected go hand in hand with an awareness of social and geographical distance and separation.
Download or read book Gendered Power and Mobile Technology written by Caroline Wamala Larsson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mobile phones are widely viewed as the information and communication technology that holds the most promise for bridging global digital divides. Gendered Power and Mobile Technology uses empirical research to focus on changing intersections between technology, gender and other categories of social and cultural power difference (such as age, race, class, and ethnicity) in the use of mobile communication technologies. Asking how these intersections can inform development discourse, practice, and research, this volume seeks to rectify the lack of attention to the Global South, calling for more sensitivity to the contexts and consequences of mobile phone use. Indeed, drawing on case studies from Ecuador, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book engages with the intersectionality paradigm to tease out the complexities of using mobile technologies for development purposes. Gendered Power and Mobile Technology will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as media studies, development studies, gender and technology, feminist technoscience, anthropology, and sociology.
Download or read book Indigenous People and Mobile Technologies written by Laurel Evelyn Dyson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the rich tradition of mobile communication studies and new media, this volume examines how mobile technologies are being embraced by Indigenous people all over the world. As mobile phones have revolutionised society both in developed and developing countries, so Indigenous people are using mobile devices to bring their communities into the twenty-first century. The explosion of mobile devices and applications in Indigenous communities addresses issues of isolation and building an environment for the learning and sharing of knowledge, providing support for cultural and language revitalisation, and offering the means for social and economic renewal. This book explores how mobile technologies are overcoming disadvantage and the tyrannies of distance, allowing benefits to flow directly to Indigenous people and bringing wide-ranging changes to their lives. It begins with general issues and theoretical perspectives followed by empirical case studies that include the establishment of Indigenous mobile networks and practices, mobile technologies for social change and, finally, the ways in which mobile technology is being used to sustain Indigenous culture and language.
Download or read book Publics in Africa in a Digital Age written by Sharath Srinivasan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across Africa, digital media are providing scholars with a reason and opportunity for revisiting the question, and the analytical lens, of publics with new vigour and less normative baggage. This book brings together a rich set of empirically grounded analyses of the diverse digital spaces and networks of communication springing up across the Eastern African region. The contributions offer a plural set of reflections on whether and how we can usefully think about these spaces and networks as convening publics, where citizens come together to discuss matters of common interest. The authors make clear the need to unshackle such studies from slavish acceptance of outsiders’ prescriptions on what constitutes desirable publics. They highlight the importance of being attentive to rapidly changing everyday realities across Africa in which people are coming together around the circulation of ideas in ways that include digital means of communications. In so doing, the contributions bring forward new ways of thinking about, through and with publics, alongside other heritages in Africanist scholarship that have continued salience. Looking outwards from the region, such different perspectives on our digitally mediated world offer theoretical novelty that advances how we think about the notion of publics and their political significance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies.
