Book ID: CBB001451046

Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe (2014)

unapi

Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (Author)


The MIT Press


Publication Date: 2014
Physical Details: 256 pp.
Language: English

In this book, Clapperton Mavhunga views technology in Africa from an African perspective. Technology in his account is not something always brought in from outside, but is also something that ordinary people understand, make, and practice through their everyday innovations or creativities---including things that few would even consider technological. Technology does not always originate in the laboratory in a Western-style building but also in the society in the forest, in the crop field, and in other places where knowledge is made and turned into practical outcomes. African creativities are found in African mobilities. Mavhunga shows the movement of people as not merely conveyances across space but transient workspaces. Taking indigenous hunting in Zimbabwe as one example, he explores African philosophies of mobilities as spiritually guided and of the forest as a sacred space. Viewing the hunt as guided mobility, Mavhunga considers interesting questions of what constitutes technology under regimes of spirituality. He describes how African hunters extended their knowledge traditions to domesticate the gun, how European colonizers, with no remedy of their own, turned to indigenous hunters for help in combating the deadly tsetse fly, and examines how wildlife conservation regimes have criminalized African hunting rather than enlisting hunters (and their knowledge) as allies in wildlife sustainability. The hunt, Mavhunga writes, is one of many criminalized knowledges and practices to which African people turn in times of economic or political crisis. He argues that these practices need to be decriminalized and examined as technologies of everyday innovation with a view toward constructive engagement, innovating with Africans rather than for them.

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Reviewed By

Review Kirsten Moore-Sheeley (2017) Review of "Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe". Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science (pp. 74-75). unapi

Review Jennifer Hart (2015) Review of "Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe". Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (pp. 197-199). unapi

Review Heather J. Hoag (2015) Review of "Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe". Technology and Culture (pp. 1002-1003). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001451046/

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Authors & Contributors
Cartwright, Brad J.
Ige, O. Akinlolu
Diaz, Roberto Jesus
Ken J. Caine
Peter B. Thompson
Ogundiran, Akinwumi
Concepts
Traditional knowledge
Technological innovation
Indigenous technology
Cross-national comparison
Technology and culture
Diffusion of innovation; diffusion of knowledge; diffusion of technology
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, early
20th century
Early modern
Medieval
19th century
Places
United States
China
Japan
Germany
Europe
Yorubaland (West Africa)
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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