Article ID: CBB370391532

On humble technologies: Containers, care, and water infrastructure in northwest Madagascar, 1750s-1960s (2021)

unapi

Anchored in urban Madagascar, this study probes historical entanglements between water systems, containers as ordinary technological things, and labor regimes from the late eighteenth century through French colonial times (1896–1960). As technologies-in-use, water containers were sometimes materials of governance, but increasingly they were anticipatory technologies through which families could navigate the precarities of monarchal and then colonial rule by storing excess, manipulating time, and sustaining everyday life. While technologies-in-use are always embedded in local moral economies, I argue that they also act on users in sometimes contradictory ways – ossifying labor regimes and entrenching existing practices that navigate everyday predicaments of urban space. Ultimately, this essay calls for historians of technology to attend to the relationships between humble artifacts (containers) and labor practices to understand how practices of care are forged in tandem with the material world.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB370391532/

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Authors & Contributors
Mandy de Wilde
Katie Hindmarch-Watson
Prince K Guma
Kroløkke, Charlotte
Klose, Alexander
Pontille, David
Concepts
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Technology and society
Cities and towns
Users of technology
Maintenance and repair
Infrastructure
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
Places
United States
Africa
Tanzania (Tanganyika, Zanzibar)
London (England)
Dakar
Butte, Montana
Institutions
Unilever (firm)
Anaconda Copper Mining Company
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