Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa (Editor)
The MIT Press
Physical Details: 256 pages
Language: English
Explorations of science, technology, and innovation in Africa not as the product of "technology transfer" from elsewhere but as the working of African knowledge.In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of "technology transfer" from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. "Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere," observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume's editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable.The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of "fixing"; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production.ContributorsGeri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash, Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer
...MoreReview Walter Gam Nkwi (December 2018) Review of "What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?". Transfers (pp. 139-140).
Essay Review David Baronov (2018) Shifting Agendas and Competing Interests within Public Health, Science and Technology, and Medicine in Africa. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 809-816).
Review Edward, Frank (January 2018) Review of "What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?". Technology and Culture (pp. 815-816).
Similar Citations
Book
Ptak, Roderich;
(2011)
Birds and Beasts in Chinese Texts and Trade: Lectures Related to South China and the Overseas World
(/isis/citation/CBB001202426/)
Book
Hanna Hodacs;
Stéphane Van Damme;
Kenneth Nyberg;
(2018)
Linnaeus, Natural History and the Circulation of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB833759855/)
Book
Martin Lengwiler;
Nigel Penn;
Patrick Harries;
(2018)
Science, Africa and Europe: Processing Information and Creating Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB005876124/)
Book
Andersen, Casper;
(2011)
British Engineers and Africa, 1875--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001550326/)
Thesis
Flint, Karen E.;
(2001)
Negotiating a Hybrid Medical Culture: African Healers in Southeastern Africa from the 1820s to the 1940s
(/isis/citation/CBB001562376/)
Book
Mallart i Guimerà, Lluis;
(2003)
La fôret de nos ancêtres. Vol. 1, Le système medical des Evuzok du Cameroun
(/isis/citation/CBB000651281/)
Book
Linda Ratschiller;
Siegfried Weichlein;
(2016)
Der schwarze Körper als Missionsgebiet: Medizin, Ethnologie und Theologie in Afrika und Europa 1880–1960
(/isis/citation/CBB934191479/)
Article
Jones, Adam;
Voigt, Isabel;
(2012)
“Just a First Sketchy Makeshift”: German Travellers and Their Cartographic Encounters in Africa, 1850--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001200591/)
Book
Campbell, Gwyn;
Stanziani, Alessando;
(2013)
Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World
(/isis/citation/CBB001421572/)
Book
Higgs, Catherine;
(2012)
Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001421818/)
Book
Fabian, Johannes;
(2000)
Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB000110282/)
Book
Sluyter, Andrew;
(2012)
Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001421797/)
Book
Newman, Simon P;
(2013)
A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic
(/isis/citation/CBB001422269/)
Book
Jutta Wimmler;
(2017)
The Sun King's Atlantic
(/isis/citation/CBB307939896/)
Article
Low, Christopher H.;
(2007)
Different Histories of Buchu: Euro-American Appropriation of San and Khoekhoe Knowledge of Buchu Plants
(/isis/citation/CBB001231355/)
Book
Carey, Daniel;
(2012)
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001421379/)
Book
Kiple, Kenneth F.;
(2007)
A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization
(/isis/citation/CBB001422625/)
Article
Kalle Kananoja;
(2016)
Infected by the Devil, Cured by Calundu: African Healers in Eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil
(/isis/citation/CBB775987632/)
Book
Abena Dove Osseo-Asare;
(2019)
Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa after Independence
(/isis/citation/CBB410531058/)
Book
McCann, James;
(2005)
Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB000600585/)
Be the first to comment!