Book ID: CBB668478842

African Motors: Technology, Gender, and the History of Development (2021)

unapi

Joshua Grace (Author)


Duke University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 384
Language: English

In African Motors, Joshua Grace examines how everyday Tanzanian drivers, mechanics, and passengers reconstituted the automobile into a uniquely African form between the late 1800s to the early 2000s. Drawing on hundreds of oral histories, ethnographic fieldwork as an apprentice in Dar es Salaam's informal network of garages, and extensive archival research, Grace counters the pervasive narratives that Africa is incompatible with technology and that the African use of cars is merely an appropriation of technology created elsewhere. Although automobiles were invented in Europe and introduced as part of colonial rule, Grace shows how Tanzanians transformed them, increasingly associating their own car use with maendeleo, the Kiswahili word for progress or development. Focusing on the formation of masculinities based in automotive cultures, Grace also outlines the process through which African men remade themselves and their communities by adapting technological things and systems for local purposes. Ultimately, African Motors is an African-centered story of development featuring myriad examples of everyday Africans forging both individual and collective cultures of social and technological wellbeing through movement, making, and repair.

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Reviewed By

Review Marcus Filippello (2023) Review of "African Motors: Technology, Gender, and the History of Development". Technology and Culture (pp. 944-946). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB668478842/

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Authors & Contributors
Bo Ruberg
Daniela Waldburger
Morgan J. Robinson
Carl-philipp Bodenstein
Ann H. Kelly
Fraiture, Pierre-Philippe
Concepts
Colonialism
Postcolonialism
Technology and society
Environmental policy
Rivers
Germany, colonies
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Qing dynasty (China, 1644-1912)
Modern
20th century, early
Places
Africa
Tanzania (Tanganyika, Zanzibar)
France
China
India
Óman
Institutions
Automobiles Citroën
Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin)
UNESCO
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