STS in Africa: Macro

This essay answers the analytic question: "(How) are economic and legal infrastructures said to shape science and technology in Africa?" Analyses of the economic and legal infrastructures figure heavily in STS scholarship situated in African contexts, especially by those who rely on historical sources. Specific economic and legal infrastructures mentioned include university Institutional Review Board ethics protocols (Biruk 2018); development funding regimes that build and reify “global North” and “global South” inequalities (Biruk 2018Crane 2010Coban 2018Bezuidenhout 2017Geissler and Tousignant 2016); colonial histories (Tilley 2011Osseo-Asare 2014Foster 2017Breckenridge 2014); economic competitiveness (Tilley 2011) as well as claims to citizenship (von Schnitzler 2013); Bretton Woods structural adjustment programs and the emergence of a neoliberal knowledge economy (Green 2012Pollock 2014Okeke 2011); and intellectual property law (Foster 2017Pollock 2014Osseo-Asare 2014) (and its overemphasis on individualist notions of authorship).

This essay is part of a broader orals document by Angela Okune querying Science and Technology Studies in Africa. Sub-essays within the orals document can be accessed directly through the following links: Discursive RiskDeuteroMetaMacroMicroNanoTechnoDataEco.

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Creative Commons Licence

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Created date

August 2, 2018

Cite as

Angela Okune. 2 August 2018, "STS in Africa: Macro", STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 24 August 2018, accessed 29 March 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/sts-africa-macro