STS in Africa: Nano

Long standing debates about the relationship between “indigenous knowledge” and “science” continue to animate the study of science and technology on the continent. As Green has noted, many discussions have fallen into a circular argument that cultural difference is because of culture, inevitably proposing a stark division between “Western science” and “African” (or other) knowledge. This appears to be a particularly strong area of focus for STS scholars working in South African contexts (see for example Foster 2017, Osseo-Asare 2014, Pollock 2014, Green 2012, von Schnitzler 2013, and Hecht - van Sittert 2013 exchange). Green’s work should be an important reference point for scholars grappling with the identity politics of knowledge.

Coban (2018) noted the heavily used phrase “Made in Africa, for Africa” as a claim for expertise and having expert knowledge about what is best for one’s own context and building for it. This echoes Crane (2010; 2013) who found the strategic use of "Africanness" to highlight local expertise in relation to “global” knowledge. von Schnitzler (2013) also noted the strategic and valuable use of "local knowledge" demonstrated by South Africa-based engineers (over their Europe-based counterparts) with regards to their awareness of the history of payment practices in a particular area and their conducting of on-the-ground field trials or pilot projects that could “demonstrate a certain local knowledge.

Biruk (2018) highlighted extensive research fatique by Malawian participants and noted that nonetheless, research participants are expected to understand their role as “voluntary, altruistic and towards the collective good” (while researchers earn money, status, and accolades for the work). Not unsurprisingly therefore, Foster described experiencing “informed refusal” Ruha Benjamin (2016) by some who declined to talk to her. She mentions aiming for an “ethic of reciprocity” that recognizes “mutual benefits received by both researchers and researched” stating: “practices of accountability and reciprocity have enabled me to find way of engaging in the rich, messy, and continually long process of, in the words of Kim TallBear, finding ways of “standing with” San peoples and producing “faithful knowledges” that are co-constituted with San interests,” (2017: 22).

A desire for self-reliance emerged as a theme amongst Pollock (2014)’s South African interlocutors who saw a need for South African scientists to focus on the needs not only of the global or even the South African elite, but on the poor and black South African majority. Tousignant (2018) echoed this desire for African self-agency, noting: “for Senghor as for Diop, then, being scientific was not just about being modern as a form of mimicry, but about (re)setting African history in motion: for Africans to (once again) become active transformers of their society and place in the world.” Geissler and Tousignant (2016) noticed that to gain capacity, African scientists and clinicians often seek to become “collaborators” at the expense of autonomy in setting and pursuing priorities of knowledge and care and performing “partial capacity.” Crane (2010)’s work echoed this, noting the desirablity of having African names on a funding proposal for global health research.

Scholars working on STS in Africa grapple with a double bind of emphasizing the situated contexts, multiplicity of expertises, and long histories of inequalities that have structured the production of knowledge in and about Africa (see for example, this call for addressing the layers of structural inequality that continue to shape who represents the continent) with a simultaneous desire to avoid essentializing and reifiying a particular “African” science or knowledge (related to a desire to justify the importance and equal standing of Africa in the world?). This is most explicit in Crane’s work (2010) where she outlines how African scientists seek to assert their "local knowledge" and unique expertise of African contexts but simultaneously need to also demonstrate their "global" credibility as scientists (and not only as holding “sub-par” knowledge). Fortun and Cherkasky (1998) advise that rather than avoidance of this double bind, “working” the metaphoric image of the “double bind” might help to grapple with the disjunctures and unresolvable contradictions. Another distinctly contradictory element within the emerging field of STS in Africa is the desire for epistemic justice with the fact that the field is largely comprised of academics working within university structures (and most based in the US or Europe). Thus, despite awareness of colonial histories of extractive knowledge processes and desire to conduct research “with” rather than “of” their research interlocutors, an analysis of scholars’ data practices still reveals a lack of alternatives to traditional modes of publishing and fieldwork.

Crane (2010) found that the invocation of “African” identity by the scientists was often a way to justify or signal their good intentions, noting that the identity category of “African” flattened many of the fault lines within it. Questions of identity politics, representation, and claims to scientific and moral authority appear just under the surface of a 2013 polemic exchange in The American Historical Review between Gabrielle Hecht and Lance van Sittert. Gabrielle Hecht leverages the idea of "intellectual dishonesty" (several times) in her rebuttal against van Sittert who framed Hecht as an unethical neo-colonialist no different from the extractive mining companies she is studying. The lines between identity politics and politics of knowledge overlap with Hecht asserting that van Sittert cannot speak for “South Africans” (and van Sittert rebutting that he does not claim to). While such a dramatic exchanges appear atypical, with most dialogues within STS in Africa appearing quite colleagial based on the annotated set I reviewed, they do reveal ways in which “Africa” is contested as a site with unique responsibilities with regards to data and research practices.