Pollock draws on the Comaroffs (postcolonial scholars from Africa). She puts herself in conversation with STS work on laboratories in the global South and argues for a material analysis of them, especially looking at how place figures into laboratory sciences.
Pollock includes a slogan that emerged from her interviews “African solutions for African problems” - this is something that also circulates VERY much in the Kenyan tech context as a justification for why Kenya (and Kenyans) are uniquely positioned to make tech in Kenya (851). Pollock notes that in this notion of ‘African solutions’, ‘African’ refers to African labs and scientists, not African plants or traditional healers. The endeavor of these scientists is not African in any ethnoscience sense, but it is rooted in place.”
Pollock draws on sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasonoff and Kim) as vital sites for imagining collective visions of society.
Pollock draws on the work about African botanical knowledge done by Osseo-Asare and Langwick); Alondra Nelson’s concept of bioculture brokers (688); Warwick Anderson’s “conjugated subjects.”
