What geographic and temporal contexts characterize this STS innovation?

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Angela Okune's picture
July 11, 2019

AO: This paragraph from the blog post describes where the library is situated and its surrounding environment.

Behind me, to the left of the library doors, city council parking ofcials have set up a temporary workstation. This is where parking attendants come to hand in the money they have collected from motorists brave enough drive in to town. The attendants come and go regularly, dressed in their bright yellow coats, swapping cash and used ticket books for a pat on the back and a new book. In a corner are about a dozen yellow tyre clamps. Every so often an excited attendant will dash up to collect a clamp. When this happens, everyone around me stops what he or she is doing to see which unfortunate person is getting their car punished for parking illegally. Moments later a young girl comes up the stairs hawking ripe yellow bananas and there’s more commotion as the council workers choose the largest ones. She waits a few minutes, then gathers the banana peels and tosses them in to a large yellow trashcan on the way out of the library gates. ‘This has got to be the worst possible location for a library,’ I think to myself. Then I realise that in 1929, it was a prime spot: close enough to the University, City Hall and the law courts. The thing is, Nairobi has changed.

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