STS in Africa

Louise Bezuidenhout on future directions of STS in Africa

Louise Bezuidenhout (May 17, 2018): " I would like to see more work on the informal economies of research." Read more

Langwick, Stacey Ann. 2011. Bodies, Politics, and African Healing: The Matter of Maladies in Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Abstract: "This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how...Read more

Tilley, Helen. 2010. “Global Histories, Vernacular Science, and African Genealogies; or, Is the History of Science Ready for the World?” Isis 101 (1): 110–19.

AO:  In this 2010 article, Helen Tilley argues, like Schumaker, for a field-based approach to studying colonial science and argues that vernacular science is an important area of study to study the situated nature of colonial science and the role that scientists and researchers play...Read more

Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Abstract: " Tropical Africa was one of the last regions of the world to experience formal European colonialism, a process that coincided with the advent of a range of new scientific specialties and research methods. Africa as a Living Laboratory is a far-...Read more

Michel Wahome on Future Directions of STS in Africa

Michel Wahome (August 20, 2018): "Continued work in the development of decolonial epistemology so that Africa can speak about and for itself." Read more

4S 2018 Poster: iHub Research Education

This poster series was created as part of  IHUB RESEARCH (2011 - 2017): A CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY ACTION RESEARCH GROUP WITHIN NAIROBI'S FLAGSHIP TECH INNOVATION HUB, an STS Across Borders gallery collection at the 4S 2018 annual meeting in Sydney, Australia. All posters...Read more

Chaudhury. 2018

This essay answers the analytic: "What events have marked the development of this STS formation?"Read more

Bezuidenhout, Louise M., Sabina Leonelli, Ann H. Kelly, and Brian Rappert. 2017. “Beyond the Digital Divide: Towards a Situated Approach to Open Data.” Science and Public Policy 44 (4): 464–75.

AO: This 2017 paper by Bezuidenhout et al. uses qualitative empirical data from a study of lab-based research in Africa to highlight the limitations of a framing of online inequalities and access to ICTs as a "digital divide." They adapt Sen’s ‘capabilities approach’ to highlight the...Read more

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