Connectivity and Society in Africa
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Edited by:
This series is aimed at understanding the dynamics in the relationship between enduring conflict, hardship, governance regimes, connectivity in Africa. The first books of the series concentrate on Middle and West Africa, in particular in Cameroon, Chad, CAR, Nigeria, Congo-Brazzaville, DRC, Uganda and Mali; a region with a shared history of connectivity, of oppression and conflict (duress). Within the region the variation in these two variables and its comparisons highlight processes and dynamics of socio-political change, and of agency (the ways of people to act, react, experience). The series uses an interdisciplinary methodology, combining anthropology, history, communication studies, conflict studies, and social geography. Publications are comparative and complementary, among diverse mobile populations in urban centers, refugee camps, and remote rural areas and of different types of relations between duress and changing communication technologies. The main concepts Duress and Connectivity need explanation. Duress is the internalization of conflict/oppression, and combines the long history of such circumstances, their recurrence, with a perspective on (constrained) agency, emotions, and socio-political change. Connectivity encompasses all forms of connectivity, from geographical mobility to communication, in which the role of technologies of communication (from roads to mobile phones) are present. In this series we focus on the interplay between the changes and continuities in connectivity and the way it (re/trans)forms duress.
More specifically, the publications in this series concentrate on (a) how, through new communication and information flows people’s experience of duress changes; (b) how new opportunities to be informed, to communicate, and connect, influence individual decision making and the (re)forming of communities; and (c) how these changes influence power relations and existing hierarchies. An important goal is to contextualize these seemingly ‘revolutionary’ and ‘new’ changes related to the introduction of new technologies in a historical longue durée_perspective, relating developments in connectivity to older connectivity processes in the history of African regions.
The series will be in conversation with various fields in the social sciences and humanities: Studies of migration, displacement, refugees; Studies of the history of conflict; Conflict studies; Ethnography of mobility, Mobility turn in Geography (Urry et al.), and in the methodological field with Digital Ethnography and Digital Humanities.
Advisory Board:
Dr. Henrietta Nyamnjoh, Independent Researcher
Prof. Bruce Mutsvairo
Dr. Katrien Pype, University of Leuven
Prof. Andrea Behrends, University of Bayreuth
Prof. Abdou Salam Fall, IFAN, University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar
Prof. Rijk van Dijk, University of Leiden,
Dr. Shamil Jeppie, University of Cape Town
Prof. Han van Dijk, Wageningen University
Prof. Thomas Moloniy, Director African Studies Centre Edinburgh
Prof. Ayo Ojebode, University of Ibadan
Dr. Joris Schapendonk, Nijmegen University
Topics
The concept of 'hybridity' is often still poorly theorized and problematically applied by peace and development scholars and researchers of resource governance. This book turns to a particular ethnographic reading of Michel Foucault's Governmentality and investigates its usefulness to study precisely those mechanisms, processes and practices that hybridity once promised to clarify.
Claim-making to land and authority in a post-conflict environment is the empirical grist supporting this exploration of governmentality. Specifically in the periphery of Bukavu. This focus is relevant as urban land is increasingly becoming scarce in rapidly expanding cities of eastern Congo, primarily due to internal rural-to-urban migration as a result of regional insecurity. The governance of urban land is also important analytically as land governance and state authority in Africa are believed to be closely linked and co-evolve.
An ethnographic reading of governmentality enables researchers to study hybridization without biasing analysis towards hierarchical dualities. Additionally, a better understanding of hybridization in the claim-making practices may contribute to improved government intervention and development assistance in Bukavu and elsewhere.
This book paints an image of sociality in duress, describing how new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) bring possible changes in political engagement and civic-ness. The political branch of the field of ICT-for-Development (ICT4D) is firmly convinced that this translates in civic engagement and democratisation. This book questions this conception, by showing that mistrust greatly increases through new ICT in a society where mistrust has been internalised. These processes are examined in the society encountered in Sokodé, the capital of the Central Region of Togo, in the period between 2015 and 2020, when the mobile phone became widespread among young people.
This ethnographic research provides a snapshot of the changes brought about by new ICT in the social fabrics and the lives of these young people. The place and period are highly relevant for getting a better understanding of the forms that civic engagement can take, and the roles that new ICT can play in settings of political repression. Togo has been ruled by the same family for over half a century, and Sokodé is one of the rare places of fierce political opposition. However, young people do not persevere in massive street protests like in other countries, even though they appear to have every reason to do so. How can the circumstances and social processes be understood that are leading to this ‘political silence’, and how do frustration and anger find their way?
The link between new ICT and civic engagement has more often been made, but mostly quantitative and volatile, lacking empirical grounding. This book demonstrates that there is indeed a connection between new ICT and social change. Through their phones, young people inform themselves in different ways, and they react differently to social and political changes. Their reflection on politics has also altered, minimal as it may seem. By closely regarding the context and mechanisms by which the trustworthiness of information is valued, this book contributes to the nascent research field of communication and political anthropology.
