Connections and Transformations

Sub programme 1
Technologies of Mobility and Communication, New Dynamics in Spatial Relations in Africa and Beyond

In this sub programme we are investigating the notion of mobility as a social technology in itself and in relation to other ‘hard’ technologies. Mobility is an important technology of connecting; new social relations are established as well as new ideas of relating developed. How can we understand mobility and patterns of mobility as a social technology, as a linking technology? The sub-programme inscribes itself into the now well-established paradigm that takes mobility instead of sedentarity as the norm and considers mobility and being mobile in a geographical sense as one of the basic parameters of the formation of societies and social transformations (studies of translocality and transnationalism). However, these studies do not pay much attention to the realization of communication or transmission in mobile societies. In this programme we take as an explicit research problematic the introduction of new communication technologies and how they are related to old and new forms of transmission in these cultures. We are particularly interested in how they transform feelings of belonging, cultural terms and religious forms, leading to new repertoires of connections and disconnections, and to new mobility patterns and mobile communities. This will be explored by looking at the past introduction of technologies such as the motor car and the building of roads, but also the current introducing of the mobile phone and ICT technologies. This invites ethnographical work with a longitudinal perspective.

The interlinkage and dynamics between mobility, the introduction of new communication technologies and social transformations is to be researched in different social fields in this programme. The first concentrates on the changes in mobile margins, i.e. the social spaces that exist between remote areas and other parts of the world. This research will be a continuous follow-up of research in marginal areas and its people who have become connected through today’s new technologies, but also in a historical perspective. The second project explores a very modern form of mobility: tourism. The third field relates to the study of children and youth. How do new forms of child mobility inscribe old traditions, and how do these new patterns of mobility influence the communication/transmission between generations? To what social and cultural transformations and continuities does this lead?

Countries of research: Uganda, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Angola, Tanzania

Research Projects:

1) Mobile Africa Revisited: A Comparative Study of the Relations between New Communication Technologies and New Social Spaces (Chad, Mali, Cameroon, Angola, Tanzania, Sudan)
Mirjam de Bruijn, Inge Brinkman, Francis Nyamnjoh

Blog on Mobile Africa: http://mobileafricarevisited.wordpress.com/
More movies here: The wireless camel - Mobile phones in Sudan and Cameroonians about Phones

In Africa, the use of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) − the Internet and mobile telephony in particular − has accelerated remarkably since these were introduced in the late 1990s. This explosion of the Internet and mobile telephony on the African continent is oftentimes portrayed as a straightforward economic success and an opportunity for marginalized areas to overcome their assumed isolation. In the development discourse the new ICT are unequivocally regarded as a means for ‘development’. There are problems still; the ‘digital divide’ and the ‘technology gap’ threaten to slacken the process of Africa’s inclusion as active participants in the global village. Yet, these problems are interpreted only in terms of inclusion and problems of access. Within development circles the aim is to capacitate people (especially disadvantaged groups) so that they can afford these technologies and are no longer blocked from usage. The relation between development and communication technologies as such is not questioned.
This view has been criticized by a number of scholars. For these scholars the new ICT are a hegemonising force comparable to a new form of imperialism and neo-colonial control. Introduced by Western companies, these new technologies merely serve to bring Africa more firmly into the orbit of worldwide neo-capitalism. The new technologies are based on illegal coltan-mining, pushed onto African customers with misleading and aggressive advertisement campaigns, undermining local traditions of face-to-face communication, and, on top, old models from the West are dumped on the African continent, adding to the problem of pollution.
These notions about the dis/advantages of modern communication technologies are hardly based in empirical research and furthermore, they are largely framed in a macro-perspective on society. In our research programme on social relations, mobility and new communication technologies in Africa we seek to address the issue of development and communication technologies through the interpretation of African end-users. Instead of the macro-perspective we propose to deal with large structures and big issues from a bottom-up perspective: the daily lives of people and their evaluations of new technologies are central to our endeavour. Combining historical and anthropological methods we hope to address how people in Africa are appropriating new ICTs and how they did so in the past. Such an approach may redirect the debates mentioned above towards more emphasis on agency in historically specific contexts.
Exchange with organisations in the telecommunication business sector and in development organisations is essential to this programme.

WOTRO Proposal
Workshop Mobile Telephony
Thurnau workshop
APAD Paper
ECAS New Social Spaces

Sub projects/Case studies:

a. Mobile Africa Revisited: A comparative study of the relations between new communication technologies and new social spaces (Chad, Mali, Cameroon, Angola, Tanzania): Angola case study
Inge Brinkman

This project investigates the relations between mobility, communication technologies and social space. New communication and information technologies have been hailed as an opportunity for marginalized areas to become active participant in the 'global village'. In an opposite view, it is feared that the introduction of new ICT will only lead to an increase of social inequalities. Hitherto little research has been done on the actual impact of these new technologies on social relations and the views on new ICT from people from so-called 'marginal' areas. This project seeks to interpret the influence of new communication technologies in the context of earlier technological innovations, and histories of mobility and 'marginality'.
Research will be carried out on a comparative basis in various remote areas in Africa. The case study of Angola will focus on communication technologies in a post-war context and the relations between oral, written and 'virtual' communication technologies in a region where literacy has played an historically important role.

b. At the Frontier of African Multi-Local Livelihood: the livelihood network of the Murid brotherhood
Mayke Kaag

This study of the Senegalese Mouride brotherhood as a multilocal livelihood network aims to show that local and transnational linkages of migrants may take many forms; people are tied to each other in social, economic, cultural and political ways. Furthermore, diverse local or transnational linkages may have diverse, sometimes even opposite, effects in terms of migrants' engagement. These diverse forms and layers of local and transnational involvement and their interplay are studied in order to understand how Mouride migrants' lives are influenced by their multiple ties, and how this, in its turn, influences the functioning of the Mouride network as a whole.

c. Traveling social hierarchies: Translocality and social change among the Fulbe in Mali and France
Lotte Pelckmans

In this research project changes in social hierarchies of mobile Fulbe are studied in different geographical settings (rural central Mali, urban Bamako and transnational Paris). In the past Fulbe society used to divide society hierarchically in social groups. This (technology of) power distribution used to be institutionalized in manifold social rules of conduct, called Pulaaku and ndimu in Fulfulde language. The central research question is whether, why and how typical Sahelian social hierarchies are maintained and transformed in a globalising world, since the formal abolition of slavery?
It is argued that the historical and current importance of different technologies (material, communication and social) should be considered in studying the increasing/decreasing options for connecting through mobility. Furthermore, in what ways does movement (geographical mobility) contribute to obtaining higher or lower status (social mobility)? Do people feel that by moving from one place to another, their possibilities and social networks are enlarged (social mobility/ emancipation) or, on the contrary, reduced (social disconnection)? Does mobility change technologies of power and dependence and in what ways does it affect the memory of hierarchy and individuals' senses of self in relation to others? All these transformations triggered new forms of social connections, marriage alliances, etcetera, thereby changing notions of hierarchy and dependency.

d. Mobile Africa Revisited: A comparative study of the relations between new communication technologies and new social spaces (Chad, Mali, Cameroon, Angola, Tanzania): Case studies Cameroon and Chad
Mirjam de Bruijn, Francis Nyamnjoh and Walter Nkwi

This research programme investigates the relations between mobility, communication technologies and social space. New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been hailed as an opportunity for marginalized areas to become active participants in the 'global village'. In an opposite view, it is feared that the introduction of ICTs will only lead to an increase in social inequalities. Hitherto little research has been done on the actual impact of new ICTs on social relations and the views on these technologies from people from 'marginal' areas. This project seeks to interpret the influence of new ICTs in the context of earlier technological innovations, and histories of mobility and 'marginality'.
Research will be carried out on a comparative basis in remote areas in Africa, through surveying, interviewing and archival research. The project combines various disciplines (Anthropology, History, Communication Studies) and several research institutes (ASC-Leiden, CODESRIA-Dakar, and country specific research institutes in Africa).

e. Mobile youth and children in Africa
Mirjam de Bruijn, Rijk van Dijk and Ria Reis

The generational division has become very important in Africa. Demographic realities show that young people, defined in terms of their age, their position in structures of authority and their place in society are the majority in most African societies. They have for long been neglected as a separate category, but increasingly form an economic, social and political power that needs to be studied in its own right. This is relevant for both the young being defined as 'youth' as well as the young being defined as children where these matters be different in degree but not in kind.

In this sub programme we investigate the meaning and significance of mobility of young people in Africa. In youth studies especially the theme of migration to urban environments, the movement to areas of economic growth is central, and mobility features as topic in the exploration of sub themes like youth and religion, youth in political movements etc. Geographical movements of young people are primarily explained in the context of rapid changes of African economy and society. The young and their changing attitudes are being interpreted as being at the forefront of these changes. Mobility is thus interpreted as a new development in the life of youth in Africa.

f. African tourist encounters
Wouter van Beek

Among the many connections of African societies with the rest of the world and with each other, tourism has a special place. In African tourism it is the African locality which is connected from the outside, more than the other way around. The mobility of a half of the tourist equation determines the impact on the other, local half. Tourism is a peculiar and paradoxical connection between people anyway, but African tourism has some specific features which colour the way it links Africans with the outer world. First, the wealth imbalance between 'host' and 'guest' is marked, and the roles are irreversible, and any real reciprocity in the tourist exchange is problematic. Second, Africa knows almost no internal and very little regional tourism, so international tourism dominates the scene. Third, the power position of the various actors in the tourist industry is skewed, and the actors operate under different political and economic conditions. Africa is for tourists the continent of 'the wild', of 'pristine nature' and 'authentic cultures', admired but feared, gazed at but not participated in. Characteristic for Africa is the geographic separation of the various types of tourist destinations: wildlife, culture, beach, landscape and history/heritage.
This project researches the various modalities of tourist-host interactions, with the concept of the 'tourist bubble' as one main approach. The way this interface with the visiting and the visited is being constructed at various tourist destinations, is crucial for the connections that the local actors accrue through the presence of tourists. How do, for instance, the types of destinations co-vary with different connections of African actors with the 'North' and among themselves? What are the economic and political dynamics of tourism in each of these situations? To what extent do tourist dynamics reproduce neo-colonial dependencies and do they situate the African actors in the globalizing world of international travel?

g. The Social history of communication technology and mobility in Kom, Cameroon
W. Nkwi

The study aims to write a social history of the Grassfields in Cameroon, Central Africa that focuses on the relations between mobility, communication technology and political hierarchies. It questions what the role of political and social status has been in the formation of the mobile communities that are so typical for this part of Cameroon, and how this is related to the way access to communication technologies is organized and negotiated in society, i.e. how these communication technologies are appropriated by society and by different social and political layers in a variable way.

h. From Muskets to Nokias: Technology, Consumption and Social Change in Central Africa from Pre-Colonial Times to the Present
Dr. Jan-Bart Gewald, Prof. dr. Robert Ross, Dr. Giacomo Macola, Mary Davies, Prof. dr. Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu and Dr. Etoile Kasenga

Firearms and mobile phones are fitting examples of the kind of foreign technological innovations that Central African peoples have appropriated and absorbed within their social structures over the course of the past three centuries of their history. Taken together, the individual research projects that make up 'From Muskets to Nokias' amount to an attempt to rewrite the history of the Zambian and Congolese copperbelts and their hinterlands through the lenses of technology and consumption, and their relations to social organization. The principal contention of 'From Musket to Nokias' is that by portraying rural Africans as mere pawns in the impersonal clash between capital and organized labour, materialist interpretations of the region's history have obfuscated the full range of social experiences of Central African peoples. Set in a much deeper chronological framework than has hitherto been the case, 'From Muskets to Nokias' moves away from a teleological narrative of oppression and exploitation with a view to reinstating the African in the position of independent economic agent. Adopting an explicitly social historical perspective, all the members of the proposed research team will seek to understand the changing dynamics of African engagement with the products of industrial technology and the impact of the transformation of consumption patterns upon the region's social structures and related notions of wealth.

i. Partnering with the Private Sector: The impacts of joint ventures between land reform beneficiaries and the private sector in Limpopo Province
Marja Spierenburg, Ben Cousins, Nerhene Davis, Lubabalo Ntsholo and Angelique Bos

The project analyses how the popular 'panacea' for economic develop and service delivery of Public-Private Partnerships is connected to and translated in the land restitution programme implemented by Limpopo Province. Despite the fact that the programme itself is an attempt to overcome the dominance of white farmers in South Africa's agricultural sector, their farming models are still considered as the only viable models. Through the strategic partnerships, land reform beneficiaries are connected to private sector organisations to learn how to operate a 'modern' agricultural - or tourism in the case of game farms - business. Little attention is paid to the aspirations of the beneficiaries themselves, neither, as will be shown below, does the strategic partnership model pay attention to power relations between the partners involved in the strategic partnership, which will be the focus of the analysis presented in this chapter.

j. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), mobility and the reconfiguration of marginality in South(ern) Africa
Francis B. Nyamnjoh, M.E. de Bruijn, Andrew Spiegel, Rehana Vally, Susan Levine, Sally Frankental, Heike Antje Becker, Tanja Bosch

This project investigates the diverse transformations wrought by new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), in particular mobile phones, in socially marginal populations within Southern Africa, including migrants from Africa north of the Limpopo. The project aims to reveal how, when and why ICTs generate new configurations of marginality. The project will focus on social categories described as ‘mobile margins’ of the population that are both mobile and politically and economically marginal and whose members are engaged in maintaining social networks across localities. The research aims to gather empirical data that will enable the researchers to interrogate stakeholders and users views regarding ICTs. The results will contribute to on-going discussions on migration, marginality and ICTs in South(ern) Africa.