[Sci-tech-public] Reminder: STS Circle, March 5th - Clapperton Mavhunga - (Please RSVP)

[STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
[image: image.png]

*Clapperton Mavhunga*
*MIT, STS*
*
*
on

*Why is the 'Social,' Not 'Technology,' the Central Subject *
*in African**(ist) History?*
Monday, March 5th
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

[image: image.png]

Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts
<sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>by 5pm
Thursday, March 1st.
*
*
*Abstract:* Writing in a recent article in *Technology & Culture*, Leo Marx
traced the history of technology as a concept and words like “civilization”
and “progress” that preceded the word. It was while “civilization” and
“progress” were common parlance in western societies that Europe colonized
Africa. These registers traveled with the colonizer and were then used to
name emerging settler infrastructures, silhouetted unambiguously against
those of “primitive” ‘natives’ presumed hostages to Nature until (European)
civilization rescued them. The Africanist’s first task was to correct this
narrative by reasserting the African as an agent. Any consideration of the
role of ‘technology’ and ‘nature’ in history cannot ignore this usage and
its impact on the production of knowledge about Africa. The presentation
dwells on one such example: the twentieth century colonial discussions that
the tsetse fly ‘held Africans hostage’ before European guns and drug
prophylactics came to their rescue.

*Biography*: Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga is an assistant professor of
science, technology, and society at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). He is a historian of science, technology, and society in
Africa. He received his Masters at Wits University (South Africa) and his
PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has authored a number of
book chapters and articles, including journals like *Social Text*, *Journal
of Southern African Studies*, and *Oryx*. This presentation is the second
chapter of his forthcoming book, *The Mobile Workshop*, an exploration of
the war against tsetse fly in Zimbabwe throughout the 20th century, in
which rifles, insecticides like DDT and Dieldrin, and human shields were
used to stop the deadly mobilities of an insect.


A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
Follow us on Facebook: STS at Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20120229/c1915eb0/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/png
Size: 4628 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20120229/c1915eb0/attachment.png