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- Convenors:
-
Dmitri Van den Bersselaar
(Universität Leipzig)
Jean Sebastian 'Baz' Lecocq (Humboldt University of Berlin)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH111
- Start time:
- 1 July, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel examines the relations between technological innovation, economic and political power, and social status through the lens of travel. Papers that engage this topic from a historical perspective, covering various means and aims, will explore how people travel or imagine to travel.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to explore the relations between technological innovation; economic and political power; and social status through the lens of travel. Travel is crucial to cities as the means through which new inhabitants arrive and move about, and as it connects African cities to global urban networks. In Africa as elsewhere, the introduction of new mechanical means of transport broadened real and imagined horizons, creating new dynamics in all spheres of life. Travel alters and reinforces human hierarchies. Social economic and political status determines who gets to travel, how fast and how far, with what means of transport at their disposal, and to what parts of urban African global society. Over time, these patterns have changed due to technological development, changes in infrastructure, and changes in the organisation of travel through infrastructure, as well as through changes in economic and political power. Actual travel, the imagination of travel, and the status of having travelled, play an important role in the status claims of elites, as well as in the aspirations of the poor. What means of transport, at what costs and with what goals, do Africans use in their every day lives, as well as in more exceptional circumstances of travel? What is the relation between the goal and length of the journey and the form travel takes? Bringing together papers that engage this topic from a historical perspective, covering a range of types of travel, we will explore how people travel or imagine to travel.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses civil aviation as a projection and tool of high modern power, including how populations engaged with or challenged such uses. We explore the specificity of that modernity in the African context as a social and cultural history connected to but not dependent on technical history
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses civil aviation as a projection and tool of high modern power. Prior to the advent of mass aviation in the 00's, flying formed as much a projection of modern life as it provided global connectivity. We seek to address the specificity of that modernity in the African context as a social and cultural history connected to - but not dependent on - technical history. Aviation was first introduced as a tool of empire in which the projection of modern power in technical performance soon took a primary place of importance. The association of aviation with modernity continued following decolonisation, when African "flag carriers" were the celebrated emblems of national independence and state power. The operational and financial problems of African airlines, frequently ending in their demise, became an indication of the state of their countries. African airlines thus remained an emblem for independent African states, but not in the way the leaders of African independence had anticipated. Flying remains a powerful instrument of social, economic and political power and status to those Africans who have access to it and an object of desire to those who have not. As intercontinental aviation became more securitised and scrutinised in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of global anti emigration policies, the word "flight" took on a double meaning for Africans who dream of a better life elsewhere, while for the travels of the affluent the double meaning of the French word "vol" might have become an appropriate aphorism.
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses power structures in the urban motorcycle-taxi sector in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It looks at social practices of transport operators and state actors and how they negotiate, enable and restrict market access through power relations.
Paper long abstract:
In recent years/decades motorcycle-taxi services have seen strong growth in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. In cities such as Dar es Salaam they are part of a larger process that transforms the way people travel through urban space. In light of urban growth, social change, and changing mobility needs moto-taxi services fulfil essential functions as providers of public transport. They increase mobility through feeder services, accessing underserved areas, and providing end-to-end trips. Thus, they impact on which places are reached and how distances are covered. Moto-taxis also bring about changing forms/conditions of traveling with regard to security, comfort, and individual preferences but also involve negative externalities and conflicts (e.g. regarding regulations, road safety, emissions).
The mechanisms through which this 'new' urban travel mode is facilitated are based on (the transformation of) social practices and the way actors (stakeholders) are embedded in social structures, networks, and relations, and how this enables or constrains their actions. It depends on public demand and acceptance through urban dwellers. But it also depends on those actors who provide the service and/or can influence/control/restrict its expansion. This latter point is in focus of the proposed paper. It looks at how moto-taxis manage to access the market of transport provision and thus 'power travel' by ferrying large numbers of passengers. In order to understand how market access is enabled or constrained the paper looks at how governance structures are actively negotiated between actors in the moto-taxi field and therefore at the role of 'power in travel'.
Paper short abstract:
Examines the ideas and justifications surrounding the establishment of a number of specific airfields and aerodromes throughout Zambia in the 1920s and 1930s, and argues that fascination and not notions of control lie at the basis of this historical development.
Paper long abstract:
I am particularly interested in the various optimistic, and with the benefit of hindsight charmingly naive, ideas that members of the colonial administration and elite had with regard to aeroplanes and the possibilities of flight in colonial Zambia. My paper deals with the schemes and many pies in the sky that developed as a result of this fascination. In particular I examine the ideas and justifications surrounding the establishment of a number of specific airfields and aerodromes throughout Zambia in the 1920s and 1930s. Theoretically the paper deals with colonial notions of control and the role of aircraft within this, and suggests that romantic imaginings of burgeoning flight and not colonial discipline triggered the passion for aircraft and all things attached thereto in colonial Zambia.
The paper is based on extensive archival fieldwork carried out in archives and museums in Zambia, South Africa, and Great Britain, as well as field visits to a number of the airfields and locations dealt with in the paper
Paper short abstract:
Boatmen and their boats on Congo’s and Senegal’s rivers have been and continue to be agents and platforms of 'floating urbanity'.
Paper long abstract:
For a long time boatmen on Congo's and Senegal's rivers have been economic, but also cultural brokers who assure the nexus between urban and rural populations and their livelihoods. Congo's larger river boats (Integrated Tug Boats), but also the locally developed Congolese baleinières, are floating platforms of urbanity that carry Kinshasa's urban culture of music, consumption, beer and electricity into the 'interior' of the country. As part of the kinetic hierarchy of Congo's multi-modal transport network, boats are not just technologies of propulsion - both in the kinetic and the social sense. Ever since the introduction of steam and Diesel, they are also technologies of capitalistic penetration, pushing on to conquer the remote. While for passengers travelling on a river is often connected with ludic joy and liminality, the boat journey also oozes boredom and regularity, turning the up-river cities at the end of the trip into harbours of arrival and relief. Inspired by Wolfgang Schievelbusch's thesis that transport technologies can lead to an industrialisation of space and time, the paper investigates whether this experience of 'floating urbanity' and the shipping technology as such has historically conditioned the ways in which urbanity in African up-river secondary towns is practiced and performed.
Paper short abstract:
Does the nganya ride indicate how status, power and agency are negotiated, thus translating travel from commute to wish fulfilment? Is the nganya ride an interplay between human and technological agency whereby strategies such as names, colour and lights animate and anthropomorphise the vehicles?
Paper long abstract:
The term matatu is widely known as the name for the Kenyan public transport vehicles. The competitive nature of the matatu industry necessitates the employment of tactics such as speeding and styling up of the vehicles in order to get a market edge. Although these tactics are mainly business strategies, in this paper, I focus on them as lenses that can illuminate the interaction between human-beings and technology. Focus is on manyanga (nganya), mini-bus matatus which greatly utilize many of the business tactics referred to above. They are easily recognized by their stylish look, speed and boldly calligraphed names. I propose to conduct a survey of nganyas plying between Nairobi and Ongata Rongai (a town about 25 kilometres south of Nairobi city). I will interview nganya crew and passengers and also observe them both inside the nganyas and at the terminus to investigate the dynamics at play in the human activity of travel and the relationship between humans and technology. This will address the questions whether the experience of the nganya ride can act as an indicator of how status, power and agency are negotiated thus translating travel from mere commute to real or imagined wish fulfilments; also whether the nganya ride can be read as an interplay between human and technological agency whereby strategies such as names, art work and lights not only individualize, but also animate and anthropomorphise the nganyas.