Paper short abstract:

The paper provides an overview of the so-called use perspective in the history of technology with the purpose of demonstrating A) how this perspective can enrich the study of African urbanization and B) what historians of technology can learn from the scholarship on African urbanization

Paper long abstract:

In recent years historians of technology have shifted their focus from studying the innovation of new technology to historical perspectives that include also the use and maintenance of technologies. This change of perspective entails also a shift from studies of Large Technological Systems and Technology as an abstract entity to studies that explore the impact of specific technologies - small, old, mundane, "creole" (Edgerton) and "everyday" (Arnold) technologies that are in use widely in societies at given moments in history. At their best use perspectives on technology have fundamentally changed the historical timelines that structure narratives of technological development and modernity. Geographical assumptions about our technological infrastructures and trajectories are also challenged as innovation-centric narratives are supplemented by use-centric perspectives that adopt broader notions of technological agency, impact, and expertise. In this paper I present a review of the use perspective literature with the purpose of identifying A) specific ways in which the use perspective in the history of technology can enrich the study of African urbanization in historical and contemporary contexts and B) what historians of technology can learn from the scholarship on African urbanization. I argue that the use perspective has the potential to open a rich theoretical and empirical landscape for historians, anthropologists, STS scholars and others studying urbanization processes in African contexts.