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Far-fetched facts
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ISBN: 0262182645 9780262182645 9786612240607 0262255030 1282240609 9780262255035 9781282240605 Year: 2009 Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press


Book
The World of Indicators : The Making of Governmental Knowledge through Quantification
Author:
ISBN: 1316397076 1316091260 1316393836 1107086221 1107450837 9781316393833 9781316397077 9781316091265 Year: 2015 Publisher: Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press,

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Abstract

The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance.


Book
Translating Technology in Africa. : Technicisation
Authors: ---
ISBN: 9004688285 Year: 2024 Publisher: Leiden, The Netherlands : Koninklijke Brill BV,

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This volume revisits one of the great challenges of our time - the global circulation of technology and the resulting technicisation. Together, the introductory essay and six case studies argue that while circulation inevitably leads to the global standardisation of some forms, successful technicisation depends on local appropriation that takes place in the interstitial zones of translation. These zones, characterised by their asymmetrical power relations, need to be constantly renegotiated, recreated, and maintained in order to sustain decolonial translations. The aim of this volume is to stimulate further experimental praxiographic studies of decolonial translation in processes of technicisation, and thereby ignite novel, forward-looking theoretical debates. Contributors are Sarah Biecker, Marc Boeckler, Jude Kagoro, Jochen Monstadt, Sung-Joon Park, Eva Riedke, Richard Rottenburg, Klaus Schlichte, Jannik Schritt, Alena Thiel, Christiane Tristl, Jonas van der Straeten.


Multi
Travelling models in African conflict resolution : translating technologies of social ordering
Authors: --- ---
ISSN: 15746925 ISBN: 900427409X 9789004274099 9789004264601 9004264604 1306808596 Year: 2014 Volume: 13 Publisher: Leiden Brill

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Travelling Models offers a theoretical concept for comparative research on conflict management in Africa in processes of globalization: how is change in one place related to developments in other places? Why are certain issues that are important in one place taken up in other places, while others are not? The authors examine how the travel of models enact changes, particularly in African conflict situations, most often in unexpected ways. They look at what happens when a model has been put into practice at a conflict site, and they pay attention to the forms of social (re-)ordering resulting from this process. The authors look, among others, at conflict managing models of power- and revenue sharing, mediation, freedom of expression, disaster management, community involvement and workshopping. Contributors are: Andrea Behrends, Lydie Cabane, Veronika Fuest, Dejene Gemechu, Mutasim Bashir Ali Hadi, Remadji Hoinathy, Mario Krämer, Sung-Joon Park, Tinashe Pfigu, Richard Rottenburg, Sylvanus Spencer and Kees van der Waal. The Introduction of this volume is being offered in Open Access


Book
Disrupting territories : land, commodification & conflict in Sudan
Authors: --- ---
ISBN: 1782042946 1782042636 1847010547 Year: 2014 Publisher: Woodbridge, Suffolk : James Currey,

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Nowhere has a range of case studies of Sudan been brought together in a single volume. Given the concern with the growing number and complexity of conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan there is a significant readership in academic circles and from those involved in humanitarian organisations of all kinds. Professor Peter Woodward, University of Reading "A timely contribution to an important set of debates ... tackles questions emerging from discussions about modernisation, urbanisation and globalisation from an explicitly local angle with regards to Sudan." Dr Harry Verhoeven, University of Oxford. Sudan experiences one of the most severe fissures between society and territory in Africa. Not only were its international borders redrawn when South Sudan separated in 2011, but conflicts continue to erupt over access to land: territorial claims are challenged by local and international actors; borders are contested; contracts governing the privatization of resources are contentious; and the legal entitlements to agricultural land are disputed. Under these new dynamics of land grabbing and resource extraction, fundamental relationships between people and land are being disrupted: while land has become a global commodity, for millions it still serves as a crucial reference for identity-formation and constitutes their most important source of livelihood. This book seeks to disentangle the emerging relationships between people and land in Sudan. The first part focuses on the spatial impact of resource-extracting economies: foreign agricultural land acquisitions; Chinese investments in oil production; and competition between artisanal and industrial gold mining. Detailed ethnographic case studies in the second part, from Darfur, South Kordofan, Red Sea State, Kassala, Blue Nile, and Khartoum State, show how rural people experience "their" land vis-à-vis the latest wave of privatization and commercialization of land rights. Jo̘rg Gertel is Professor of Economic Geography at Leipzig University; Richard Rottenburg is Chair of Anthropology at the University of Halle; Sandra Calkins is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle.


Book
Translating Technology in Africa.
Authors: --- ---
ISBN: 9004678352 9004678344 Year: 2023 Publisher: Leiden : BRILL,

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Abstract

Brings together authors from different disciplines who engage with Science and Technology Studies (STS) to stimulate curiosity about the diversity of sociotechnical assemblages on the African continent. The contributions provide detailed praxeographic examinations of technologies at work in postcolonial contexts. The series of 5 volumes aims to catalyse the development of a field of research that is still in its infancy in Africa and promises to offer novel insights into past, present, and future challenges and opportunities facing the continent. The first volume, on "Metrics", explores practices of quantification and digitisation. The chapters examine how numbers are aggregated and how the resulting metrics shape new realities.


Book
Identity Politics and the New Genetics : Re/Creating Categories of Difference and Belonging
Authors: --- --- ---
ISBN: 1789204712 Year: 2012 Publisher: Berghahn Books

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Abstract

Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.

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