The Social Life of Connectivity in Africa

Mirjam de Bruijn, Rijk van Dijk, M. de Bruijn, R. van Dijk

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781137278012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137278029
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The rapid increase in adoption of modern 'connective' technologies like the mobile phone has reshaped the social landscape of Africa. This book examines the myriad possibilities that the post-global moment offers African societies to develop and to relate, offering profound new insights into the processes of globalization.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Connectivity and the Postglobal Moment: (Dis)connections and Social Change in Africa
• 1 Flows and Forces: Once Contained, Now Detained? On Connections Past and Present in Rwanda
• 2 Research Practice in Connections: Travels and Methods
• 3 Patriarchy Turned Upside Down: The Flight of the Royal Women of Kom, Cameroon from 1920 to the 1960s
• 4 Beyond the Last Frontier: Major Trollope and the Eastern Caprivi Zipfel
• 5 The “Victorian Internet” Reaches Halfway to Cairo: Cape Tanganyika Telegraphs, 1875–1926
• 6 Marriages and Mobility in Akan Societies: Disconnections and Connections over Time and Space
• 7 A Ritual Connection: Urban Youth Marrying in the Village in Botswana
• 8 Connecting Communities and Business: Public-Private Partnerships as the Panacea for Land Reform in Limpopo Province, South Africa
• 9 Connectivities Compared: Transnational Islamic NGOs in Chad and Senegal
• 10 Love Therapy: A Brazilian Pentecostal (Dis)connection in Maputo
• 11 Ajala Travel: Mobility and Connections as Forms of Social Capital in Nigerian Society
• 12 Connecting “Ourselves”: A Dogon Ethnic Association and the Impact of Connectivity
• 13 Intimate Strangers: Connecting Fiction and Ethnography
• Index