berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: A Social Science Perspective on Media Practices in Africa: Social Mechanisms, Dynamics and Processes
Jo Helle-Valle and Ardis Storm-Mathisen

Part I: Economy

Chapter 1. Digital Development Imaginaries, Informal Business Practices and the Platformisation of Digital Technology in Zambia
Wendy Willems

Chapter 2. Botswana’s Digital Revolution: What’s in it?
Ardis Storm-Mathisen and Jo Helle-Valle

Part II: Gender and Social Relations

Chapter 3. Bolingo ya face: Digital Marriages, Playfulness and the Search for Change in Kinshasa
Katrien Pype

Chapter 4. Texting Like A State: Knowledge and Change in a National mHealth Programme
Nanna Schneidermann

Chapter 5. New Ways of Making Ends Meet? On Batswana Women, Their Uses of the Mobile Phone and Connections through Education
Ardis Storm-Mathisen

Part III: Localities and New Media

Chapter 6. The Public Inside Out: Facebook, Community and Banal Activism in a Cape Town Suburb
Nanna Schneidermann

Chapter 7. From No Media to All Media: Domesticating New Media in a Kalahari Village
Jo Helle-Valle

Afterword: The Electronic Media in Africa, with an Addendum from Mauritius
Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Index

Media Practices and Changing African Socialities

Non-media-centric Perspectives

Edited by Jo Helle-Valle and Ardis Storm-Mathisen
Afterword by Thomas Hylland Eriksen

250 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-78920-661-6 Hb Published (March 2020)

eISBN 978-1-78920-662-3 eBook

Details

“This is a fascinating set of ethnographic and empirically based studies with an excellently penned Introduction.” • Keyan Tomaselli, University of Johannesburg

Deriving from innovative new work by six researchers, this book questions what the new media's role is in contemporary Africa. The chapters are diverse - covering different areas of sociality in different countries - but they unite in their methodological and analytical foundation. The focus is on media-related practices, which require engagement with different perspectives and concerns while situating these in a wider analytical context. The contributions to this collection provide fresh ethnographic descriptions of how new media practices can affect socialities in significant but unpredictable ways.

Jo Helle-Valle is a social anthropologist and Professor in the Development Studies Department at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has published in journals such as Journal of African Media Studies, Africa, Ethnos, History and Anthropology, and New Media & Society.

Ardis Storm-Mathisen is Research Professor at Consumption Research Norway and at the Faculty of Education, Oslo Metropolitan University.

Series: Volume 9, Anthropology of Media

Subject: Media Studies Anthropology (General) Development Studies

Area: Africa

LC: HM851 .M4245 2020

BISAC: SOC052000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Media Studies; SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social