Mobilities, ICTs and marginality in Africa

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South Africa in comparative perspective Mobility has become a prominent feature in African societies. Populations all over Africa are mobile and politically and economically marginal. Yet, these populations are actively engaged in maintaining social networks across localities. Mobilities, ICTs, and marginality in Africa look at the dramatic changes brought about in socially marginal populations by new ICTs in general and mobile phones in particular. The book aims to situate the cultural, social and, in some cases, the transnational context of ICT appropriation and virtual connectivity to reposition Africans from various countries and contexts as active agents of social change. The intricacies of local ICT use and mobility dynamics in the African context enable us to understand better material cultures, relationships between people, new media and social networking. Equally explored in relation to ICTs are the social and spatial dynamics of communication, association, and belonging across spaces – particularly physical borders, social boundaries, confines, and possibilities informed by the habitus of bodies and practices. Mobilities, ICTs, and marginality in Africa are rich in theoretically informed case studies that lend themselves to comparative perspectives and ethnographies from beyond Africa.

Foreword

Acknowledgement

1. Mobilities, ICTs and marginality in Africa: South Africa in comparative perspective
Francis B Nyamnjoh and Ingrid Brudvig

Part 1: Negotiating Marginality: ICTs as means of empowerment

2. Defeating marginality: Mobile phones as a rite of passage
Crystal Powell

3. Adopting and adapting the ‘Hearing Baby’: Appropriation and domestication of the cell phone by the Deaf of Cape Town
Myrna van Pinxteren

4. The invisible visible and the visible invisible: Zimbabwean migrant women in Johannesburg and their cell phones
Nikiwe Solomon

5. Navigating and negotiating relationships through the cell phone: The case of Basotho women
Kefiloe Sello

Part 2: Negotiating distance: Migration, mobility and ICTs

6. Negotiating intimacy, distance and marginality: Migration, religion and the use of ICTs at the Bay Community Church in Cape Town
Paula Hay

7. Gifting, reciprocity and obligation in communication by young Cameroonians in Cape Town
Kate Jackson

8. Mobility and the challenge of obligation and reciprocity: The case of Côte d’Ivoire
Francis B Nyamnjoh

Part 3: Negotiating belonging: ICTs, diaspora and citizenship

9. Belonging nowhere and everywhere: The repercussion of the Indo-Mauritian Diaspora’s modern connection with India
Moshumee T Dewoo

10. Belonging away from home: Building community and virtual intimacies among frontier Pinyin migrants in Cape Town and Cameroon
Henrietta M Nyamnjoh

11. ICTs, news and networking among Somali migrants in Cape Town: Prospects for a mobile nationhood?
Ingrid Brudvig

Part 4: Reconfiguring the Social Field through Digital Inclusion

12. Mobile margins: Mobile communication and the reconfiguration of the family in post-independence Namibia
Volker Winterfeldt and Ndeshimona Namupala

13. From letter writers to call box attendants: Communicating in a marginal community in Cameroon Grassfields, c. 1940–2000
Walter Gam Nkwi

14. Getting lost: On technologies of identity and belonging
Ana Karina Menezes de Morais

Epilogue
Sophie Oldfield

References

About the authors

Index