"New Information and Communication Technologies and ‘New’ Stratifications of Society: Evidence from Chad, Mali and Cameroon"
Open Lectures Spring 2016
- Date: May 26, 2016
- Time: 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Mirjam de Bruijn (University of Leiden)
- Mirjam de Bruijn is professor in African Studies at Leiden University. She is a researcher at the African studies centre. Her recent research delves into the various ways we can understand new ICTs (mobile telephony, social media) in mobile and urban societies in Africa. Her research is historical-anthropological and has a firm valorization component.
- Location: MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, Göttingen
- Room: Library Hall
For more details please contact buethe(at)mmg.mpg.de.
Research on mobile telephony in African nomadic societies, among African urban youth and in diasporic and transnational societies show new socio-political dynamics. In this talk I present how the appropriation of this new technology has deeply transformed social and hierarchical relations and has led to new stratifications and diversities. We should not only hail the mobile telephony ‘revolution’, but instead search for the profound influence and deep meaning of the new ways to communicate and to acquire information for social change, in terms of rupture and continuation.