{"id":645,"date":"2014-10-14T06:15:17","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T06:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=645"},"modified":"2014-10-14T06:15:17","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T06:15:17","slug":"the-overlooked-history-of-african-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/the-overlooked-history-of-african-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"The overlooked history of African technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

New book explores the confluence of innovation, hunting, and nature in Zimbabwe.<\/em>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The overlooked history of African technology<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, MA — In the border region where Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa meet, indigenous hunters have for centuries made and used an impressive array of tools. There is the bow, made from giant raisin trees and called the \u201cvurha\u201d or \u201cuta\u201d in the languages of two ethnic groups in the area, the chiShona and the xiTshangana. Local craftsmen make arrows (\u201cmatlhari\u201d or \u201cmiseve\u201d), knives (\u201cmukwanga\u201d or \u201cbanga\u201d), and axes (\u201cxihloka\u201d or \u201cdemo\u201d). Until the advent of colonial rule, villagers also dug pits lined with poison-tipped stakes (\u201cgoji\u201d or \u201chunza\u201d), where animals as big as elephants were captured.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hunt was a transient or mobile workspace where work was done on the move,\u201d says Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, an associate professor in MIT\u2019s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. \u201cBoys were schooled in the arts of tracking, shooting, trapping, making weaponry, and using trees as assets for making poisons, medicines, food, and other purposes. The hunt was a professoriate of indigenous knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

These hunts were also incorporated within a highly spiritualized understanding of forests, animal life, and human behavior, Mavhunga emphasizes. For instance, hunters would never orphan an antelope fawn, and strict local taboos limited elephant hunting to basic needs for meat, skin, and ivory. Chiefs and spirit mediums enforced these rules.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the maTshangana calendar is based, in part, on the life cycles of animals: \u201cMpala,\u201d or November, is when antelopes give birth; \u201cNkokoni,\u201d or December, is when wildebeest are born and elephants mate. No hunting was allowed during these months.<\/p>\n

\u201cCenturies of acquired and received knowledge were available on the annual rates of increase, out of which sustainable yields were calculated,\u201d Mavhunga writes in a new book about technology, society, and nature in southern Africa.<\/p>\n

In exploring the hunt as a mobile space for work and education, Mavhunga\u2019s book \u2014 \u201cTransient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe,\u201d just published by MIT Press \u2014 is a call for a historical rethinking about the meaning, prevalence, and application of technological innovation in Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I am challenging is the idea that technology can only come from outside Africa, from the laboratories and factories,\u201d Mavhunga says. \u201cThis general narrative of technology transfer \u2014 from the haves to the have-nots \u2014 is one I find troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t the only thing Mavhunga describes as troubling in his book. The colonial-era portioning of land into game reserves, as he makes clear, has forced indigenous people out of their native lands and criminalized traditional hunting \u2014 as \u201cpoaching\u201d \u2014 while providing local residents no clear economic alternative. That policy has continued in the postcolonial era, to the continued detriment of locals, as Mavhunga emphasizes.<\/p>\n

Ordinary people<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mavhunga grew up in rural Zimbabwe; his book involves archival and linguistic research, political analysis, and what he describes as \u201ca wealth of childhood and adult experience\u201d that included making some of the technologies he details.<\/p>\n

The work also comes from the scholarly recognition that relatively few studies of African technology have been written from an African point of view. A more common perspective focuses on the Western technologies, such as guns and quinine, which helped enable colonial incursions on the continent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWestern scholars talk about technology in the Roman Empire,\u201d Mavhunga says. \u201cWhat if we were to do this for Africa? If we say that technology is something that comes prior to the colonial period, what does it do to the way we think about history?\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cWhat then happens to the idea and practice of technology when its itineraries are so thoroughly dominated by spirituality? What does it say about the meanings of technology within African societies, if one takes vaShona and maTshangana as an example?\u201d<\/p>\n

The deep experiential knowledge of the forests that Mavhunga explores in the book also applies to the tsetse fly, known for transmitting the African \u201csleeping sickness,\u201d or trypanosomiasis. The tsetse fly inhabits low-lying areas, so vaShona and maTshangana tended to develop agriculture in higher-altitude areas.<\/p>\n

When the British forcibly occupied Zimbabwe starting in 1890, they had no technology to deal with the tsetse fly, and so deferred to local technological practices instead, such as concentrated human settlements and control of traffic to reduce the spread of trypanosomiasis; forest-clearance efforts that created buffer zones between infected and uninfected areas; and the elimination of wild animals in such areas.<\/p>\n

To accomplish this last step, the British employed vaShona and msTshangana hunters, as Mavhunga\u2019s book explains. In so doing, Europe\u2019s colonizers were relying on the more effective technologies of the Africans, in contrast to the more widespread narrative of Western technological superiority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been somebody who believes ordinary people have something up their sleeves,\u201d Mavhunga says. \u201cThey know things that we think they don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two critical debates<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ultimately, Mavhunga hopes to spur debate on both the trajectory of African technology and the basic policy questions surrounding game reserves. Postcolonial African governments, he believes, \u201cneed to initiate a serious discussion\u201d about the realities of the game reserves and their consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people who fought for independence had been promised that they would reclaim these ancestral lands that were taken away from them by force of arms and arson,\u201d Mavhunga says. The essential issue, he adds, is \u201chow to serve the people and save the animals\u201d in these areas; understanding the traditional practices that let both thrive in the past is a necessary first step, in his view.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder colonialism, when the hunt was criminalized, all that knowledge was also criminalized,\u201d Mavhunga says. \u201cAnd when you criminalize that practice, you destabilize the place where the knowledge existed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New book explores the confluence of innovation, hunting, and nature in Zimbabwe. CAMBRIDGE, MA — In the border region where Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa meet, indigenous hunters have for centuries made and used an impressive array of tools. There is the bow, made from giant raisin trees and called the \u201cvurha\u201d or \u201cuta\u201d in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,32,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-social-science","category-techbiz"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02-202x300.jpg",202,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",243,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",44,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",288,426,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",65,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/MIT-Clapperton-Mavhunga-02.jpg",150,222,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Culture<\/a> Social Science<\/a> Tech<\/a>","tag_info":"Tech","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}