Sale!

Democracy’s Infrastructure: Techno-Politics and Protest after Apartheid (Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology)

Amazon.com Price:  $27.11 (as of 19/04/2019 03:43 PST- Details)

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

In the past decade, South Africa’s “miracle transition” has been interrupted by waves of protests with regards to basic products and services such as water and electricity. Less visibly, the post-apartheid period has witnessed widespread illicit acts involving infrastructure, including the nonpayment of service charges, the bypassing of metering devices, and illegal connections to products and services. Democracy’s Infrastructure shows how such administrative links to the state became a central political terrain throughout the antiapartheid struggle and how this terrain persists in the post-apartheid present. Specializing in conflicts surrounding prepaid water meters, Antina von Schnitzler examines the techno-political forms through which democracy takes shape.

Von Schnitzler explores a controversial project to install prepaid water meters in Soweto―one of the efforts to curb the nonpayment of service charges that started throughout the antiapartheid struggle―and she traces how infrastructure, payment, and technical procedures turn into sites where citizenship is mediated and contested. She follows engineers, utility officials, and local bureaucrats as they believe how one can prompt Sowetans to pay for water, and she shows how local residents and activists wrestle with the constraints imposed by meters. This investigation of democracy from the viewpoint of infrastructure reframes the conventional story of South Africa’s transition, foregrounding the less visible remainders of apartheid and challenging readers to think in more material terms about citizenship and activism in the postcolonial world.

Democracy’s Infrastructure examines how seemingly mundane technological domains turn into charged territory for struggles over South Africa’s political transformation.

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Asia » Japan » General » Democracy’s Infrastructure: Techno-Politics and Protest after Apartheid (Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology)

Recent Products