Beach Haven

Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. 2018. The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Among many threads, Mavhunga makes a point around ‘thingamication’. He shares examples throughout the book on colonial (and later) white perspective on African people as objects of study, control, labor, and information.

One striking example was the use of fences in building corridors through tsetse infested areas. Local labor was used alongside a thing called a bulldozer to clear forest where the land was too steep for the machine. They were also used to put in fencing, then funneled through those fences and ‘de-flying’ stations while moving along the fenced paths (182). The roads themselves were also a product of African labor, mostly built to allow for traffic between white-owned farms as well as for Africans to get from their homes to work in mines or on farms. These same Africans were able to move through traditional paths in ways that avoided infested areas during infested times before the belief that roads and fences were necessary.

Another particularly difficult approach from the perspective of Mavhunga was government creation of villages as a prophylactic. This effort removed people from their ancestral homes to gather them in new communities in between white-owned farms. Clearing and building up these small towns forced elimination of tsetse habitat (as well as habitat for nature in general), lowering the threat to sparse white-owned farms. The towns became a form of human shield. This approach lead to overcrowding of people in the buffer zones, and over burdening of the soils around the new towns (153). Mavhunga gives examples of eventual movement patterns adopted by officials that were not all that different than those previously employed by locals, but instead of preventative movement efforts these were about damage control (161).
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I’ll share one more human-as-object example. When authorities added chemical efforts to ‘mechanized phytocides’ (141) Africans again became a tool for the effort. While pilots sprayed less effectually from the thing called an airplane, African workers called ‘spray boys’ were given backpack pneumatic sprayers to go directly into the infestation. This put them as risk both from the fly and from the chemical poisons. Mavhunga offers a great deal of insight over several chapters about which chemicals were used during various periods and the effect on the fly, the plants, the environment, wildlife, and humans who both applied the poison and lived on the affected land. Decision makers only backed off aggressive use of chemicals when whites in the area began to complain after the shift from organic to synthetic pesticides (152).

Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Vernacular

Among the threads in Tilley’s work is the idea of a linkage of vernacular with goals. In many instances, officials at the Colonial Office and scientists in the various studies documented similar goals. For example, all were trying to understand how to make the best use of soils in agriculture. Depending on the era, they also often agreed on concepts of ecology.

Tilley shares examples of divergent goals as well. In areas of ecology, forestry, anthropology, etc., the scientists were interested in local farming approaches. Colonial officials were sometimes more interested in helping white settlers to succeed in creating cash crops. Native agriculture differed from area to area just as soils differed. Burning, then planting in particular ways, allowing portions of land to lay fallow, all looked like randomness to European farmers who approached farming essentially the same way regardless of environment. Indigenous farms in Rhodesia, for example, remained sustainable. White farms in the same area were initially fruitful, but by year three or four tended to fail as soils became depleted (p. 158). Practices of clearing and tilling by Europeans also led to damaging ground erosion. Homer Shanz referred to such farming approaches as “the tyranny of the plow” (p. 136). He sought to guard against “dogmas that hinder successful agricultural development”.

There was a definite tension within the various studies described with regard to considering local conditions as opposed to scaling up to regional or continental approaches. The larger scale proponents looked to standardization. Localization proponents looked to unique factors in a given area. As movement in the scientific community discussed merits of using ecology as a potential way to connect various fields of science, consideration of factor interrelationships seemed ever more complex, even locally.

Similar to the debate over local vs standard farming approaches, attempts to control trypanosomiasis, or sleeping disease, spread by the tsetse fly were cast in similar language. William Ormsby-Gore noted, “No one form of attack upon the tsetse fly is universally practicable” (p. 177). Note the language of war used around to the time of both world wars.

Just as dogmas noted by Shanz clouded European colonialism in farming, similar language around the people of Africa shaped perspectives toward native populations. Tilley tells us how the language of eugenics and demography “had important effects on conduct and legislation of colonial administrations” (p. 258). She shows a number of examples of scientists and administrators who believed Europeans could learn more from locals about farming techniques. She also gives examples of language in which indigenes are seen as ‘backward’ or somehow 'less'.

​Vernaculars differed throughout the work. Whether the language was political, administrative, scientific, that of the local farmer, or of workers in faraway laboratories, language, perspective, and actions are clearly intertwined.

​BLACK INVENTORS IN THE AGE OF SEGREGATION
By Rayvon Fouché
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 225 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work the author shares the personal stories of three specific African American inventors in attempt to call into question several myths often perpetuated about black technologists. The ideas are how a patent equals financial success, people of color invent purely to uplift the race, or that Black-patented objects are the first of their kind. Fouché approaches these myths by building a narrative about each of three inventors that contradict one or more of them. The inventors are Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson.
 
This approach by Fouché goes a long way to dispel the inventor-as-hero narrative which has been put in question by other writers about other inventors without the race angle included. In this work race is certainly part of the narrative, but not exclusively the narrative, making the complexity of both the inventors and others they interact with more nuanced, and enlightening. Fouché approaches this historical and sociological work in this way in order to show three different people with three different personalities, cultures and motivations. In other words, they are each a unique person and not some sort of imagined icon.
 
The work would appeal to those with interest in technology, sociology, racial studies, and history. Fouché connects with readers through clear language, personal stories of the three inventors, depicting and dispelling ideas commonly held in both the African American and majority communities. The strength of the work comes through the individual lives depicted, and how these men fit into larger societies. They are juxtaposed to other prominent Black leaders that they were at odds with. Their histories do show how they were at times helped by race, and at times hamstrung. Perhaps a deeper look at societal trends that inspired the inventor-as-hero myth, and in particular the black-inventor-as-hero myth may have add more insight into Fouché’s main argument. One could argue, given the documented experiences, how the effects of these inventors’ efforts perpetuated these beliefs at least at some level, and were not just debunking.

​SCIENCE IN ACTION
By Bruno Latour
Harvard University Press, 1987, 274 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
Subtitled How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Latour claims that as scientific ideas become generally accepted they are ‘black boxed’ (taken for granted in future knowledge claims). In what later becomes known as actor-network theory (ANT) his thesis is that knowledge is not linear discovery, but rather the building of supportive relationships among actors (human or otherwise), creating a web of idea dependency among scientific communities. The author seeks to describe the need to follow the closure of scientific controversies in order to understand the nature of knowledge production.
 
Latour seeks to link himself with scientists, and those who study aspects of science, he himself using the scientific method to study practitioners of the scientific method. In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this is a seminal work as it introduces a link between the philosophical perspective such as the social construction of knowledge, with the practical need for scientists to enlist others for consensus and adaptation. Unfortunately, the idea that knowledge is a function of the strength of actor relationships leaves out the potential of black boxing what at some future point turns out to be untrue.
 
As mentioned above this is foundational STS work as paradigmatically shifted away from the idea of linear knowledge advancement through discovery. ANT takes into account all forces at work in the knowledge creation process, including non-human participants.

THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
4th Edition
By Thomas S. Kuhn
The University of Chicago Press, 2012, 217 pages

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (original 1962) Thomas Kuhn sheds doubt on the cumulative nature of scientific knowledge, and offers an alternative explanation of how scientists’ views change over time. Kuhn describes the source of his inspiration as coming from historiographic cyclical patterns leading up to and following major shifts, or “extraordinary episodes” (p.6), in scientific thought; noting the pattern as normal science, puzzle-solving, an established paradigm, discovery of anomalies, crisis, and revolution. The author’s “most fundamental objective is to urge a change in the perception and evaluation of familiar data” (p. xliii), here he is referring to historiographical data, in order to advocate a “reorientation” (ibid) of how we understand the nature of scientific change.

Kuhn appeals to both historians of science, and communities of scientists, in an effort to show value in both disciplines, and how the ideas of each influences the other. His argument is strengthened through use of multiple specific examples of scientific revolutions (extraordinary episodes both large and small) to show how events followed the proposed historic pattern.

The author points to weaknesses in his argument in a postscript added to the 1969 edition, having ignored other influences on paradigms (which he referred to as a 'disciplinary matrix') such as metaphysics, values, and shared commitment (p. 185-186). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become canon in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), as it raises significant questions in history, sociology, philosophy, and policy; all core concerns in the STS discipline.

SPACESHIP IN THE DESERT
ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND URBAN DESIGN IN ABU DHABI
By Gökçe Günel
Duke University Press, 2019, 256 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach

Success or Failure?


This book recounts the history of an entire community created in the deserts of Abu Dhabi based on renewable energy approaches. The idea was to create a campus in which new energy technologies could develop to help the country become less dependent on petroleum revenue. The name of the new city is Masdar.

Günel notes how Bruno Latour referred to technology as a system (p.139). Where most of us see only the portion we interact with, that portion is supported by an entire network of interconnected parts. For example, at Masdar people in general noted the pod cars of the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system as if they were one and the same (p.142). In fact, the pod cars are of no worth without the supporting system known as the undercroft, the controlling software, and an army of maintenance crew, often made up of workers from Asia. These workers were not allowed to live in the city, nor even use the pod cars once up and running.


How does one describe project success or failure? Exactly! The fact that this is even a question points to how criteria (official and unofficial) varies with every beholder’s eye. 


The PRT was not successful in that it could not handle large numbers of passengers efficiently. It was not cost effective. The undercroft requirement caused increased indirect expenses for the buildings which had to be lifted by 20 feet to accommodate the required space. One could simply walk the short distance the PRT served. It went not faster than a bicycle. Eventually, when a new executive took over the Masdar facility, the PRT was cancelled.


Despite the pessimistic view, others saw how people who came to visit the facility lined up to ride the PRT despite the availability of a shuttle bus during large events. Even jaded academics who pointed out issues still used the system because it was fun, making functionality a secondary consideration (p.142).


Günel makes the point of how the Masdar PRT is just one in a string of PRT projects that all end essentially the same. Although the system in West Virginia is still in use, it does so with a $120M price tag and an annual cost of $5M, and has stayed essentially small scale. It only goes between  West Virginia University (WVU) campuses and downtown Morgantown. 


In his 1994 book  The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Jame Ferguson argues whether or not original project goals are realized, something is accomplished. The project goals represent an entry point of development efforts, but whatever effect comes about, stakeholders think of some outcomes as desirable, and others as undesirable. 

THE SYNTHETIC AGE
OUTDESIGNING EVOLUTION, RESURRECTING SPECIES, AND REENGINEERING OUR WORLD
By Christopher J. Preston
The MIT Press, 2018, 195 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach

The Singularity

Among the many threads in The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston refers to a book by Ray Kurzweil. In The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil defines this event as when artificial intelligence (AI) gets ahead of human intellect. Preston characterizes results of this theoretical event as “a future in which artificially intelligent machines gain a runaway intellect that exceeds anything the human brain can counter” (157).

This theme is a common thread for Preston. Earlier in the book he expresses concerns over other synthetic proposals run amuck. Nanobots that self-replicate, biobots acting as bacteria, genetically created bacteria acting as bacteria, and unforeseen effects of approaches to cooling the earth are some of the examples Preston points to where technical solutions to natural concerns carry their own risks.

Why the ethical backlash to the idea of genetically-created humans, for instance? Dubbed the Human Genome Project 2, some organizations want to take technical lessons learned with genetic recreation of simpler life forms and apply them to the more complex genetic sequences of humans (154). The singularity of AI described by Kurzwail considers software as a servant of humanity, even if the risk of so many sci-fi movies of the machine taking over exists. Creating human life synthetically for purposes such as harvesting organs or experimentation raises reasonably grave concerns. For instance, would a genetically created human be a human? If so, then human rights would apply to them, and would preclude their use as test subjects or organ farms. If not human, then one could argue the ‘experiment’ would have failed. This ethical area hearkens back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

One of Preston’s base arguments shows how concern over human interference with nature is not avoidable. In fact, humans have always interfered with nature. Preston points out how some argue that humans are a product of nature so human acts are acts of nature. The difference between human acts and natural acts gets blurry when humans intervene in natural processes as simple as moving butterflies north in England to help them migrate fast enough to avoid perceived global warming effects, or as complicated as seeding sulfuric acid in the stratosphere to lower sunlight penetration. Human history and natural history begin to merge (149).

EBOLA: HOW A PEOPLE'S SCIENCE HELPED END AN EPIDEMIC
By Paul Richards
Zed Books, 2016, 180 pages
Review by Michael Beach

Just the Facts?

Among the arguments Richards makes, I'd like to examine the area of messages originating from official channels.

Is it possible to be factually correct and still misunderstand? Perhaps it is if one only has (or shares) some facts, or if the facts come too late to have any real meaning. In his book on how ‘people’s science’ helped end Ebola in three countries, Paul Richards makes this case in terms of messaging by international and state organizations attempting to ‘educate’ residents in upper west Africa. Richards does not make the case for or against Ebola origination through eating or handling of ‘bush meat’ (zoonotic spillover). He does make the case that once transmission was obviously moving person-to-person (nosocomial and family care), continued public messages about bush meat did more to increase mistrust than to curb the disease (25).


People in the forest border area were particularly targeted with bush meat messages. Likely this would be due to assumptions that these areas were where hunting was most likely to occur. Despite this, even when Ebola moved along roads and began to display in urban areas messaging was slow to change. Villagers, and later urbanites, quickly lost faith in messages coming from official sources in part due to this dissonance. As messages shifted toward person-to-person transmission, highlighting danger in caring for the sick and handling of bodies, mistrust was still lingering. Facts about people not adopting safe practices lead to untrue assumptions by official decision makers about culture as a route cause of Ebola spread (51).


People in affected areas had already figured out on their own health how care and body handling were risky behaviors, but again the messaging from official sources was dissonant. Authorities offered centralized care and body removal, but were often not available when actually called. People were not able to see their family once removed either for care or burial. Many decided if death was inevitable it would be better to just die at home among family. Despite assumptions that locals were unreasonably resistive, growing cries to train people, supply the tools, and allow for more dispersed care and body removal using ‘safe burial’ practices resulted in a quicker drop off of cases. Once people understood the disease (transfer limited to contact with body fluids, hydration focus) many figured out how to improvise protective gear through use of things like trash bags and raincoats. One might ask the question, is unfamiliar different than uninformed?


As regular people and respected local leaders understood the nature of Ebola, use of those facts lead to incorporation of new social adoption of care and burial. Once local trusted social leaders incorporated relevant facts to actual experience, the link of science and society, ‘people’s science’, all three countries reviewed in the book became strong examples of effective disease control.

DEMOCRATIC DESIGNS
INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION AND ELECTORAL PRACTICES IN POSTWAR BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
By Kimberley Coles
University of Michigan, 2007, 297 pages
Review by Michael Beach

Democracy is neither natural nor intuitive (5)

For those of us who lived our entire life in a country based on democratic principles, the idea that democracy would be thought of as unnatural and counter intuitive seems itself to be counter intuitive. Coles makes a compelling case when one considers all the thought and effort it takes to create an election. An election is really three separate processes, voter registration, voting, and results tabulating. All are complex. Each are made up of many actants (people, objects, processes).

Parts of the international community have a fundamental belief of democratic society as the best power to bring about peace (237). Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed to outsiders as somewhere that could be improved through the imposition of democratic principles since in the 1990s it suffered from war, authoritarianism, and communism (33).

Coles argues rather convincingly how the need to create complex labor-intensive processes, and a perceived need to impose democracy through negotiation and external experts (or even internal experts) would seem to question naturalness. So many places along the election path are fraught with both innocent and intentional process ambiguities and deviations. Many options along the planning and execution paths are open to design and interpretation based on assumptions by system architects and implementers.

Since democracy was a new approach to Bosnians, fears of unfairness or interference led to a desire for transparency. This transparency was bodily symbolized in form of the (sheer, mere, peer) presence of international experts (88). This is similar to the point made by Rist about the need for technical measures including scientific (or expert) knowledge.

Coles argues not only a need to use experts, but also how these experts are knowledgeable about processes that are used in virtually any setting using a cookie-cutter approach (16). The agencies seeking to facilitate the democracy machine approach argue that using ‘standard’ practices makes the effort apolitical or acultural (77) much as Ferguson describes. Technicality equates to depolitization (152).

The intent of holding an election is to translate voter will into political authority so long as those imposing democracy deem the outcome as desirable. The process has to be perceived as valid, but who’s perception matters? Whoever judges validity, in Coles argument the process and outcome needs to be perceived as free and fair. The election is not discretely either free and fair or not free and not fair, rather processes need to be free enough and fair enough to create confidence (155). Mathematically, that is more likely if there is some level of transparency (though total transparency is not really possible). How transparency is measured is another ambiguous concept. So long as the difference between winners and losers is well outside the margin of error perhaps there is more trust. When races are more closely contested then trust is probably more an issue.
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HIV EXCEPTIONALISM
By Adia Benton
University of Minnesota Press, 2015, 176 pages
Review by Michael Beach

Kabuki Theater?

Benton sums up the heart of her findings as “…the aggregate of HIV programming techniques has given rise to new forms of social relations based on biological status and further entrenched AIDS as having exceptional status” (143). Among many supportive threads of this summation one link to other similar published works is the concern over aid colonialism (139).

A number of behaviors and attitudes link HIV/AIDS development in Sierra Leone to colonial perspectives similar to other forms of global development efforts. In general, infected among the poor are most dependent on the healthcare and food aid offered through sponsored support groups. These programs prescribed patient behaviors based on models used in other parts of Africa for the good of the people. HIV-positive people who have independent means were not subject to the demands of such groups and ultimately received the best care.

For example, patients were often grouped into program-prescribed identities such as “HIV-positive,” “former combatant,” “vulnerable woman,” “bush wife,” and “traumatized” among others (140). Within these roles, infected people are expected to display behaviors which are sometimes contradictory in order to show they are deserving of assistance. How does one demonstrate vulnerability and self-sufficiency at the same time?  One should look good to show the effectiveness of treatment. In this case looking good is equated with looking well. At the same time, if one does not seem vulnerable then perception may be that the person does not need the help. The help recipient must then navigate a sort of theater that requires shifting appearance based on circumstances and audience.

Benton points to how the poor must be accountable to development agencies. Metrics such as showing up on time to group events, participating in public events such as marches or parades, making public acknowledgement of their status of being HIV-positive show complicity.

Not only development agencies expect compliance. So does the state. Government leadership want to appear competent to those same development agencies to keep the funding coming in. One approach is an appeal to moral conformance in the most private of human activities. Benton raises the issue of ownership of patient bodies. Clarifying the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’ she notes how the state expects people to abstain or practice ‘safer sex’ in an effort for both care for the state and care of the state. The more extreme version of this argument depicts personal sexuality as a resource of the state (130), the argument being some behaviors lead to the spread of illness and an increased demand on healthcare resources. This seems not unlike how actors’ behavior is prescribed to complete a successful Kabuki performance, but with play directors changing throughout.