Von Schnitzler, Antina. 2013. “TRAVELING TECHNOLOGIES: Infrastructure, Ethical Regimes, and the Materiality of Politics in South Africa: TRAVELING TECHNOLOGIES.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (4): 670–93.
AO: This 2013 article by Antina von Schnitzler looks at how technology itself becomes a political terrain, tracking cycles of innovation and
subversion related to prepaid meters that measure and (dis)connect networked services (esp. electricity or water). She tracks how the pre-paid meter traveled from the UK to South Africa and focuses on the micro techno-politics in the SA township contexts. She notes that the breaking and rewiring of the prepayment devices by local residents (and the constant innovation by engineers that is required as a result) should be analyzes as an unusual terrain where political negotiations are carried out.
Anita von Schnitzler, "Von Schnitzler, Antina. 2013. “TRAVELING TECHNOLOGIES: Infrastructure, Ethical Regimes, and the Materiality of Politics in South Africa: TRAVELING TECHNOLOGIES.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (4): 670–93. ", contributed by Angela Okune, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 15 August 2018, accessed 25 April 2024. http://www.stsinfrastructures.org/content/von-schnitzler-antina-2013-“traveling-technologies-infrastructure-ethical-regimes-and
Critical Commentary
AO: This 2013 article by Antina von Schnitzler looks at how technology itself becomes a political terrain, tracking cycles of innovation and
subversion related to prepaid meters that measure and (dis)connect networked services (esp. electricity or water). She tracks how the pre-paid meter traveled from the UK to South Africa and focuses on the micro techno-politics in the SA township contexts. She notes that the breaking and rewiring of the prepayment devices by local residents (and the constant innovation by engineers that is required as a result) should be analyzes as an unusual terrain where political negotiations are carried out.