• IntroductionAfricanizing the History of Technology
• Laura Ann Twagira (bio)

In 2002 the Kenyan scholar E. S. Atieno-Odhiambo challenged historians of Africa to critically consider the direction of the field by asking the question: “is autonomy of African history possible?”¹ Atieno-Odhiambo wrote these words in the collection Africanizing Knowledge, which similarly charged scholars to make African Studies “more African,” or more specifically to center African epistemologies in the production of knowledge about the continent.² The scholars featured in this special issue of Technology and Culture extend the idea of Africanizing knowledge to the history of technology. The stakes of this project draw from the work of another Kenyan historian, Bethwell A. Ogot, who conceptualized the modern field of African history as one with an “antecedent historical consciousness”—a field that continues to resonate with “an African world order or an African vision of reality that informs the political, historical, philosophical, value-ethical, and epistemological fields of concern.”³ In short, African ways of knowing the world have shaped and continue to influence Africans’ interactions with technology and Africa’s engagement with the history of technology.

Along similar lines, scholars working in African Studies from multiple disciplines have asserted that Africa has long been a place of technological innovation, creativity, and adaptation despite contemporary Western media [End Page S1] depictions to the contrary. As the archaeologist Shadreck Chirikure has recently posited, the earliest African sites of pottery-making and metal-working might be compared to the laboratory in that they were spaces of experimentation and that they produced a rich diversity of material techniques and scientific knowledge.⁴ It is worth noting that the historian Hellen Tilley previously employed the laboratory metaphor in tracing how colonial scientists benefited from fieldwork in Africa—“the living laboratory”—in the development of Western scientific fields, such as ecology.⁵ However, in Chirikure’s use, precolonial laboratories such as iron ore sites, forges, and clay pits were distinct from the built world of the modern scientific laboratory, but also from Tilley’s notion of the laboratory because they were directed by African specialists and contributed to the development of African expertise. Chirikure explains, “precolonial Africa—like many other previously colonized regions in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere—had sites of work and knowledge production at which innovations, inventions, and experimentation took place.” He continues: “Such sites of work were deeply wrapped up in the view that knowledge is culture. Therefore, they were not built environments or laboratories in the modern or Western sense, but they nevertheless play an important role in knowledge production that networked the world from early on.”⁶ As Chirikure suggests, the places where potters, smelters, and smiths worked were adaptable and distinctive in their embeddedness in the natural world and daily life—from the materiality of quotidian labor to spiritual and symbolic action. They were also sites of intellectual labor.⁷

In the example of pottery production—an explicitly female technological practice, as explained by Chirikure—the “laboratory” drew together the sites where women located clay and the household. Women worked to produce pots, steamers, ritual vessels, and other earthen tools inside their homes, thus bringing together domestic life and the technological world. Significantly, women potters transmitted their technological knowledge to daughters, thereby establishing specifically female-centered technological networks.⁸ The key point here is that the multiplicity of female and male specialists working across Africa shaped the direction of their fields and their networks of material and intellectual exchange. [End Page S2]

Chirikure’s essay appears in the recent interdisciplinary collection What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa (2017) that aims to upend both popular and scholarly assumptions that leave little space to imagine Africa as a place of technology.⁹ Indeed, the study of African pottery production and metal working have offered important insights for scholars of technology. These technologies were tied to notions of power in African societies, which as the above example demonstrates was deeply intertwined with notions of gender in society. As historian Eugenia Herbert—whose foundational work Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies (1993) draws attention to the deeply gendered aspects of African technology—has...

• 简介非洲化技术史
• 劳拉·安·特瓦吉拉（生物）

2002年，肯尼亚学者ES Atieno-Odhiambo挑战非洲历史学家，提出一个问题：“非洲历史的自主性有可能吗？”，从而批判性地考虑了该领域的发展方向。¹ Atieno-Odhiambo在“非洲化知识”（Africanizing Knowledge）一集中写下了这些词，该词同样要求学者们将非洲研究“变得更加非洲”，或更具体地讲，是将非洲认识论集中在有关该大陆的知识生产中。²本期《技术与文化》特刊中的学者将知识非洲化的思想扩展到技术历史上。该项目的利益来自于另一位肯尼亚历史学家贝思韦尔·奥格（Bethwell A. Ogot）的工作，他将非洲历史的现代领域概念化为具有“先验的历史意识”的领域，这一领域继续与“非洲世界秩序或历史”共鸣。一种非洲的现实观，为关注的政治，历史，哲学，价值伦理和认识论领域提供了信息。” ³简而言之，非洲人了解世界的方式已经塑造并继续影响着非洲人与技术的互动以及非洲对技术历史的参与。

按照类似的思路，学者多学科非洲研究工作已经断言，非洲一直是技术创新，创造力和适应的地方，尽管当代西方媒体[尾页S1]描写相反。正如考古学家Shadreck Chirikure最近提出的那样，可以将非洲最早的陶器制造和金属加工场所与实验室进行比较，因为它们是实验的空间，并且它们产生了丰富的材料技术和科学知识。⁴值得注意的是，历史学家Hellen Tilley以前曾用实验室的比喻来追踪殖民地科学家如何在西方科学领域（如生态学）的发展中从非洲的“活着的实验室”实地工作中受益。⁵然而，在Chirikure的使用中，诸如铁矿石站点，锻件和粘土坑之类的前殖民地实验室既不同于现代科学实验室的建成世界，也不同于Tilley实验室的概念，因为它们是由非洲专家指导并为非洲的发展专业知识。Chirikure解释说：“殖民前的非洲-像亚洲，拉丁美洲和其他地区以前的许多其他殖民地地区一样，拥有工作和知识生产的场所，在那里进行了创新，发明和实验。” 他继续说：“这些工作场所被深深地包裹着，因为知识就是文化。因此，它们不是现代或西方意义上的建筑环境或实验室，但它们仍在从早期开始将世界联网的知识生产中发挥着重要作用。” ⁶正如Chirikure所建议的，陶艺家，冶炼厂和铁匠的工作场所在自然世界和日常生活中的嵌入性具有适应性和独特性-从quotidian劳动的物质性到精神和象征性行动。它们也是智力劳动的场所。⁷

在陶器生产的例子中（正如Chirikure所解释的那样，这是一种明显的女性技术实践），“实验室”将女性安置陶土和家庭的地点汇总在一起。妇女努力在自己的家中生产锅具，轮船，礼器和其他土制工具，从而使家庭生活和技术世界融合在一起。值得注意的是，女性陶艺家将其技术知识传播给了女儿，从而建立了以女性为中心的专门技术网络。⁸这里的关键是，在非洲各地工作的男女专家的多样性决定了他们领域的方向以及他们的物质和知识交流网络。[结束页S2]

Chirikure的文章发表在最近的跨学科合集《非洲的科学，技术和创新意义何在》（2017年）中，旨在颠覆大众和学术假设，这些假设几乎没有余地将非洲想象成技术之地。⁹确实，对非洲陶器生产和金属加工的研究为技术学者提供了重要的见识。这些技术与非洲社会的权力观念联系在一起，正如上面的例子所示，这与社会上的性别观念密切相关。历史学家尤金尼亚·赫伯特（Eugenia Herbert）的基础著作《铁，性别和权力：非洲社会的转型仪式》（1993年）引起了人们对非洲技术深层次性别观念的关注。