HSRC Catalogue

African research that changes global thinking

Mobility has become a prominent feature in African societies: populations all over Africa are both mobile and politically and economically marginal. Yet these populations are actively engaged in maintaining social networks across localities. Mobilities, ICTs and marginality in Africa looks at the dramatic changes brought about in socially marginal populations by new ICTs in general and mobile phones in particular.

Contested Ecologies: Reimagining the Nature-culture Divide in the Global South offers an intervention in the conversations on ecology and on coloniality, and on the ways in which modern thinking, with its bifurcation of nature and culture, constitutes ‘ecology’ within a very particular politics of the cosmos.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is set to become the largest telescope on Earth, and also the largest science project in Africa. From September 2011 to August 2012, the SKA featured regularly in the South African media. In The Stars in Our Eyes, author Michael Gastrow dissects the representation of the SKA in the South African media in the period under discussion. Who were the main actors in this unfolding narrative? Who held the stage and who were marginalised? Where did gatekeeping occur and why? What was the relationship between journalists and scientists? How did the story unfold in the social media as opposed to the print media? Drawing on mass communication theory and science communication theory, The Stars in Our Eyes: Representations of the Square kilometre Array Telescope in the South African Media addresses critical gaps in the literature on science communication, particularly with respect to science communication in an African context.

African Parliaments offers an indepth analysis of parliamentary development in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the continent's post 1990s democratic resurgence. In particular, it illustrates how African parliaments struggle to serve as part of the machinery of government while exercising the function of holding government accountable.