Articles, books, reports, reviews by Daivi Rodima-Taylor
Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 2024
This article proposes three distinct approaches to the study of hybridisation across society, ind... more This article proposes three distinct approaches to the study of hybridisation across society, industries, and academia enabled by General Purpose Technologies like AI and blockchain. The term hybridisation is frequently invoked to describe and prescribe human-machine interaction and technological interoperability. Critically assessing processes of hybridisation through the perspectives of (1) materiality, (2) power and (3) expertise, we argue that the language of hybridity smoothens out frictions between human judgment, on the one hand, and automated decision-making, on the other, and that processes of hybridisation veil technology-induced epistemic and economic inequalities.
BU ASC Walter Rodney Seminar, 2024
Informal savings groups are widespread in many regions of the Global South. In various African so... more Informal savings groups are widespread in many regions of the Global South. In various African societies, these voluntary associations have deep historical roots, initially emerging to facilitate the sharing of agricultural labor. The groups with their rotating credit arrangements remain popular also among many diaspora communities worldwide. My presentation explores the historical evolution and contemporary resurgence of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) in several East and Southern African countries. It examines the increasingly complex ways these indigenous savings groups interact with formal financial institutions and financial technology platforms. These mutual support groups have also influenced the microfinance industry, though with mixed and sometimes negative outcomes. At the same time, they prompt new discussions about alternative community-based economies that can support marginalized groups, even in societies with highly formalized financial sectors, potentially leading to innovative forms of solidarity economies.
Democracy in Africa, 2024
https://democracyinafrica.org/digital-democracy-offline-challenges-to-electronic-land-registries/
Environment and Planning: Politics and Space. (with Nick Bernards and Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn), 2024
This article introduces a theme issue ‘Repoliticizing the technological turn in sustainability g... more This article introduces a theme issue ‘Repoliticizing the technological turn in sustainability governance’.
British Library Endangered Archives Blog, w. Fallou Ngom, 2024
https://blogs.bl.uk/endangeredarchives/2024/03/digitising-islamic-west-african-histories.html
Brill Blog "Humanities Matter" (w. Fallou Ngom), 2024
Global Digital Data Governance, Routledge, 2024
The chapters in this collaborative volume discuss the opportunities and chal lenges for democrati... more The chapters in this collaborative volume discuss the opportunities and chal lenges for democratic governance that are entailed in the global expansion of digital data and the growth of the Internet. My chapter explores grassroots data activism that is emerging with the growing centrality of social media platforms and electronically mediated finance in everyday life. It explores new opportu nities that these practices from the margins offer for collaborative and sustain able data governance. While the era of Big Data and machine learning brings along fundamental changes in how knowledge is produced and governance enacted, it also enables opaque data use by corporate and state actors that can undermine accountability and civil liberties. I suggest that studying grassroots data activism helps us identify more democratic and sustainable ways of circulating digital data for the benefit of larger groups of people. It also provides much-needed insights into the plurality of existing frameworks, actors, and technologies around data sharing and gov ernance. These issues are relevant for the study of polycentrism in data govern ance, as they cast light on the politics and processes that can realize the potential benefits and bypass potential challenges of expanding digital data (see Chapter 1, Aguerre, Campbell-Verduyn, and Scholte, 2024). The polycentric governance concept advanced in this volume illuminates the multiple power centers and connectivities that bring together formal and informal attempts to govern data at different levels of activity and across sectors. These actor constellations operate with multiple overlapping rationalities, normative and ethical orientations, tech nologies, and institutional arrangements (Gadinger and Scholte, 2022). The origins of the concept of polycentric governance lie in theories of common-pool resource governance. Ostrom (2008) suggests that governance systems that evolve around common-pool resources are able to effectively manage collective action and are capable of self-correction and self
Islamic Africa, 14(2), 119-143 (w. Fallou Ngom and David Robinson), 2023
African ʿAjamī literatures hold a wealth of knowledge on the history and intellectual traditions ... more African ʿAjamī literatures hold a wealth of knowledge on the history and intellectual traditions of the region but are largely unknown to the larger public. Our special issue seeks to enhance a broader understanding of this important part of the Islamic world, exploring the ʿAjamī literatures and literacies of four main language groups of Muslim West Africa: Hausa, Mandinka, Fula, and Wolof. Through increasing access to primary sources in ʿAjamī and utilizing an innovative multimedia approach, our research contributes to an interpretive and comparative analysis of African ʿAjamī literacy, with its multiple purposes, forms, and custodians. We discuss the building blocks and historical development of ʿAjamī cultures in West Africa, outline the longitudinal collaborative research initiatives that our special issue draws upon, and explore the challenges and opportunities for participatory knowledge-making that accompany the rise of digital technologies in the study of African literatures and literacies.
Published in Islamic Africa 14 (2023) 119-143 * The article is part of the special issue "ʿAjamī Literacies of Africa," edited by F. Ngom, D. Rodima-Taylor, and David Robinson
Islamic Africa, vols. 14.2 and 15.1 (Fallou Ngom, Daivi Rodima-Taylor, David Robinson), 2023
African Ajami literatures hold a wealth of knowledge on the history and intellectual traditions o... more African Ajami literatures hold a wealth of knowledge on the history and intellectual traditions of the region but are largely unknown to the larger public. Our double special issue seeks to enhance a broader understanding of this important part of the Islamic world, exploring the Ajami literatures and literacies of four main language groups of Muslim West Africa: Hausa, Mandinka, Fula, and Wolof. Through increasing access to primary sources in Ajami and utilizing an innovative multimedia approach, our research contributes to an interpretive and comparative analysis of African Ajami literacy, with its multiple purposes, forms, and custodians. Our Introduction to the special issue discusses the building blocks and historical development of Ajami cultures in West Africa, outlines the longitudinal collaborative research initiatives that our special issue draws upon, and explores the challenges and opportunities for participatory knowledge-making that accompany the rise of digital technologies in the study of African literatures and literacies.
Migration Information Source (Migration Policy Institute), 2023
In: Cryptopolitics: Exposure, Concealment, and Digital Media, 2023
This chapter explores the cryptopolitics of informal savings groups and contribution networks in ... more This chapter explores the cryptopolitics of informal savings groups and contribution networks in Africa as mediated through encrypted digital messaging platforms. Such platforms have rapidly become widespread in the global South. In Africa, they are central in mobilizing online savings groups as well as used for fundraising for a variety of causes, both public and private. Based on cases from South Africa and Kenya, my chapter argues that the emerging crypto-publics are constituted through multiple materialities and communicative forms, including the offline spaces of self-help groups with their social and historical embeddedness, and new digital platforms with BigTech connectivities. Mediated by encrypted messaging apps, the poor and marginal exercise their agency through self-help groups and networks, carving out new public spaces. While building on vernacular organizational templates and facilitating alternatives to more formalized versions of financial inclusion, such initiatives may also create exploitative invisibilities and foster data capture, scams and ‘Ponzi schemes.’ The chapter argues that such spaces always involve important and interconnected offline and online, and material and human modalities. It offers new perspectives to the formation of the digital public sphere in Africa through attention to cryptopolitics, and advances new approaches for analyzing it. When discussing the potential of encrypted chat apps to enable new types of collectivities built on peer solidarity, the paper draw parallels with other types of crypto-publics that emerge with cryptographic technologies and currencies.
co-edited w. K. Pype and V. Bernal, Berghahn Books, 2023
Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and ... more Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, “cryptopolitics,” are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media to consider public culture, sociality, and power in all its forms, illustrating the analytical potential of cryptopolitics to elucidate
intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age.
Anthropology Today, 39/4 (w. M. Campbell-Verduyn), 2023
Journal of Cultural Economy, 2022
Paul Langley and Daivi Rodima-Taylor
Journal of Cultural Economy, 2022
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 2022
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2022
(w. N. Bernards and M. Campbell-Verduyn)
Eds.: Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Parker Shipton
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Articles, books, reports, reviews by Daivi Rodima-Taylor
Published in Islamic Africa 14 (2023) 119-143 * The article is part of the special issue "ʿAjamī Literacies of Africa," edited by F. Ngom, D. Rodima-Taylor, and David Robinson
intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age.
Published in Islamic Africa 14 (2023) 119-143 * The article is part of the special issue "ʿAjamī Literacies of Africa," edited by F. Ngom, D. Rodima-Taylor, and David Robinson
intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age.
in the scholarship of postsocialist land reform: the reinvention of land
mortgage as a means of transforming agrarian relations in formerly socialist
countries.
Solutions to global sustainability challenges are increasingly technology‐intensive. Yet, technologies are neither developed nor applied to governance problems in a socio‐political vacuum. Despite aspirations to provide novel solutions to current sustainability governance challenges, many technology‐centred projects, pilots and plans remain implicated in longer‐standing global governance trends shaping the possibilities for success in often under‐recognized ways. This article identifies three overlapping contexts within which technology‐led efforts to address sustainability challenges are evolving, highlighting the growing roles of: (1) private actors; (2) experimentalism; and (3) informality. The confluence of these interconnected trends illuminates an important yet often under‐recognized paradox: that the use of technology in multi‐stakeholder initiatives tends to reduce rather than expand the set of actors, enhancing instead of reducing challenges to participation and transparency, and reinforcing rather than transforming existing forms of power relations. Without recognizing and attempting to address these limits, technology‐led multi‐stakeholder initiatives will remain less effective in addressing the complexity and uncertainty surrounding global sustainability governance. We provide pathways for interrogating the ways that novel technologies are being harnessed to address long‐standing global sustainability issues in manners that foreground key ethical, social and political considerations and the contexts in which they are evolving.