Samwel Ntapanta

Polarised Cityscapes: Gathering Electronic Waste and Its Malcontents in Dar es Salaam.

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Abstract   Salvaging e-waste is a critical sector of global south cities. Salvaging complement the gap of under-resourced waste collecting and handling institution. It also offers employment and steady income to many crumbling from the high unemployment rate. How can we understand the labour of e-waste salvaging and its malcontents in a global south city? Based on ethnographic fieldwork among informal electronic waste recyclers in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, I want to explore walking to understand informal labour and polarization in Dar es Salaam cityscapes. Walking with my interlocutors (teachers) during their labour, I walked along the trail of value production; things moved, and people moved to generate value. Walking connects different parts of the city, its history, and violence, enhancing the city's knowledge and materiality. By exploring Tim Ingold's concept of "becoming knowledgeable," I want to argue that e-waste salvaging in the global south cities can be very well understood through walking. Walking exposes the ethnographer to physical obstacles, ingenuity, valorisation processes and violence of post-modern consumerism. It also involves experiences from other sensory organs that give unique experiences about the city while observing. In this talk, I invite you to walk with me and observe together polarisation as it unfolds in the city, informal e-waste collecting and the agency of infrastructures presence or when they are not there.

Biography   Samwel Moses Ntapanta is a senior post-doctoral researcher at the Chair ofSocial and Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Africa, University of Bayreuth. This seminar paper is a result of his PhD research funded by the Anthropology of Toxicity in Africa (AnthroTox) project, at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo and Life Sciences, University of Oslo. Ntapanta has MSc in Social Sciences in Human Security from Aarhus University and a BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Dar es Salaam. He is interested in the anthropology of consumption, waste and infrastructures, informal economies, and labour relations.

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Published Nov. 2, 2022 12:40 PM - Last modified Jan. 5, 2023 11:57 AM