Digital Everyday Lives and Energy Futures in a South African Township (DigiSAt)
DigiSAt offers new empirical knowledge bridging some of the most pressing concerns of our time: digital living and energy futures with related impacts on human well-being, democratic society, and the environment
The DigiSAt project is based on long-term research in South Africa and experiments with multimodal anthropology,
The environments we inhabit change rapidly as digital technologies and infrastructures become ubiquitous, with major changes in the ways that states regulate, corporations profit from, and people consume, produce and (re)circulate digital media content. These changes impact the environment in terms of energy demand. Almost 60% of South African households’ access the Internet through using mobile devices and as the access point to the digital dimensions, the mobile phone collapses the phenomena of data costs, connection, capture – and the electricity costs and energy consumption.
The DigiSAt research project looks across scales from the intimate everyday life in the South African township of Manenberg to mapping controversies around global IT giants in the local context, linking this to the failing energy grids needed for the digital infrastructure.
Read more about the project on their own website.
DigiSAt asks three questions in their researchdesign
- What does the mobile phone and digital infrastructures do for- and to- people in this township environment?
- What controversies exist nationally and locally around cost of data, the failing energy grid, and global tech giants arriving in South Africa?
- And how do these controversies relate to hopes, fears, and the digital dimensions of everyday life in Manenberg?
DigiSAt believes our digital everyday lives and energy futures are vital questions, and that grounded research on people’s everyday experiences should be part of a democratic conversation going into uncertain futures. The project shares insights in various formats: from images, visualizations, and podcasts to scholarly and popular publications.
Energy Futures Book
A chapter entitled `The charged issue of data and energy infrastructure in a Capetonian township´ appears in Energy Futures: Anthropocene Challenges, Emerging Technologies and Everyday Life (De Gruyter 2022). The chapter is written by DigiSAt PI Karen Waltorp who also co-edited the book alongside DigiSAt Advicsory Board critical friends Simone Abram, Sarah Pink and Nathalie Ortar.
Abram, Simone, Waltorp, Karen, Ortar, Nathalie and Pink, Sarah (2022). Energy Futures: Anthropocene Challenges, Emerging Technologies and Everyday Life, De Gruyter.
Article in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology
Waltorp, Karen & Jensen, Steffen (2019) Awkward Entanglements: Kinship, Morality and Survival in Cape Town’s Prison–township Circuit, Ethnos 84(1): 41-55. DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2017.1321565
Documentary
Manenberg – Growing up in the Shadows of Apartheid (Waltorp & Vium 2010) is a 59 minute ethnographic documentary. The film gives an immersive experience into the area and insight into some of the challenges of growing up in this place. It follows two young people, Fazline and Warren, as they come of age.
DigiSAt collaborates with the following associations and research groups:
Future Anthropologies Network at EASA
Emerging Technologies Lab, Monash University
Centre for Imaginative Ethnography
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search in Name | Search in Title | Search in Phone | |
| Anna Elisabeth Stub Thygesen | Student FU | +4535325803 | |
| Asnath Paula Kambunga | Postdoc | +4535328017 | |
| Karen Waltorp | Associate Professor - Promotion Programme |
Funded by:
Digital Everyday Lives and Energy Futures in a South African Township (DigiSAt) has received a three year funding from Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Project: Digital Everyday Lives and Energy Futures in a South African Township (DigiSAt)
Period: 2022-2024
Contact
Karen Waltorp (PI)
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
E-mail: karen.waltorp@anthro.ku.dk