The Mobile Workshop

The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga

 

  • MIT Press
  • Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • 2018
  • English
  • Paperback
  • 430 pages

Synopsis

How the presence of the tsetse fly turned the African forest into an open laboratory where African knowledge formed the basis of colonial tsetse control policies.The tsetse fly is a pan-African insect that bites an infective forest animal and ingests blood filled with invisible parasites, which it carries and transmits into cattle and people as it bites them, leading to n'gana (animal trypanosomiasis) and sleeping sickness. In The Mobile Workshop, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga examines how the presence of the tsetse fly turned the forests of Zimbabwe and southern Africa into an open laboratory where African knowledge formed the basis of colonial tsetse control policies.

Review

A bold intellectual contribution to the history of science and technology that gives readers not only an African history of mhesvi, the tsetse fly, and its management but also an argument for why we must go beyond colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial frames when studying knowledge production in places such as Africa. ― Eden Medina

Author

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga is Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT.