Dissertation Research: Conduits of Culture and Control: Roads, States, and Users in West-Central Africa, 1914 to 1980

这项科学和技术研究论文改进资助研究了从1914年到1980年西非中部非洲的道路历史，分析了这种技术在物质、政治和文化方面的发展。该基金主要支持访问已出版的档案材料、已出版的资源和口述历史的旅行，主要是在法国和中非西部，以阐明道路作为物质文物、政治工具和文化意义的所在地，所有这些都是通过非洲人和西方人有时发生冲突的机构建立起来的。在20世纪的过程中，各种各样的道路作为西方人和非洲人接触的主要场所或“接触区”变得越来越重要。但是，西方人和非洲人各自带着各自的假设和期望，有时差异很大。因此，揭示西方人和非洲人感知和使用道路的方式，对于理解非洲和西方相遇的本质和影响，以及理解技术在这些相遇中的复杂角色至关重要。20世纪，非洲中西部的道路建设和维护面临着巨大的挑战，需要做出艰难的（和发人深省的）决定。研究人员将在殖民占领期间以及独立后非洲国家维护、扩展和发现继承自殖民政府的道路系统的新用途的过程中，绘制道路的技术、政治、社会和象征方面。该项目还论证了道路这一特殊技术的普遍和变革作用，不仅在政策层面上，而且在20世纪非洲西方人和非洲人的日常生活和接触中。因此，这篇论文既包括了非洲人的声音，也包括了西方人的声音，他们以不同的方式帮助修建或修理道路，沿着（或远离）道路生活，沿着道路旅行。

This Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Improvement Grant examines the history of roads in West-Central Africa from 1914 to 1980, analyzing this technology along its material, political and cultural dimensions. The grant primarily supports travel to access published archival materials, published sources and to perform oral histories, primarily in France and West-Central Africa, in order to shed light on roads as material artifacts, political instruments, and the locus of cultural meanings, all built through the sometimes-clashing agency of Africans and Westerners. Over the course of the 20th century, roads of various sorts became increasingly important as a primary site or "contact zone" for encounters between westerners and Africans. But westerners and Africans each brought their own, sometimes widely differing, assumptions and expectations about roads to these encounters. Uncovering the ways both westerners and Africans perceived and used roads is thus crucial to understanding the nature and impact of encounters between Africa and the west, and to understanding the complex roles of technology in those encounters. The construction and maintenance of roads in west-central Africa during the 20th century posed significant challenges and entailed difficult (and revealing) decisions. The researcher will draw out the technological, political, social, and symbolic aspects of roads both over the course of the colonial occupation and as post-independence African nations maintained, expanded, and found new uses for road systems inherited from colonial governments. The project also argues for the pervasive and transforming role of a particular technology, roads, not only on a policy level but also in the day-to-day lives of and encounters between westerners and Africans in twentieth-century Africa. This dissertation, then, includes the voices of Africans, as well as westerners, who variously helped to build or repair roads, lived along (or away from) roads, and traveled along roads.