experts and green innovationThe techno-science of

transforming land in the Eastern Cape

James Merron(Doctoral Program North-South)Stellenbosch (RSA) – Basel (CH)

Port of EntryFrontier Country

Transforming previously capitalized land into units of commercial interest

Empirical investigationVideo:

(Part I) What is the nature of social and institutional arrangements within which groups and organizations make use of ‘green technologies’ in the Eastern Cape?

Disaster

Mitigation

World Heritage Site(Security park?)

What are the access points at which expertsand ‘lay people’ communicate knowledge's of green technologies?

What sorts are technological artifacts are translated from theory to practice and the countryside?

Indigenous Plants

• Woolworths sells spekboom to mitigate water and climate change disasters. Shows the process of doing it online. The spekboompromoted as a plant that could ‘save the world’.

• Empirical investigation focuses on the real-time benefits to private landowners in the Eastern Cape of planting spekboom.

02.07.12 jlmerron@gmail.com 9

1. Rethink non-human agency in how people engage practically with the

ground. • Plants: – ‘Plants are not historical actors in their own right,

but their properties help to shape human history’ (Beinart xxxx).

Expanding expertise

(Part I) What are the natures of social and institutional arrangements within which groups and organizations make use of ‘green technologies’ in the Eastern Cape?

(Part II) Singing to the plants: Medicinal, spiritual and religious aspects of a plant. Juxtaposed with the technical aspects of land-use practices to explore something fundamental about science and technology, especially the way ‘trust’ mediates peoples relationship with Technological artefacts.

Wisdom sits in places

• “My house has been broken into 3 times, and the seeds of the precious and endangered plant, which we use in helping our people, were stolen. But I was able to find more, and I intend to find a piece of land - God knows where and how - to plant them, so that this plant, which is on the brink of extinction, should come back and save our people, which it is doing. I appeal to the world, sir, and to all decent human beings…The death of Africa will lead to the death of the entire human race”

• Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa

Thank you

• Land Divided delegates. • Department of Sociology and Social

Anthropology at Stellenbosch University for providing guidance (part 1).

• Cherryl Walker, Heidi Prozesky, Steven Robins, Kees van der Waal,& Lizzy.

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