{"title":"The Dotcom and the Digital","authors":"Constance Smith, H. Moore","doi":"10.1215/08992363-8358698","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In Kenya, the terms dotcom and digital have become popular descriptors for particular periods of change, as well as for modes of being. The two terms’ usage extends beyond reference to the age of the Internet or to encounters with new technologies. Rather, the dotcom and the digital—in different ways and in different decades—enable Kenyans to imagine with and through time. Using extensive ethnographic research and reflecting on pop music, TV advertising, and streetscapes, we explore how, for many Kenyans the dotcom and the digital are tools for making sense of the times in which they live. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, we tease apart what it means to be dotcom and digital in Kenya, exploring how experiences of time are also projects of self-making and critical intervention.","PeriodicalId":47901,"journal":{"name":"Public Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Public Culture","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-8358698","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In Kenya, the terms dotcom and digital have become popular descriptors for particular periods of change, as well as for modes of being. The two terms’ usage extends beyond reference to the age of the Internet or to encounters with new technologies. Rather, the dotcom and the digital—in different ways and in different decades—enable Kenyans to imagine with and through time. Using extensive ethnographic research and reflecting on pop music, TV advertising, and streetscapes, we explore how, for many Kenyans the dotcom and the digital are tools for making sense of the times in which they live. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, we tease apart what it means to be dotcom and digital in Kenya, exploring how experiences of time are also projects of self-making and critical intervention.
期刊介绍:
Public Culture is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal of cultural studies, published three times a year—in January, May, and September. It is sponsored by the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU. A four-time CELJ award winner, Public Culture has been publishing field-defining ethnographies and analyses of the cultural politics of globalization for over thirty years. The journal provides a forum for the discussion of the places and occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public phenomena, manifested in everything from highly particular and localized events in popular or folk culture to global advertising, consumption, and information networks. Artists, activists, and scholars, both well-established and younger, from across the humanities and social sciences and around the world, present some of their most innovative and exciting work in the pages of Public Culture.