Public Lecture: Staying Cold in an Ever-Warmer World. An Anthropology of Air Conditioning, Globalization and Disconnection, based on the life stories of young Cameroonian entrepreneurs; Speaker: Gérard Amougou

Abstract:

With global warming on the rise, the use of air conditioners is steadily increasing in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. Only, these cooling devices have to be maintained and repaired by youngs local technician-contractors who face various obstacles in accomplishing their work. Drawing on the biographical accounts of these emerging actors in a precarious context, my presentation examines how the problem of cooling infrastructure is linked to ecological issues by actors from below, operating on the bangs of central powers. While previous work has focused more on dominant political actors and regulatory institutions on a global scale, the added value of this contribution is to show how the logics of action of neglected or invisible actors shape the infrastructural imagination and, in so doing, participate in the process of regulating cooling services on a local and international scale. The contribution also demonstrates the value of the biographical approach in understanding the social and political dynamics underway in the global South.

Gérard Amougou is a teacher and lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Yaoundé II. He holds a doctoral thesis in political and social sciences from the University of Liège, and a thesis in political science from the University of Yaoundé II. He is a guest researcher at CriDIS/SMAG (UCL) and a researcher at CERDAP (UYII), the Paul Ango Ela Foundation (Yaoundé), and OMER (ULiège). He has been a laureate of the Pilot African Postgraduate Academy (PAPA) and the Cool Infrastructures program. He has also been engaged in the research program “Globalizing Sociological Theory: Qualitative Research and Theory Building from the South” at the Leipzig Research Center Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe). His research mainly focuses on human rights, political development, emergence policies in Africa, individualization/subjectivation, youth, the biographical approach, the land imbroglio and the ecological issue of climate change. He has to his credit around twenty publications in specialized journals.

This lecture is open to the public.

For virtual participation via Zoom, please use the following link:

https://uni-freiburg.zoom-x.de/j/62840836250?pwd=71Ru4JaZUYCjjbm1zZnxx4icbnhcCj.1

Meeting-ID: 628 4083 6250
Code: 7440PykQ0