Walking and the social life of solar charging in rural Africa

We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable HCI discourse. We describe links between walking, sociality, and using resources in a case study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Like 360 million rural Africans, inhabitants of these villages are poor and, like 25% and 92% of the world, respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We describe nine practices in using the charging stations we deployed. We recorded 700 people using the stations, over a year, some regularly. We suggest that the way we frame practices limits insights about them, and consider various routines in using and sharing local resources to discover relations that might also feature in charging. Specifically, walking interconnects routines in using, storing, sharing and sustaining resources, and contributes to knowing, feeling, wanting and avoiding as well as to different aspects of sociality, social order and perspectives on sustainability. Along the way, bodies acquire literacies that make certain relationalities legible. Our study shows we cannot assert what sustainable practice means a priori and, further, that detaching practices from bodies and their paths limits solutions, at least in rural Africa. Thus, we advocate a more “alongly” integrated approach to data about practices.This research was supported by CSIR-Meraka, South Africa and, partly, by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant (EP/H042857/1).http://dl.acm.org/hb201

Walking and the Social Life of Solar Charging in Rural Africa

We illustrate links between walking, sociality and using resources in a case-study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in two villages in Eastern Cape, South Africa. Like 360 million rural Sub-saharan Africans, inhabitants are poor and, like 25% and 92%, of the world respectively, do not have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We show that the ways we move through the world affect the meanings we embody; that certain representations obscure continuities in the practices we seek to understand and influence; and, some of the motivations of the billions of people who are marginalized in discussing sustainable HCI. Locally, about 65% of inhabitants over 14 years old own cell- phones and, over a year, we recorded 500 names of people using the Charging Stations that, we deployed within several technology probing endeavours, many on a regular basis. The detail of our longitudinal study contributes considerably to sustainable design for ‘developing’ regions. Walking is a noticeable part of charging, and all other subsistence rou- tines, and shapes inhabitants’ motivations when they use, re-purpose, store and share resources. Inhabitants are moti- vated by cost and comfort and, importantly, by performing collectivity in their tight-knit community; but, not by being green. Further, different ways of walking relate to social roles and other aspects of sociality and, we propose, shaped inhabitants’ and researchers’ perspectives on charging and using phones. We suggest this is significant for the methods and designs that we use to explore and support sustainable practices in rural Africa and, indeed, more generally