Symposium on Technology as a Social Process in Africa

Extract

This symposium was sponsored jointly by the Society for the History of Technology (S.H.O.T.) and by the anthropology section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (A.A.A.S.), arising from their annual meetings in Dallas, Texas, in December 1968. The session was clearly exploratory, in that the participants recognised the need for a systematic and integrative study of technology in African history, especially of its importance in defining cultural systems, in role differentiation and the division of labour between men and women in African communities, its interaction with the social and political system of a people—as demonstrated, for example, by irrigation systems—and its interrelationship with social needs and rituals in the evolution of music in Africa.