Open AccessAssembling an African Information Ethics
Author(s) -
Bernd Frohmann
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international review of information ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2563-5638
DOI - 10.29173/irie15
Subject(s) - information ethics , declaration , morality , universality (dynamical systems) , sociology , epistemology , identity (music) , universalism , environmental ethics , political science , law , philosophy , politics , physics , quantum mechanics , aesthetics
The Tshwane Conference on African Information Ethics of 5-7 February 2007 forces the question, What is an African information ethics? This question is addressed with reference to the complexities of a distinctly African information ethics, taking into account the distinction between ethics and morality, and the assumptions of the language of the Tshwane Declaration on Information Ethics in Africa. Gilles Deleuze‘s concept of assem-blage, analyzed from the perspectives of Bruno Latour‘s concept of ?reassembling the social? and recent anthropological approaches to global assemblages are put to work to investigate possibilities of an African information ethics, with special attention to the concepts of universality and African identity. The task of assembling an African information ethics is then analyzed in terms of Latour‘s call for building ?livable collec-tives?.