Researching global expertise: startups, venture capitalists, and the performances of techno-optimism

This seminar is about the design and the methodologies of research related to the production, circulation and manipulation of global forms of knowledge. There are three strands of scholarship that provide useful entry points to research global epistemes: 1. anthropology of development; 2. policy mobility research in urban studies 3. pragmatist sociology (from ANT to the performativity turn). The initial part of the seminar will trace the intellectual lineage and key debates within these three scholarly traditions. This will provide participants with a foundational understanding of why experts and expertise are not peripheral but central subjects of inquiry in global studies. We will explore how expertise is defined, recognized, or challenged, and how it produces the world it is purportedly analysing.

The second part of the seminar transitions from theoretical exposition to a practical application of these frameworks. What does it mean to research expertise in practice? To answer this question, this segment draws on my own ethnographic research conducted over the past decade in South Africa and Kenya. My specific research focus has been on the problematic circulation of Silicon Valley mantras and models across the African continent. This involved investigating how narratives of technological innovation, entrepreneurial success, and disruption, originating from the heart of global digital capitalism, are adopted, adapted, and rejected in diverse African contexts. Building on my experience, I will share some of the "tricks of the trade" for conducting ethnographic research with techno-optimistic “experts.”

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