Böcker av Victoria Bernal

Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, "cryptopolitics," are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media toconsider public culture, sociality, and power in all its forms, illustrating the analytical potential of cryptopolitics to elucidate intimate relationships, political protest, and economic strategies in the digital age.

How is the Internet transforming the relationships between citizens and states? The author combines media studies, ethnography, and African studies to explore this new political paradigm through an analysis of how Eritreans in diaspora have used the Internet to shape the course of Eritrean history.

Detailed, empirical, micro-level data back up Bernal's arguments as she explores labor markets, rural-to-urban migration, wage levels, patterns of work, capital accumulation, and their impact on Sudanese agriculture and the lives of peasant workers.