Primus M. Tazanu is a senior guest researcher at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Primus holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Freiburg, Germany (2011) and an MA in Development and International Relations, University of Aalborg, Denmark (2004). From 2015 to 2017, Primus was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He has been as a guest lecturer at the universities of Buea, Basel and Freiburg. His research focuses on social practices and the production of meanings through media technologies: new/social media and transnational relationships, media and Pentecostalism as well as media and racism. Primus is interested on the ways in which the liveness of media influences sociality and users’ sensory experiences, expectations and distanciations that arise in mediated communication, smartphones/social media and connectivity, smartphones/social media and electronic identities, media and self-presentation. His research on Pentecostalism revolves around the mediatization of Christian beliefs and practices in Cameroon. As concerns racism online, Primus looks at racist discourse and representations, philosophical anthropology, questions of freedom, decoloniality and social justice.
Selected Publications
Journals
- Tazanu, Primus (2018). Communication Technologies and Legitimate Consumption: Making Sense of Health Care Remittances in Cameroonian Transnational Relationships, Africa 88 (2): 385–403 (doi:10.1017/S0001972017000961).
- Tazanu, Primus (2018). Of Polluted Spirits and Compromised Identity: Pentecostal Depictions, Causality and the Repositioning of Human Agency in Cameroon, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53(6), 970-983. (/doi/abs/10.1177/0021909618762520).
- Tazanu, Primus and Frei Bettina (2017).Closeness, Distance and Disappearances in Cameroonian Mediated Transnational Social Ties: Uses of Mobile Phones and Narratives of Transformed Identities, Journal of African Media Studies 9 (1): 77–90 (doi: 10.1386/jams.9.1.77_1).
- Tazanu, Primus (2015). On the Liveness of Mobile Phone Mediation: Youth Expectations of Remittances and Narratives of Discontent in the Cameroonian Transnational Family, Mobile Media and Communication 3(1), 20 –35. (doi: 10.1177/2050157914545801)
Books
- Tazanu, Primus (2012). Being Available and Reachable: New Media and Cameroonian Transnational Sociality. Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG Publishers.
Book Chapters
- Tazanu, Primus (2012). They behave as though they want to bring heaven down: Some Narratives on the Visibility of Cameroonian Migrant Youths in Cameroon Urban Space. In Hans Peter Hahn and Kristin Kastner (eds) Urban Life-worlds in Motions: African Perspectives, Bielefeld: Transcript. Pp 101-129. (https://doi.org/10.14361/transcript.9783839420225.101)
Other Online Works
- 2019, What Data means for Cameroonians — 2019 Affordability Report Cameroon impact story (https://a4ai.org/what-data-means-for-cameroonians-2019-affordability-report-cameroon-impact-story/)
- 2011, (with Bettina Frei) Ethnographic film on new media in African/Cameroonian sociality (Wie beept Afrika?) http://www.sciencemovies.de/de/05_wie_beept_afrika