A terrestrial Internet from the quilombos: the transatlantic evolution of baobab from colonial to digital capitalism

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the origin and development of “Baobáxia,” a digital network for sharing community-produced content. Baobaxia emerged in “quilombos” (communities of run-away slaves’ descendents) in Brazil in the early 2000s and expanded to other marginalized groups in South America, Africa, and Europe. Our focus on the essential roles of baobab trees in this network raises the question of material resources sustaining the Internet and digital capitalism. Baobaxia turns out to be a “terrestrial Internet” that exposes the capitalist illusion of dematerialization and demonstrates a different approach to technology development amid the planetary environmental crises today. The analysis reveals the articulation of ancestral knowledge and new technologies in the building of Baobaxia, a network that is adaptive to local-geographical, ecological and infrastructural conditions and that supports community resistance, autonomy, and sustainability. The development of Baobaxia, historically rooted and future-oriented, is an enlightening grassroots experiment in exploring and sharing ways of making a world that may sustain life. Our study of the five-century transatlantic evolution of baobab challenges the often limited spatio-temporal framework in ethnographic research. We thus call for methodological openness to alternative perspectives from ethnographic interlocutors to guide academic understandings of the world.