Frontmatter -- Part I: Computers in an Alien Environment -- Introduction -- Chapter One: The Symbolic and the Social: Computer Use in Two African Settings -- Chapter Two: Computer-Related Successes and Excuses: The Discourse of Confrontation -- Chapter Three: New Technicians of the Sacred: Technology, Belief Systems, and Social Control -- Part II: New Technologies, Work Organization, and the Administrative Revolution -- Chapter Four: The Last Train of the Twentieth Century: The Computer Revolution in Ivory Coast -- Chapter Five: Display, Domination, and Mastery: Computers in the Kenyan Setting -- Chapter Six: Socializing Workers into the New Mechanical Solidarity -- Part III: Simulating Postmodernity -- Chapter Seven: Indigenizing the Computer: Social and Interpretive Practices Surrounding New Technologies -- Chapter Eight: The Computer Contract: A Sociosemiotic Analysis of Computer Adoption -- Chapter Nine: Terminal Signs -- Notes -- Glossary -- References -- Index