Overview

In their internationally acclaimed book, Kinshasa, anthropologist Filip De Boeck and photographer Marie-Francoise Plissart provide a history not only of the physical and visible urban reality that Kinshasa presents today but also of a second, invisible city as it exists in the mind and imagination of its inhabitants. They bring to light a mirroring reality lurking underneath the surface of the visible world and explore the constant transactions that take place between these two levels in Kinshasa's urban scape. With the exhibition that accompanied the release of their Kinshasa book, the authors won a Golden Lion at the 11th International Architecture Bienniale in Venice, 2004. This beautifully illustrated publication is now again made available. Based on lengthy field research, it provides insight into the imaginative ways in which local urban subjects continue to make sense of their worlds and invent cultural strategies to cope with the breakdown of urban infrastructure.

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9789058679673

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Reviews

This is an important book, extraordinarily rich in ethnographic detail about Kinshasa. Scholars and graduate students will find this book very useful in understanding the urban realities of Kinshasa and more broadly the impact of globalization on African cities. -Urban Affairs Review If we are to advance a more grounded and differentiated understanding of African urban settlements, this kind of work is essential. -Edgar Pieterse, Director of the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town Rich as the book is with passion, imagery, and well-researched stories, it is readably in conversation with, and challenging, Western urban theory (whether Harvey, Foucault, Lefebvre, de Certeau, or others), but also with representations of Kinshasa and of the Congo. -Garth Myers, author of African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice Particularly formative work on African cities. -Sarah Nuttall, Director of Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research

"""This is an important book, extraordinarily rich in ethnographic detail about Kinshasa. Scholars and graduate students will find this book very useful in understanding the urban realities of Kinshasa and more broadly the impact of globalization on African cities.""-Urban Affairs Review ""If we are to advance a more grounded and differentiated understanding of African urban settlements, this kind of work is essential.""-Edgar Pieterse, Director of the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town ""Rich as the book is with passion, imagery, and well-researched stories, it is readably in conversation with, and challenging, Western urban theory (whether Harvey, Foucault, Lefebvre, de Certeau, or others), but also with representations of Kinshasa and of the Congo.""-Garth Myers, author of African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice ""Particularly formative work on African cities.""-Sarah Nuttall, Director of Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research"

Author Information

Filip De Boeck is Professor of Anthropology at KU Leuven. Marie-Francoise Plissart is a photographer whose solo exhibitions include A World without End (Museum of Photography in Antwerp, 2008).

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