Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City

Author:   AbdouMaliq Simone ,  Abdelghani Abouhani
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Volume:   v. 2
ISBN:  

9781842775936


Pages:   320
Publication Date:   17 May 2005
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City


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Overview

This volume illuminates the complex and constantly shifting social dynamics of African city making and human survival today. It explores how African urban dwellers have had to find not only effective ways of pursuing their livelihoods and other aspirations within cities but also ways of managing their interactions with often more powerful economic and political interests that seek to impose particular uses of urban space. Amidst very different socio-cultural contexts in Dakar, Addis Ababa, Cape Town, Kisangani, Jos, Zaria, Cairo and Marrakesh, the research in this volume focuses on the diverse ways Africans negotiate novel spatial practices, political-economic processes, and social relations that entangle place, identity and power in urban sites. While historically familiar patterns linking countryside and city remain, these are constantly being reworked as African agency gives life to highly diverse urban formations which are further fashioned through the geographically uneven dynamics of globalization that articulate with locally specific histories, cultural practices, and political contingencies. The result is an emphasis in Africa on city making through fluid and rapidly changing institutional structures, informal agreements, and finding innovative ways to interweave various sectors and actors. Urban change, as a consequence, is not a process easily managed.

Full Product Details

Author:   AbdouMaliq Simone ,  Abdelghani Abouhani
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Zed Books Ltd
Volume:   v. 2
Dimensions:   Width: 13.50cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 21.50cm
Weight:   0.417kg
ISBN:  

9781842775936


ISBN 10:   1842775936
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   17 May 2005
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Urban Processes and Change - AbdouMaliq Simone Part I: Making Urban Politics 2. Urban Policies in Cairo: From Speeches on New Cities to the Adjustment Practices of Ordinary City Dwellers - Bénédicte Florin 3. Feasts: Panoramas in Town: The Spaces and Times of the Moulids of Cairo - Anna Madoeuf 4. Kisangani: A city at its Lowest Ebb - Jean Omasombo 5. The City Centre: A Shifting Concept in the History of Addis Ababa - Bahru Zewde 6. At the Limits of Possibility: Working Notes on a Relational Model of Urban Politics - Edgar Pieterse Part 2: Urban Practices 7. Life in a High Density Urban Area: Anguwar Mai Gwado in Zaria - Mohammed-Bello Yunusa 8. Ethnicity and the Dynamics of City Politics: The Case of Jos - Victor A. O. Adetula 9. Urban Development and Urban Informalities: Pikine, Senegal - Mohamadou Abdoul 10. Formal and Decentralized Financing of Housing: Operation 200,000 Houses, Marrakesh - Mohamed Gheris

Reviews

'Is urban life in Africa exceptional or is it another expression and reworking of universal urban modernity remolded and appropriated by Africans making their own lives in relation to and in spite of the myriad of structural and other constraints they face? This powerfully insightful book edited by Abdoumaliq Simone successfully brings out the rich and diverse complexity, ambivalence, resilience and variety of African urban lives and experiences. The book shows that there can be no simple, naive and monolithic explanations and interpretations. This is an important book that re-affirms the agency of ordinary African urban dwellers, while recognizing the often very difficult conditions of their existence but at the same time expressing the optimism and resilience that define African urban life.' Tade Akin Aina, The Ford Foundation, Nairobi


Author Information

AbdouMaliq Simone presently holds joint academic appointments at New School University and the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Witwatersrand. Professor Abouhani Abdelghani teaches at the Institut National d'Amenagement et d'urbanism in Rabat, Morocco. He is also vice president of the Centre for Social Science Research.

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