For the City Yet to Come Changing African Life in Four Cities
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
AbdouMaliq Simone is Assistant Director of the Graduate Program in International Affairs at New School University. He is the author of In Whose Image? Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan and, with David Hecht, Invisible Governance: The Art of African Micropolitics.
For the City Yet to Come Changing African Life in Four Cities
“<i>For the City Yet to Come</i> is about much more than the planning and politics of cities in Africa. AbdouMaliq Simone lays out a challenging, intellectually wide-ranging and yet very grounded consideration of present and possible dispensations of social life in Africa, maintaining a delicate balance between attention to the improvisational and creative within African urban spaces and critique of the sufferings and injustices of city life.”-Timothy Burke, author of <i>Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe</i> “This is by far the best book about African cities as well as a theoretically provocative experiment in urban criticism. Using a combination of both large-scale and focused analyses, Abdoumaliq Simone brings to light the nuances, shades, and imaginative universes of contemporary African urban life that have eluded most analysts. In the process, he profoundly renews our understanding of the politics of everyday life.”-Achille Mbembe, author of <i>On the Postcolony</i><br />
Drawing on his nearly fifteen years of work in African cities-as an activist, teacher, development worker, researcher, and advisor to ngos and local governments-Simone provides a series of case studies illuminating the provisional networks through which most of Africa’s urban dwellers procure basic goods and services. He examines informal economies and social networks in Pikine, a large suburb of Dakar, Senegal; in Winterveld, a neighborhood on the edge of Pretoria, South Africa; in Douala, Cameroon; and among Africans seeking work in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He contextualizes these particular cases through an analysis of the broad social, economic, and historical conditions that created present-day urban Africa. For the City Yet to Come is a powerful argument that any serious attempt to reinvent African urban centers must acknowledge the particular history of these cities and incorporate the local knowledge reflected in already existing informal urban economic and social systems.
Introduction: Remaking African Cities 1
1. The Informal: The Projet de Ville in Pikine, Senegal 21
2. The Invisible: Winterveld, South Africa 63
3. The Spectral: Assembling Douala, Cameroon 92
4. Movement: The Zawiyyah as the City 118
5. Reconciling Engagement and Belonging: Some Matters of History 136
6. The Production and Management of Urban Resources 178
7. Cities and Change 213
Notes 245
References 269
Index 291
“<i>For the City Yet to Come</i> is about much more than the planning and politics of cities in Africa. AbdouMaliq Simone lays out a challenging, intellectually wide-ranging and yet very grounded consideration of present and possible dispensations of social life in Africa, maintaining a delicate balance between attention to the improvisational and creative within African urban spaces and critique of the sufferings and injustices of city life.”-Timothy Burke, author of <i>Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe</i> “This is by far the best book about African cities as well as a theoretically provocative experiment in urban criticism. Using a combination of both large-scale and focused analyses, Abdoumaliq Simone brings to light the nuances, shades, and imaginative universes of contemporary African urban life that have eluded most analysts. In the process, he profoundly renews our understanding of the politics of everyday life.”-Achille Mbembe, author of <i>On the Postcolony</i><br />
Drawing on his nearly fifteen years of work in African cities-as an activist, teacher, development worker, researcher, and advisor to ngos and local governments-Simone provides a series of case studies illuminating the provisional networks through which most of Africa’s urban dwellers procure basic goods and services. He examines informal economies and social networks in Pikine, a large suburb of Dakar, Senegal; in Winterveld, a neighborhood on the edge of Pretoria, South Africa; in Douala, Cameroon; and among Africans seeking work in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He contextualizes these particular cases through an analysis of the broad social, economic, and historical conditions that created present-day urban Africa. For the City Yet to Come is a powerful argument that any serious attempt to reinvent African urban centers must acknowledge the particular history of these cities and incorporate the local knowledge reflected in already existing informal urban economic and social systems.
Introduction: Remaking African Cities 1
1. The Informal: The Projet de Ville in Pikine, Senegal 21
2. The Invisible: Winterveld, South Africa 63
3. The Spectral: Assembling Douala, Cameroon 92
4. Movement: The Zawiyyah as the City 118
5. Reconciling Engagement and Belonging: Some Matters of History 136
6. The Production and Management of Urban Resources 178
7. Cities and Change 213
Notes 245
References 269
Index 291
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
AbdouMaliq Simone is Assistant Director of the Graduate Program in International Affairs at New School University. He is the author of In Whose Image? Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan and, with David Hecht, Invisible Governance: The Art of African Micropolitics.