Publication date
18/05/2020

Price (ZA)
R300.00

Book size
230 x 155 mm

Pages
236

Language
English

ISBNs
Paper: 978-3-11-059827-8
eBook: 978-3-11-060118-3
ePub: 978-3-11-059873-5

DOI
10.1515/9783110601183

The Politics of Housing in (Post-)Colonial Africa: Accommodating Workers & Urban Residents

Edited by Kirsten Rüther, Martina Barker-Ciganikova, Daniela Waldburger and Carl-Philipp Bodenstein

Housing matters, no matter when or where. This volume of collected essays on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa seeks to elaborate how and why housing is much more than an everyday practice. The politics of housing unfold in disparate dimensions of time, space and agency. Depending on context, they acquire diverse, often ambivalent, meanings. Housing can be a promise, an unfulfilled dream, a tool of self- and class-assertion, a negotiation process, or a means to achieve other ends. This volume analyzes housing in its multifacetedness, be it a lens to offer insights into complex processes that shape societies; be it a tool of empire to exercise control over private relations of inhabitants; or be it a means to create good, obedient and productive citizens.

Contributions to this volume range from the field of history, to architecture and urban planning, African studies, linguistics, and literature. The individual case studies home in on specific aspects and dimensions of housing and seek to bring them into dialogue with each other. By doing so, the volume aims to add to the debate on studying urban practices and their significance for current social change.

Co-published with De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

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African Minds

Introduction | Martina Barker-Ciganikova
The Rule of Rent: The State, Employers and the Becoming Urban Dweller in Northern Rhodesia Acting Across a Societal Field of Force, c. 1948–1962 | Kirsten Rüther
Ruashi, a Pessac in Congo? On the Design, Inhabitation, and Transformation of a 1950s Neighborhood in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo | Sofie Boonen and Johan Lagae
At Home with Nairobi’s Working Poor: Reading Meja Mwangi’s Urban Novels | Martina Kopf
La problématique de l’habitat dans la ville de Lubumbashi (Elisabethville), province du Katanga, 1910–1960 | Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu
House, Home, Health and Hygiene – Social Engineering of Workers in Elisabethville/ Lubumbashi (1940s to 1960s) Through the Lens of Language Usage | Daniela Waldburger
Spatio-physical Power and Social Control Strategies of the Colonial State in Africa: The Case of CDC Workers’ Camps in Cameroon | Ambe Njoh and Liora Bigon
Concrete Does not Cry: Interdisciplinary Reflections on and Beyond Housing | Nicholas Sungura and Marlene Wagner in discussion with Martina Barker-Ciganikova and Kirsten Rüther

Contributors

Index