Ghana on the Go

Ghana on the Go PDF Author: Jennifer Hart
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253023254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.

Ghana on the Go

Ghana on the Go PDF Author: Jennifer Hart
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253023254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
As early as the 1910s, African drivers in colonial Ghana understood the possibilities that using imported motor transport could further the social and economic agendas of a diverse array of local agents, including chiefs, farmers, traders, fishermen, and urban workers. Jennifer Hart's powerful narrative of auto-mobility shows how drivers built on old trade routes to increase the speed and scale of motorized travel. Hart reveals that new forms of labor migration, economic enterprise, cultural production, and social practice were defined by autonomy and mobility and thus shaped the practices and values that formed the foundations of Ghanaian society today. Focusing on the everyday lives of individuals who participated in this century of social, cultural, and technological change, Hart comes to a more sensitive understanding of the ways in which these individuals made new technology meaningful to their local communities and associated it with their future aspirations.

Migrants and Strangers in an African City

Migrants and Strangers in an African City PDF Author: Bruce Whitehouse
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253000750
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In cities throughout Africa, local inhabitants live alongside large populations of "strangers." Bruce Whitehouse explores the condition of strangerhood for residents who have come from the West African Sahel to settle in Brazzaville, Congo. Whitehouse considers how these migrants live simultaneously inside and outside of Congolese society as merchants, as Muslims in a predominantly non-Muslim society, and as parents seeking to instill in their children the customs of their communities of origin. Migrants and Strangers in an African City challenges Pan-Africanist ideas of transnationalism and diaspora in today's globalized world.

Making an African City

Making an African City PDF Author: Jennifer Hart
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253069343
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In Making an African City, Jennifer Hart traces the way that British colonial officials, Accra Town Council members, and a diverse group of technocrats used regulation to define what an "acceptable" city looked like. Unlike cities elsewhere on the continent, Accra had a long history of urbanism that predated British colonial presence. By criminalizing some activities and privileging others, colonial officials sought to marginalize indigenous practices of Accra residents and shape the development of a new, "modern" city. Hart argues, however, that residents regularly pushed back, protesting regulations, refusing to participate in newly developed systems, reappropriating infrastructure, demanding rights to city services, and asserting their own informal vision for the future of the city. While urban plans and regulations ultimately failed to substantively remake the city, their effects were and are still felt by urban residents, who are often subject to but not served by urban infrastructure. Making an African City explores how the informalization of Accra's development was a historical process, not a natural and self-evident phenomenon, which connects the history of the city with the history of urban development and the growth of technocracy around the world.

The African City

The African City PDF Author: Bill Freund
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139459554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This book is comprehensive both in terms of time coverage, from before the Pharaohs to the present moment and in that it tries to consider cities from the entire continent, not just Sub-Saharan Africa. Apart from factual information and rich description material culled from many sources, it looks at many issues from why urban life emerged in the first place to how present-day African cities cope in difficult times. Instead of seeing towns and cities as somehow extraneous to the real Africa, it views them as an inherent part of developing Africa, indigenous, colonial, and post-colonial and emphasizes the extent to which the future of African society and African culture will likely be played out mostly in cities. The book is written to appeal to students of history but equally to geographers, planners, sociologists and development specialists interested in urban problems.

To Build a City in Africa

To Build a City in Africa PDF Author: Michelle Provoost
Publisher: Nai010 Publishers
ISBN: 9789462083929
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Africa's population and economic growth make it the world's fastest urbanizing continent. While some might still associate Africa with rural development, the future of Africa is, in fact, very urban. This urbanization is a huge challenge in areas with fragile institutional frameworks and chronic poverty. Many migrants moving to the city end up in self-organized settlements without basic services. One alternative is being offered by developers and investors who have designed and built new towns in Africa that are modelled after Asian and American cities. But is this really a proper alternative? Does one size fit all?00'Urban Africa' brings together authors from various academic, political and design backgrounds; as well as case studies on new towns in, amongst others Ghana, Egypt, South Africa, Angola, Morocco and Kenya. In this way, the book provides a critical narrative about contemporary 'Urban Africa' and the western world's role - if any - in the radical transformations happening today.

The City Makers of Nairobi

The City Makers of Nairobi PDF Author: Anders Ese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000096777
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
The City Makers of Nairobi re-examines the history of the urban development of Nairobi in the colonial period. Although Nairobi was a colonial construct with lasting negative repercussions, the African population’s impact on its history and development is often overlooked. This book shows how Africans took an active part in making use of the city and creating it, and how they were far from being subjects in the development of a European colonial city. This re-interpretation of Nairobi’s history suggests that the post-colonial city is the result of more than unjust and segregative colonial planning. Merging historical documentation with extensive contemporary urban theory, this book provides in-depth knowledge of the key historical roles played by locals in the development of their city. It argues that the idea of agency, a popular inroad to urban development today, is not a current phenomenon but one that has always existed with its many social, spatial, and physical ramifications. This is an ideal read for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying the history of urban development and theories, providing an in-depth case study for reference. The City Makers of Nairobi broaches interdisciplinary themes important to urban planners, social scientists, historians, and those working with popular settlements in cities across the world.

Food, Culture, and Survival in an African City

Food, Culture, and Survival in an African City PDF Author: K. Flynn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113707986X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
A rich ethnographic portrait of food-provisioning processes in a contemporary African city, offering valuable lessons about the powerful roles of gender, migration, exchange, sex, and charity in food acquisition. Based on anthropologist Karen Coen Flynn's study of Mwanza, Tanzania, this work draws on the personal accounts of over 350 market vendors, low, middle and high-income consumers, urban farmers as well as those, including children, who live on the streets. This strikingly original work offers interdisciplinary appeal to a broad audience of both students and professionals interested in anthropology, African studies, urban studies, gender studies and development economics.

Bottleneck

Bottleneck PDF Author: Caroline Melly
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022648906X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
In Bottleneck, anthropologist Caroline Melly uses the problem of traffic bottlenecks to launch a wide-ranging study of mobility in contemporary urban Senegal—a concept that she argues is central to both citizens' and the state's visions of a successful future. Melly opens with an account of the generation of urban men who came of age on the heels of the era of structural adjustment, a diverse cohort with great dreams of building, moving, and belonging, but frustratingly few opportunities to do so. From there, she moves to a close study of taxi drivers and state workers, and shows how bottlenecks—physical and institutional—affect both. The third section of the book covers a seemingly stalled state effort to solve housing problems by building large numbers of concrete houses, while the fourth takes up the thousands of migrants who attempt, sometimes with tragic results, to cross the Mediterranean on rickety boats in search of new opportunities. The resulting book offers a remarkable portrait of contemporary Senegal and a means of theorizing mobility and its impossibilities far beyond the African continent.

Slavery and the Birth of an African City

Slavery and the Birth of an African City PDF Author: Kristin Mann
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253117089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
As the slave trade entered its last, illegal phase in the 19th century, the town of Lagos on West Africa's Bight of Benin became one of the most important port cities north of the equator. Slavery and the Birth of an African City explores the reasons for Lagos's sudden rise to power. By linking the histories of international slave markets to those of the regional suppliers and slave traders, Kristin Mann shows how the African slave trade forever altered the destiny of the tiny kingdom of Lagos. This magisterial work uncovers the relationship between African slavery and the growth of one of Africa's most vibrant cities.

Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar

Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar PDF Author: William Cunningham Bissell
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253222559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
At once an engaging portrait of a cosmopolitan African city and an exploration of colonial irrationality, Urban Design, Chaos, and Colonial Power in Zanzibar opens up new perspectives on the making of modernity and the metropolis.