Description
Book SynopsisAt times of economic and political crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, urban dwellers display a large degree of creativity in their survival strategies by developing social networks and constructing imaginative and original practices and ideas. This volume views the urban neighbourhood from two different perspectives and explores the importance of these creative processes. The first approach considers the neighbourhood as a geographical domain in which people are engaged in a variety of activities to advance their material and immaterial well-being, making use of their ‘wealth’ of opportunities, assets and diverse forms of natural, physical, financial, human and social capital. The second angle sees the neighbourhood as not necessarily geographically located or bounded but as having been created and defined by human beings. These neighbourhoods may take on the form of self-help organizations, associations or churches, or be based on gender, generational, ethnic or occupational identities.
Table of ContentsContents Figures vii Maps vii Tables vii Photographs viii 1 The African neighbourhood: An introduction 1 Piet Konings, Rijk van Dijk & Dick Foeken 2 Surviving in the neighbourhoods of Nakuru town, Kenya 22 Samuel Owuor & Dick Foeken 3 ‘Bendskin’ drivers in Douala’s New Bell neighbourhood: Masters of the road and the city 46 Piet Konings 4 Intimate strangers: Neighbourhood, autochthony and the politics of belonging 66 Basile Ndjio 5 Neighbourhood formation process: Access to housing land in Kamwokya, Kampala, Uganda 88 Emmanuel Nkurunziza 6 Urban space, gender and identity: A neighbourhood of Muslim women in Kano, Nigeria 119 Katja Werthmann 7 Maps of what matters: Community colour 142 Deborah Pellow 8 Not quite the comforts of home: Searching for locality among street youth in Dar es Salaam 163 Eileen Moyer 9 Togolese cartographies: Re-mapping space in a post-Cold War city 197 Charles Piot 10 Neighbours on the fringes of a small city in post-war Chad 211 Mirjam de Bruijn 11 Neighbourhood (re)construction and changing identities in Mauritania from a small town perspective 230 Kiky van Til List of authors 251
