J Sumich
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 18145 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | J Sumich |
| NOMBRES | J |
| APELLIDO | Sumich |
| FIRMA | SUMICH J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Essex |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5486-2798 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 20 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 118 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 20 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Para viver bem
Many scholars have argued that the explosive growth of gated communities in African cities results from the soaring inequalities and insecurities unleashed by the adoption of neoliberalism. Based on our analysis of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, we demonstrate how gated communities are the latest attempt in a long-term social engineering project that aims to use the built environment to create the desired urban subject. We then trace how utop…
Unseeing urban divides in Luanda and Maputo
Taking China Miéville's novel The City & The City as our point of departure, we develop the idea of "unseeing" as a central cultural skill to make sense of, and live with, contemporary urban inequality. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Luanda and Maputo, we posit unseeing as a useful heuristic to capture the processes by which divisions between disparate urban lifeworlds are produced and upheld. While unseeing is a necessary, entraine…
Building walls to tame time
In this paper, I explore the ways in which the construction of enclaves became central to utopian attempts of social engineering and how their legacies shape contemporary society despite the failures of these projects. By focusing on the role of enclaving, in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, I demonstrate how it derives its power as a walled remnant of the resuscitation of past utopian goals and simultaneously, by being presented as a solution …
Just another African country’
Here, I examine the legacies of Marx and Lenin for the Indian Ocean nation of Mozambique by tracing nation-building projects from the late colonial period to the present. By combining Archambault’s insights concerning the ‘politics of pretense’ in Mozambique with McGovern’s arguments concerning the development of a durable set of national dispositions in socialist Guinea, I explore the legacies of transformative projects in Mozambique and their c…
Enclaving
While detachment and separation continue to be central to urban development across the globe, in several sub-Saharan African cities they have acquired a particular form of acute social and political efficacy. In many European and American cities, the making of fortified enclosures is considered to be an effect of an endemic fear of societal dissolution, and a growing number of sub-Saharan African cities are, seemingly, affected by a similar socio…
Just out of Reach
The leader of Mozambique's Renamo party, Afonso Dhlakama, died on May 3, 2018. His death both necessitates an ethnographic, regionally comparative rethinking of the analytical approach to the dominant Mozambican political parties (Frelimo and Renamo) as diametrically opposed formations from independence onward and invites a more general reconsideration of anthropological approaches to politics and the trajectory of African postcolonial states. Ba…
Response by the author
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique
This article explores the social and material repercussions of middle class aspirations in a system that is still infused by socialist aesthetics in Maputo, Mozambique. We argue the activation of “middle classness” reproduces ingrained inequalities and boundaries. This is demonstrated through two ethnographic case studies of urban housing, long central to imaginaries of prosperity. First, fearing downward mobility, members of the upper middle cla…
No Smoke without Fire
This article explores the complicated interrelationship between economic enclaves, their associated security practices and the formation of national citizens in Mozambique. From the colonial era of company rule to the large-scale foreign direct investments of the present day, investors have feared the destructive fires of rampant 'mobs', unruly workers and the potentially rebellious populace more generally. Signs of smoke point to trouble for inv…
The Middle Class in Mozambique
In recent years, the growth of a middle class has been a key feature of the 'Africa Rising' narrative. Here, Sumich explores the formation of this middle class in Mozambique, answering questions about the basis of the class system and the social order that gives rise to it. Drawing extensively on his fieldwork, Sumich argues that power and status in dominant party states like Mozambique derives more from the ability to access resources, rather th…
The middle class of Mozambique and the politics of the blank slate
The Uncertainty of Prosperity
In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a 'middle class' in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to 'new' middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these 'emerging middle classes' are central for economic growth and the …
Tenuous Belonging
This article examines changing ideas of who constitutes a 'deserving' and 'full' citizen in Mozambique, from independence in 1975 to the present. I argue that the leadership of the ruling Frelimo Party attempted to occupy a position above society where it could determine the practices and behaviors that made one a loyal citizen and, conversely, those that made one an 'alien' or enemy. The adoption of liberal democracy in 1990 undermined the party…
‘An Imaginary Nation’. Nationalism, Ideology & the Mozambican National Elite
This chapter addresses the specification of the tde-marginalisationt of National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) shortly before and after independence. There is little doubt that ethnicity played an important role in the Angolan civil war, and that it proved to be a very potent mobilising tool for UNITA. The chapter starts with a brief critical overview of the historiography of Angolan nationalism, showing how dominant interpre…
Partido fuerte, ¿Estado débil
Much of the research on Africa in the postcolonial period places the government in a central role-or as a cause- of many crises that have afflicted the continent since its independence. The State or government has been described in different ways: as severe and mild, authoritarian and underdeveloped, corrupt, patrimonial, or as a motor of development. While some warn of the drawbacks of an excessively interventionist State, others warn of the dan…
The Party and the State
This contribution examines the relationship between the ruling Frelimo party and the state it controls in post-socialist Mozambique. It argues that while democratic reforms may have altered state structures since the end of single-party socialism in 1992, power remains concentrated in Frelimo, which has actually increased its hold and become more deeply entrenched during the liberal period. The party is not only the dominant political force in th…
Politics after the Time of Hunger in Mozambique
This article offers a critique of Patrick Chabal's and Jean Pascal Daloz's ‘neo-patrimonial’ interpretation of elite politics in Africa. It does so through an exploration of Mozambican society and politics in the period of democratic transition. By examining the relationship between the ruling Frelimo elite and the middle class in the capital Maputo, I argue that state politics cannot be explained by elites competing with each other through verti…
Construir uma nação
O presente artigo analisa a importância, para a elite moçambicana politicamente dominante, de uma ideologia de modernidade unificadora. Argumento que esta ideologia de modernidade constitui uma categoria «nativa», sendo utilizada pelas elites para reivindicarem o seu poder social e legitimarem as suas posições de privilégio perante a sociedade em geral. Não se trata de uma ideologia estática, mas antes profundamente enraizada nos antecedentes soc…
Modernity Redirected
The Black South African Middle Class
In the past few years, the phrase ‘the middle class’ seems to be on everyone’s lips. In Europe and the USA, pundits debate the depth and breadth of the social crisis caused by its worrying decline
The Party and the State
This contribution examines the relationship between the ruling Frelimo party and the state it controls in post-socialist Mozambique. It argues that while democratic reforms may have altered state structures since the end of single-party socialism in 1992, power remains concentrated in Frelimo, which has actually increased its hold and become more deeply entrenched during the liberal period. The party is not only the dominant political force in th…
The Uncertainty of Prosperity
In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a 'middle class' in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to 'new' middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these 'emerging middle classes' are central for economic growth and the …
Politics after the Time of Hunger in Mozambique
This article offers a critique of Patrick Chabal's and Jean Pascal Daloz's ‘neo-patrimonial’ interpretation of elite politics in Africa. It does so through an exploration of Mozambican society and politics in the period of democratic transition. By examining the relationship between the ruling Frelimo elite and the middle class in the capital Maputo, I argue that state politics cannot be explained by elites competing with each other through verti…
Enclaving
While detachment and separation continue to be central to urban development across the globe, in several sub-Saharan African cities they have acquired a particular form of acute social and political efficacy. In many European and American cities, the making of fortified enclosures is considered to be an effect of an endemic fear of societal dissolution, and a growing number of sub-Saharan African cities are, seemingly, affected by a similar socio…
The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique
This article explores the social and material repercussions of middle class aspirations in a system that is still infused by socialist aesthetics in Maputo, Mozambique. We argue the activation of “middle classness” reproduces ingrained inequalities and boundaries. This is demonstrated through two ethnographic case studies of urban housing, long central to imaginaries of prosperity. First, fearing downward mobility, members of the upper middle cla…
No Smoke without Fire
This article explores the complicated interrelationship between economic enclaves, their associated security practices and the formation of national citizens in Mozambique. From the colonial era of company rule to the large-scale foreign direct investments of the present day, investors have feared the destructive fires of rampant 'mobs', unruly workers and the potentially rebellious populace more generally. Signs of smoke point to trouble for inv…
Just another African country’
Here, I examine the legacies of Marx and Lenin for the Indian Ocean nation of Mozambique by tracing nation-building projects from the late colonial period to the present. By combining Archambault’s insights concerning the ‘politics of pretense’ in Mozambique with McGovern’s arguments concerning the development of a durable set of national dispositions in socialist Guinea, I explore the legacies of transformative projects in Mozambique and their c…
Just out of Reach
The leader of Mozambique's Renamo party, Afonso Dhlakama, died on May 3, 2018. His death both necessitates an ethnographic, regionally comparative rethinking of the analytical approach to the dominant Mozambican political parties (Frelimo and Renamo) as diametrically opposed formations from independence onward and invites a more general reconsideration of anthropological approaches to politics and the trajectory of African postcolonial states. Ba…
Unseeing urban divides in Luanda and Maputo
Taking China Miéville's novel The City & The City as our point of departure, we develop the idea of "unseeing" as a central cultural skill to make sense of, and live with, contemporary urban inequality. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Luanda and Maputo, we posit unseeing as a useful heuristic to capture the processes by which divisions between disparate urban lifeworlds are produced and upheld. While unseeing is a necessary, entraine…
Building walls to tame time
In this paper, I explore the ways in which the construction of enclaves became central to utopian attempts of social engineering and how their legacies shape contemporary society despite the failures of these projects. By focusing on the role of enclaving, in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, I demonstrate how it derives its power as a walled remnant of the resuscitation of past utopian goals and simultaneously, by being presented as a solution …
Partido fuerte, ¿Estado débil
Much of the research on Africa in the postcolonial period places the government in a central role-or as a cause- of many crises that have afflicted the continent since its independence. The State or government has been described in different ways: as severe and mild, authoritarian and underdeveloped, corrupt, patrimonial, or as a motor of development. While some warn of the drawbacks of an excessively interventionist State, others warn of the dan…
Politics after the Time of Hunger in Mozambique
This article offers a critique of Patrick Chabal's and Jean Pascal Daloz's ‘neo-patrimonial’ interpretation of elite politics in Africa. It does so through an exploration of Mozambican society and politics in the period of democratic transition. By examining the relationship between the ruling Frelimo elite and the middle class in the capital Maputo, I argue that state politics cannot be explained by elites competing with each other through verti…
Partido fuerte, ¿Estado débil
Much of the research on Africa in the postcolonial period places the government in a central role-or as a cause- of many crises that have afflicted the continent since its independence. The State or government has been described in different ways: as severe and mild, authoritarian and underdeveloped, corrupt, patrimonial, or as a motor of development. While some warn of the drawbacks of an excessively interventionist State, others warn of the dan…
The Party and the State
This contribution examines the relationship between the ruling Frelimo party and the state it controls in post-socialist Mozambique. It argues that while democratic reforms may have altered state structures since the end of single-party socialism in 1992, power remains concentrated in Frelimo, which has actually increased its hold and become more deeply entrenched during the liberal period. The party is not only the dominant political force in th…
‘An Imaginary Nation’. Nationalism, Ideology & the Mozambican National Elite
This chapter addresses the specification of the tde-marginalisationt of National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) shortly before and after independence. There is little doubt that ethnicity played an important role in the Angolan civil war, and that it proved to be a very potent mobilising tool for UNITA. The chapter starts with a brief critical overview of the historiography of Angolan nationalism, showing how dominant interpre…
Tenuous Belonging
This article examines changing ideas of who constitutes a 'deserving' and 'full' citizen in Mozambique, from independence in 1975 to the present. I argue that the leadership of the ruling Frelimo Party attempted to occupy a position above society where it could determine the practices and behaviors that made one a loyal citizen and, conversely, those that made one an 'alien' or enemy. The adoption of liberal democracy in 1990 undermined the party…
The middle class of Mozambique and the politics of the blank slate
The Uncertainty of Prosperity
In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a 'middle class' in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to 'new' middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these 'emerging middle classes' are central for economic growth and the …
The Middle Class in Mozambique
In recent years, the growth of a middle class has been a key feature of the 'Africa Rising' narrative. Here, Sumich explores the formation of this middle class in Mozambique, answering questions about the basis of the class system and the social order that gives rise to it. Drawing extensively on his fieldwork, Sumich argues that power and status in dominant party states like Mozambique derives more from the ability to access resources, rather th…
No Smoke without Fire
This article explores the complicated interrelationship between economic enclaves, their associated security practices and the formation of national citizens in Mozambique. From the colonial era of company rule to the large-scale foreign direct investments of the present day, investors have feared the destructive fires of rampant 'mobs', unruly workers and the potentially rebellious populace more generally. Signs of smoke point to trouble for inv…
Response by the author
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique
This article explores the social and material repercussions of middle class aspirations in a system that is still infused by socialist aesthetics in Maputo, Mozambique. We argue the activation of “middle classness” reproduces ingrained inequalities and boundaries. This is demonstrated through two ethnographic case studies of urban housing, long central to imaginaries of prosperity. First, fearing downward mobility, members of the upper middle cla…
Just another African country’
Here, I examine the legacies of Marx and Lenin for the Indian Ocean nation of Mozambique by tracing nation-building projects from the late colonial period to the present. By combining Archambault’s insights concerning the ‘politics of pretense’ in Mozambique with McGovern’s arguments concerning the development of a durable set of national dispositions in socialist Guinea, I explore the legacies of transformative projects in Mozambique and their c…
Enclaving
While detachment and separation continue to be central to urban development across the globe, in several sub-Saharan African cities they have acquired a particular form of acute social and political efficacy. In many European and American cities, the making of fortified enclosures is considered to be an effect of an endemic fear of societal dissolution, and a growing number of sub-Saharan African cities are, seemingly, affected by a similar socio…
Just out of Reach
The leader of Mozambique's Renamo party, Afonso Dhlakama, died on May 3, 2018. His death both necessitates an ethnographic, regionally comparative rethinking of the analytical approach to the dominant Mozambican political parties (Frelimo and Renamo) as diametrically opposed formations from independence onward and invites a more general reconsideration of anthropological approaches to politics and the trajectory of African postcolonial states. Ba…
Building walls to tame time
In this paper, I explore the ways in which the construction of enclaves became central to utopian attempts of social engineering and how their legacies shape contemporary society despite the failures of these projects. By focusing on the role of enclaving, in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, I demonstrate how it derives its power as a walled remnant of the resuscitation of past utopian goals and simultaneously, by being presented as a solution …
Construir uma nação
O presente artigo analisa a importância, para a elite moçambicana politicamente dominante, de uma ideologia de modernidade unificadora. Argumento que esta ideologia de modernidade constitui uma categoria «nativa», sendo utilizada pelas elites para reivindicarem o seu poder social e legitimarem as suas posições de privilégio perante a sociedade em geral. Não se trata de uma ideologia estática, mas antes profundamente enraizada nos antecedentes soc…
Modernity Redirected
The Black South African Middle Class
In the past few years, the phrase ‘the middle class’ seems to be on everyone’s lips. In Europe and the USA, pundits debate the depth and breadth of the social crisis caused by its worrying decline
Unseeing urban divides in Luanda and Maputo
Taking China Miéville's novel The City & The City as our point of departure, we develop the idea of "unseeing" as a central cultural skill to make sense of, and live with, contemporary urban inequality. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Luanda and Maputo, we posit unseeing as a useful heuristic to capture the processes by which divisions between disparate urban lifeworlds are produced and upheld. While unseeing is a necessary, entraine…
Para viver bem
Many scholars have argued that the explosive growth of gated communities in African cities results from the soaring inequalities and insecurities unleashed by the adoption of neoliberalism. Based on our analysis of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, we demonstrate how gated communities are the latest attempt in a long-term social engineering project that aims to use the built environment to create the desired urban subject. We then trace how utop…
Political science (17 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Political economy (13 obras) · Law (10 obras) · African history and culture studies (9 obras) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (7 obras) · Democracy (6 obras) · Economics (6 obras)