Constance Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 3594805 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Constance Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Constance |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6397-4414 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1909 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Comparison in motion
In recent years there has been renewed enthusiasm for comparison within urban studies: a call for comparison that does away with conventional units of analysis and is more experimental. Recent directions in studies of comparative urbanism have urged urban scholars to move on from the tightly controlled comparisons of (usually) Northern cities and to think instead with variation, creativity and alternative modes of citymaking. Drawing from recent …
Nairobi Becoming
Echoing the edgy, disjunctive, ever-emergent city of Nairobi that it explores, Nairobi Becoming: Security, Uncertainty, Contingency strives to be several things-in-the-making. It is a historically and anthropologically minded examination of a shifting cityscape, an experimental, collaborative exercise in curated juxtaposition and assemblage, and an interdisciplinary, subjunctive urban ethnography. It brings together curated interventions by twent…
Building Legacies
This article examines the narratives and practices of return experienced by long-term Nairobi-based Luo seeking to make a home in rural western Kenya. Building a rural home, and being buried there, remain crucial to many urban Luo understandings of a successful life. This is a project full of contingency: it relies on resources gained in the city, as well as access to land and the cultivation of rural kin relations. Although ‘home’ and ‘return’ w…
After Grenfell
The Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 is popularly associated with a litany of failures: political, structural, moral, material. But while the official inquiry has sought to frame the fire as a discrete event, for local residents it is inextricable from accumulated histories of injustice and inequality. Years on, the fire still reverberates, its afterlife constellating with new narratives and politics. Drawing on literature on ruination and r…
City of icebergs
This article considers the materiality and substance of the built environment in Nairobi in light of concerns about surface, depth and the power of the unseen. Taking Nairobi's high-rise construction boom and a recent spate of collapsed buildings as its starting point, it examines how longstanding ideas about the hidden and invisible dynamics of African cities do not operate in a realm distinct from the material world, but often stem from it: the…
Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Milk and meat consumption patterns and the potential risk of zoonotic disease transmission among urban and peri-urban dairy farmers in Ethiopia
Creating awareness about the risk factors for zoonotic transmission of diseases through training and media campaigns, improving meat hygiene through better abattoir services, and inducing behavioural change around meat sourcing, raw meat and raw milk consumption, are all crucial to the successful prevention and control of the spread of zoonotic diseases, including bTB
Urban Popular Economies
What is a life worth living and how is it concretely actualized by an urban majority making often unanticipated, unformatted uses of the urban to engender livelihoods in a dynamic and open-ended process? This is the key question undertaken in this collectively written piece. This means thinking about work, paid and unpaid, in ways that highlight the everyday practices of urban inhabitants as they put together territories in which to operate, whic…
All in this together? Isolation and housing in ‘lockdown London’
Economic Anthropology
Anthropology has a long and complicated history in Africa, and its study of economic life is no exception. In the early days of the discipline, in the 1930s and 1940s, anthropologists like Audrey Richards, Meyer Fortes, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard all departed for Africa to conduct fieldwork. In general, early British social anthropology was committed to holistic studies of small-scale societies, and thus what counted as “economic anthropology” was…
Collapse
In Nairobi, the speed of urban growth is producing a parallel threat of architectural failure: in a recent spate of tower block collapses, many have died. Nairobians describe collapsed tower blocks as "fake," referring to ideas of the counterfeit, as well as anxieties about morally suspect economies. Simultaneously, state-led development is re-envisioning Nairobi as a "world-class" city of spectacular infrastructure and gleaming high-rises. Thoug…
The Dotcom and the Digital
In Kenya, the terms dotcom and digital have become popular descriptors for particular periods of change, as well as for modes of being. The two terms' usage extends beyond reference to the age of the Internet or to encounters with new technologies. Rather, the dotcom and the digital-in different ways and in different decades-enable Kenyans to imagine with and through time. Using extensive ethnographic research and reflecting on pop music, TV adve…
Accumulating history
In anthropology and related fields, “ruin” and “decay” are terms that are often used interchangeably. By paying close attention to the materiality and politics of dirt and decay in a colonial-era housing estate in Nairobi, Kenya, this article argues for their uncoupling. Instead of implying loss or oblivion, decay is explored as a process of accumulation: an excess that constitutes a material history
Anthropological and Ethnographic Methods and Sources
For scholars of African history, anthropology offers a number of valuable and invigorating methodological avenues, from engaging directly in ethnographic fieldwork to analyzing anthropological data compiled by others. Given the asymmetries of written documents and the biases of archival material for Africa, anthropological methods and sources offer a different type of access to those who, for various reasons, tend not to appear in other forms of …
Government Revenue Stabilization Funds
Les recettes que le gouvernement de l’Alberta tire de l’exploitation des ressources naturelles sont très instables, et l’ajustement des dépenses du gouvernement aux variations des revenus implique des coûts sociaux et économiques. Dans cet article, nous montrons, grâce à des simulations, que, si le gouvernement albertain avait créé au début des années 1970 un fonds de stabilisation fondé sur des règles, cela aurait permis de réduire l’instabilité…
Updating an Updating
Charles Dickens on More
Thomas More in America
More’s Works in American Editions
Voluntary Association
Voluntary Associations
A Seventeenth-Century Manuscript of ‘a Vision’ Attributed to Thomas More
Additional locations for Thomas More’s Utopia
The Saar
Essay| May 01 1955 The Saar: Symbol or Prize Constance E. Smith Constance E. Smith Instructor of Government, Wheaton College CONSTANCE SMITH, who received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe College, tvas awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to the London School of Economics in 1951-1952. She has participated in the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies (1952), the Cambridge Seminar on American Studies (1952) and the Woodrow Wilson Seminar, on the United Nations (…
The Working of the Trade Boards Act in Great Britain and Ireland
Accumulating history
In anthropology and related fields, “ruin” and “decay” are terms that are often used interchangeably. By paying close attention to the materiality and politics of dirt and decay in a colonial-era housing estate in Nairobi, Kenya, this article argues for their uncoupling. Instead of implying loss or oblivion, decay is explored as a process of accumulation: an excess that constitutes a material history
Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
City of icebergs
This article considers the materiality and substance of the built environment in Nairobi in light of concerns about surface, depth and the power of the unseen. Taking Nairobi's high-rise construction boom and a recent spate of collapsed buildings as its starting point, it examines how longstanding ideas about the hidden and invisible dynamics of African cities do not operate in a realm distinct from the material world, but often stem from it: the…
Urban Popular Economies
What is a life worth living and how is it concretely actualized by an urban majority making often unanticipated, unformatted uses of the urban to engender livelihoods in a dynamic and open-ended process? This is the key question undertaken in this collectively written piece. This means thinking about work, paid and unpaid, in ways that highlight the everyday practices of urban inhabitants as they put together territories in which to operate, whic…
Collapse
In Nairobi, the speed of urban growth is producing a parallel threat of architectural failure: in a recent spate of tower block collapses, many have died. Nairobians describe collapsed tower blocks as "fake," referring to ideas of the counterfeit, as well as anxieties about morally suspect economies. Simultaneously, state-led development is re-envisioning Nairobi as a "world-class" city of spectacular infrastructure and gleaming high-rises. Thoug…
After Grenfell
The Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 is popularly associated with a litany of failures: political, structural, moral, material. But while the official inquiry has sought to frame the fire as a discrete event, for local residents it is inextricable from accumulated histories of injustice and inequality. Years on, the fire still reverberates, its afterlife constellating with new narratives and politics. Drawing on literature on ruination and r…
The Dotcom and the Digital
In Kenya, the terms dotcom and digital have become popular descriptors for particular periods of change, as well as for modes of being. The two terms' usage extends beyond reference to the age of the Internet or to encounters with new technologies. Rather, the dotcom and the digital-in different ways and in different decades-enable Kenyans to imagine with and through time. Using extensive ethnographic research and reflecting on pop music, TV adve…
Women in Industry from Seven Points of View
Women in Industry from Seven Points of View
The Working of the Trade Boards Act in Great Britain and Ireland
The Saar
Essay| May 01 1955 The Saar: Symbol or Prize Constance E. Smith Constance E. Smith Instructor of Government, Wheaton College CONSTANCE SMITH, who received her Ph.D. from Radcliffe College, tvas awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to the London School of Economics in 1951-1952. She has participated in the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies (1952), the Cambridge Seminar on American Studies (1952) and the Woodrow Wilson Seminar, on the United Nations (…
Additional locations for Thomas More’s Utopia
A Seventeenth-Century Manuscript of ‘a Vision’ Attributed to Thomas More
Voluntary Associations
Voluntary Association
Thomas More in America
More’s Works in American Editions
Charles Dickens on More
Updating an Updating
Government Revenue Stabilization Funds
Les recettes que le gouvernement de l’Alberta tire de l’exploitation des ressources naturelles sont très instables, et l’ajustement des dépenses du gouvernement aux variations des revenus implique des coûts sociaux et économiques. Dans cet article, nous montrons, grâce à des simulations, que, si le gouvernement albertain avait créé au début des années 1970 un fonds de stabilisation fondé sur des règles, cela aurait permis de réduire l’instabilité…
Anthropological and Ethnographic Methods and Sources
For scholars of African history, anthropology offers a number of valuable and invigorating methodological avenues, from engaging directly in ethnographic fieldwork to analyzing anthropological data compiled by others. Given the asymmetries of written documents and the biases of archival material for Africa, anthropological methods and sources offer a different type of access to those who, for various reasons, tend not to appear in other forms of …
Accumulating history
In anthropology and related fields, “ruin” and “decay” are terms that are often used interchangeably. By paying close attention to the materiality and politics of dirt and decay in a colonial-era housing estate in Nairobi, Kenya, this article argues for their uncoupling. Instead of implying loss or oblivion, decay is explored as a process of accumulation: an excess that constitutes a material history
All in this together? Isolation and housing in ‘lockdown London’
Economic Anthropology
Anthropology has a long and complicated history in Africa, and its study of economic life is no exception. In the early days of the discipline, in the 1930s and 1940s, anthropologists like Audrey Richards, Meyer Fortes, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard all departed for Africa to conduct fieldwork. In general, early British social anthropology was committed to holistic studies of small-scale societies, and thus what counted as “economic anthropology” was…
Collapse
In Nairobi, the speed of urban growth is producing a parallel threat of architectural failure: in a recent spate of tower block collapses, many have died. Nairobians describe collapsed tower blocks as "fake," referring to ideas of the counterfeit, as well as anxieties about morally suspect economies. Simultaneously, state-led development is re-envisioning Nairobi as a "world-class" city of spectacular infrastructure and gleaming high-rises. Thoug…
The Dotcom and the Digital
In Kenya, the terms dotcom and digital have become popular descriptors for particular periods of change, as well as for modes of being. The two terms' usage extends beyond reference to the age of the Internet or to encounters with new technologies. Rather, the dotcom and the digital-in different ways and in different decades-enable Kenyans to imagine with and through time. Using extensive ethnographic research and reflecting on pop music, TV adve…
Milk and meat consumption patterns and the potential risk of zoonotic disease transmission among urban and peri-urban dairy farmers in Ethiopia
Creating awareness about the risk factors for zoonotic transmission of diseases through training and media campaigns, improving meat hygiene through better abattoir services, and inducing behavioural change around meat sourcing, raw meat and raw milk consumption, are all crucial to the successful prevention and control of the spread of zoonotic diseases, including bTB
Urban Popular Economies
What is a life worth living and how is it concretely actualized by an urban majority making often unanticipated, unformatted uses of the urban to engender livelihoods in a dynamic and open-ended process? This is the key question undertaken in this collectively written piece. This means thinking about work, paid and unpaid, in ways that highlight the everyday practices of urban inhabitants as they put together territories in which to operate, whic…
Building Legacies
This article examines the narratives and practices of return experienced by long-term Nairobi-based Luo seeking to make a home in rural western Kenya. Building a rural home, and being buried there, remain crucial to many urban Luo understandings of a successful life. This is a project full of contingency: it relies on resources gained in the city, as well as access to land and the cultivation of rural kin relations. Although ‘home’ and ‘return’ w…
After Grenfell
The Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 is popularly associated with a litany of failures: political, structural, moral, material. But while the official inquiry has sought to frame the fire as a discrete event, for local residents it is inextricable from accumulated histories of injustice and inequality. Years on, the fire still reverberates, its afterlife constellating with new narratives and politics. Drawing on literature on ruination and r…
City of icebergs
This article considers the materiality and substance of the built environment in Nairobi in light of concerns about surface, depth and the power of the unseen. Taking Nairobi's high-rise construction boom and a recent spate of collapsed buildings as its starting point, it examines how longstanding ideas about the hidden and invisible dynamics of African cities do not operate in a realm distinct from the material world, but often stem from it: the…
Introduction
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Nairobi Becoming
Echoing the edgy, disjunctive, ever-emergent city of Nairobi that it explores, Nairobi Becoming: Security, Uncertainty, Contingency strives to be several things-in-the-making. It is a historically and anthropologically minded examination of a shifting cityscape, an experimental, collaborative exercise in curated juxtaposition and assemblage, and an interdisciplinary, subjunctive urban ethnography. It brings together curated interventions by twent…
Sociology (13 works) · History (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Art (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Art history (4 works) · Engineering (4 works)