Place resists
Grounding African urban order in an age of global change
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3647235 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Barac (0000-0002-4562-3952, London South Bank University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 24-42 |
| Publication date | 2011-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Dynamics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0253-3952 • E-ISSN: 1940-7874 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02533952.2011.569995 |
| OpenAlex | W2047631306 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 32 |
Emerging studies of African urbanity are reappraising city‐making practices and theories in ‘the global South’. Grounding alternative claims to ‘cityness’, the dynamics of informality hold a key to local cultures of transformation. In our age of global change this insight is crucial to grasping future urban demands. What debate about such cities calls for is an interpretive model able to orient circumstantial judgments in often discordant situations. Emphasising the anchoring role of place, the research argues for a research analytic more faithful to everyday events than ‘Northern’ paradigms of urban order. Concepts of order underpin profound questions of orientation: how do African city dwellers make sense of their expectations? What role does the city play in decision‐making? Being true to how life is experienced on the ground implies comprehending its challenges, but interpretation must go beyond simply identifying with the disadvantaged. The plurality of claims to the city creates conflicts that typically obscure deeper issues. Understanding rooted in the mundane order would disclose a concrete metabolism able to mediate rivalry between urban discourses. Instead of a consensus version of what makes a city civic, the proposed analytic follows ideas in planning theory and social processes to address everyday diversity head on
Common ground · Disadvantaged · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Everyday life · Political science · Politics · Rivalry · Sociology · Technocracy · Urbanity · Law · South African History and Culture · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
The Anti-aesthetic
Telling About Society
Splintering Urbanism
Ordinary Cities
The Material Culture Reader
Planet of Slums
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Geographies of Resistance
Deep Difference
Africities
Reconsidering Informality
Humanitarian & development actors as peacebuilders
The Sociological Imagination
Pirate Towns
Defining spatial concepts toward an African urban system
The Ordinary City
The sociological imagination
Poetry, language, thought
Were Cities Built as Images
The World City Hypothesis
Cyborg Urbanization
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women
Post-Colonialism and the Political Imagination
People as Infrastructure
Writing the World from an African Metropolis
Sense-scapes
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2022 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |