Claudia Gastrow's Books

The Aesthetics of Belonging

Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda

By: Claudia Gastrow

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The Aesthetics of Belonging

Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda

By: Claudia Gastrow

After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola's three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reimagine the Luanda cityscape. Awash with petrodollars cultivated through strategic foreign relationships, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos rolled out a national reconstruction program that sought to transform Angola's capital into what he considered to be a modern, world-class metropolis. Until funds dried up in 2014, the program—in conjunction with sweeping private investments in real estate—involved mass demolitions of vernacular architecture to make way for high-rise buildings, large-scale housing projects, and commercial centers. The program thus underestimated the values enshrined in the materials and designs of Luanda's existing "informally" constructed neighborhoods, or musseques. The Aesthetics of Belonging explores the political significance of aesthetics in the remaking of the city. Claudia Gastrow's archival and ethnographic work, which includes interviews with city planners, architects, nonprofit leaders, and urban dwellers, shows how government infrastructure projects and foreign-inspired designs came to embody displacement and exclusion for many. This, Gastrow argues, catalyzed a countermovement, an aesthetic dissent rooted in critically reframing informal urbanism as Indigenous—a move that enabled the possibility of recognizing the political potential of informal settlements as spaces that produce belonging.

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Page Count

242

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UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469682206

ISBN 13

9781469682204

The Aesthetics of Belonging

Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda

By: Claudia Gastrow

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The Aesthetics of Belonging

Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda

By: Claudia Gastrow

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338

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1469682192

ISBN 13

9781469682198

Conspicuous Consumption in Africa

By: DEBORAH POSEL; ILANA VAN WYK; JONI BRENNER; SOPHIE.,Deborah Posel

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Conspicuous Consumption in Africa

By: DEBORAH POSEL; ILANA VAN WYK; JONI BRENNER; SOPHIE.,Deborah Posel

This volume grapples with contemporary conspicuous consumption in Africa, its history and how it relates to the project of African modernity. The essays delve into the pleasures, stresses and challenges of consuming in its religious, gendered and racialised aspects, revealing conspicuous consumption as a layered set of practices and relations.

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Page Count

257

ISBN 10

1776143655

ISBN 13

9781776143658

Book's by Claudia Gastrow

The Aesthetics of Belonging

The Aesthetics of Belonging

The Aesthetics of Belonging

The Aesthetics of Belonging

Conspicuous Consumption in Africa

Conspicuous Consumption in Africa

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