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A Decade of Zimbabwe
This ten-year review covers a difficult but exciting period in Zimbabwe. It starts when the so-called 'Zimbabwe Crisis' was full-blown, and the country was experiencing political, economic and social turmoil, characterized by hyperinflation, de-industrialization, polarization and persistent repression. The review captures the fast-moving events in the three major institutions in Zimbabwe: the state, the ruling party and the main opposition. It also captures the goings-on in national governance, from ruling party dominance, to a Government of National Unity in 2008 and back to ruling party dominance in contested elections in 2013. In this period, the country saw a change from the Mugabe years to his ouster in a so-called 'soft-coup' and a change in leadership in 2017.
Governing the Poor in Harare, Zimbabwe
This is a study of the ‘terrain of urban governance’, using areas of Zimbabwe’s biggest city Harare as case studies. It presents and discusses sets of perceptions of poverty and the poor which influence policy development and decisionmaking among urban ‘governors’. Kamete shows the effects of positive as well as negative perceptions of the poor. He also problematizes more conventional understandings of poverty and includes into his own conceptual understanding dimensions of deficient access to participation and citizenship. He shows that the relationship between power and powerlessness among the poor is much more complex than is sometimes assumed.
Associational Life in African Cities
The book contains 17 chapters with material from 13 African countries, from Egypt to Swaziland and from Senegal to Kenya. Most of the authors are young African academics. The focus of the volume is the multitude of voluntary associations that has emerged in African cities in recent years. In many cases, they are a response to mounting poverty, failing infrastructure and services, and more generally, weak or abdicating urban governments. Some associations are new, in other cases, existing organizations are taking on new tasks. Associations may be neighbourhood-based, others may be city-wide and based on professional groupings or a shared ideology or religion. Still others have an ethnic base. Some of these organizations are engaged in both day-to-day matters of urban management and more long-term urban development. Urban associations challenge the monopoly of local and central government institutions.
Reconsidering Informality
This book brings together two bodies of research on urban Africa that have tended to be separate, studies of urban land use and housing and studies of work and livelihoods. Africa's future will be increasingly urban, and the inherited legal, institutional and financial arrangements for managing urban development are inadequate. Access to employment, shelter and services is precarious for most urban residents. The result is the phenomenal growth of the informal city. Extra-legal housing and unregistered economic activities proliferate and basic urban services are increasingly provided informally. Recent decades of neo-liberal political and economic reforms have increased social inequality acr...
Splintering Towers of Babel
Splintering Towers of Babel focuses on and redefines soft infrastructures and critical infrastructure projects. It explores key issues in contemporary urban studies including town planning histories, architecture, heritage, colonialism and postcolonialism, philosophy, and ethics. The book combines transdisciplinary perspectives on the key historical, philosophical, and political issues associated with urban experiences, built forms, and infrastructure networks. It explores uneven dimensions in contemporary urbanisms and develops spatial phenomenological thinking with reference to the northern and southern hemispheres. This book connects the past and the present, in addition to Western and global South geographies, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Its main contribution is to broaden readers' understanding of infrastructure through the lens of the humanities and to engage with political, poetical, and ethical perspectives. This book is tailored to scholars working in the fields of urban planning, urban geography, architectural history, urban design, infrastructure studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, African studies, and philosophy.
Emotional Transitions in Contemporary Afrodiasporic Women’s Writing
This book is an in-depth study of the category "stranger" as represented in four contemporary Afrodiasporic novels of female authorship: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers. Examined from an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together different approaches to the figure of the stranger and Affect Theory, the plurality of experiences of estrangement, disorientation and unbelonging portrayed in these texts allows expansion upon Sara Ahmed’s (2000) investigation of "stranger fetishism" and, in so doing, contributes to the recent call for a more nuanced understanding of...
Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning
Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning 5 is a selection of some of the best scholarship in urban and regional planning from around the world. The internationally recognized authors of these award-winning papers take up a range of salient issues from the theory and practice of planning. The topics they address include the effects of globalization on world cities, metropolitan planning in France and Australia, and new research in pedestrian and traffic design. The breadth of the topics covered in this book will appeal to all those with an interest in urban and regional planning, providing a springboard for further debate and research. The papers focus particularly on themes of inclusion, urban transformation, metropolitan planning, and urban design. The Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) book series is published in association with the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN) and its member national and transnational planning schools associations.
Political Opposition in African Countries
This Discussion Paper is another outcome of the “Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa” project, which was coordinated at the Institute between 2001 and 2006. The papers are revised versions of presentations made at the “Comparative Sociology” Session of the Research Committee at the XVI World Congress of Sociology held at the end of July 2006 in Durban. They explore different aspects of the role of opposition parties in several East and Southern African countries, which differ according to the socio-political determinants.
