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Written by AbdouMaliq Simone and Edgar Pieterse, this book attempts to address the relationship between urban theory and practice in Asia and Africa. It is argued that we need to look at the neighborhood or district level to get the essence of urban lives. This book reads like a collection of authors’ thoughts on urban change over the past several decades. It reflects their concern for social justice in African and Asian cities, which is ever challenged by the commodification and technologization of urban spaces.
Description
It is well known that the world is transitioning to an irrevocable urban future whose epicentre has moved into the cities of Asia and Africa. What is less clear is how this will be managed and deployed as a multi-polar world system is being born. The full implications of this challenge cry out to be understood because city building (and retrofitting) cannot but be an undertaking entangled in profound societal and cultural shifts.
In this highly original account, renowned urban sociologists AbdouMaliq Simone and Edgar Pieterse offer a call for action based fundamentally on the detail of people’s lives. Urban regions are replete with residents who are compelled to come up with innovative ways to maintain or extend livelihoods, whose makeshift character is rarely institutionalized into a fixed set of practices, locales or organizational forms.
This novel analytical approach reveals a more complex relationship between people, the state and other agents than has previously been understood. As the authors argue,
We need adequate concepts and practices to grasp the composition and intricacy of these shifting efforts to make visible new political possibilities for action and social justice in cities across Asia and Africa.
Contents
Chapter 1: Paradoxes of the Urban
Chapter 2: Precarious Now
Chapter 3: Re-Description
Chapter 4: Secretions
Chapter 5: Horizons From Within the Break
Chapter 6: Experimentations
Chapter 7: Epilogue: A Story About Stories