Envisioning the City in Africa: Anthropology, Creativity and Urban Culture

Förster, Till

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-46344-9_22

Cited by 18 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Cities are constantly evolving and allow, based on urban dwellers' agency, for practices that create new social spaces (Förster 2013, 246). Proposing that urban contexts are enabling, some scholars claim that creative ways to cope with the hardship that urban life brings can be found anywhere, while others point to the fact that one has to look more closely at the kinds of social practices that enable new social and cultural spaces (Förster 2013(Förster , 2017.…”

Section: Urban Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing the City from the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Urban Marginality

Aceska

Heer

Kaiser-Grolimund

2019

Anthropological Forum

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This special issue focuses on urban marginality in diverse contexts across the world (Africa, Latin America, Arab States and Europe) and proposes anthropological perspectives on contemporary urbanity that take into account the complexity of the social positions of those city dwellers that are on the margins. Three aspects of urban margins come to the fore. First, urbanites respond to increasing marginalisation through the production of alternative meanings and narratives about the city. While grand, powerful narratives may present cities as 'divided', 'dual' or 'conflicted', urban dwellers may carve out symbolic space through discourses of the non-spectacular and non-political, emerging out of lived space. Second, the cuts and frictions constituting urban margins do not only limit urban dwellers capacities, but can also provide spaces of agentic possibilities. As it is well known, the absence of state control can be turned by versatile urbanites into opportunities of the 'informal' economy. Third, urban dwellers engage in manifold practices that connect and entangle their marginalised position with spaces of power and resources. Through their practices urban margins become a relation to, not a disconnection from the 'centre'. In this special issue we understand 'urban margins' not as essence or entities, but as forms of relations between urban dwellers shaped by processes of political, economic, spatial and social marginalisation. Seen in this way, urban margins constitute a perspective on the urban: a lens to entice comparisons of urban agency in the world of cities [

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Section: Urban Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing the City from the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Urban Marginality

Aceska

Heer

Kaiser-Grolimund

2019

Anthropological Forum

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“…The increased speed and avenues of access to national and international circuits of recognition have their nodal points in the city, rendering it the Mecca of artistic success and stardom. Moreover, the size, density, and heterogeneity of the city (Forster 2014) assures that even if aspiring stars do not make it to the big leagues, modest success yields a bigger fan base than non-urban contexts would offer. The city thus provides the social, economic, psychological, and material conditions for the flourishing of popular arts, even in an age of technological interconnectedness.…”

Section: Lagos and Nigerian Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective Capital: Lagos and Nigerian Music Videos

Eromosele¹

2022

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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Lagos is a recurrent theme in Nigerian music videos. Eromosele examines this phenomenon in relation to the objectives of the music video and the musician’s star image. Various studies involving emotion and forms of capital help to reveal how Lagos is appropriated into the iconography of music stars in ways that extend the city’s affective capital while serving the promotional aims of the music video. Capital is viewed chiefly as value accumulated through circulation and capable of being transubstantiated into different forms. The economic and political prominence of Lagos influences and is fed by the city’s affective power.

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“…For instance, the lives of Africans in urban environments have been shaped by regional and civic conflicts; the desires and pervasive pains induced by neoliberal market-oriented reforms; large-scale urban-rural and transnational migrations; the rapid demolitions, dispossessions, and constructions of urban and (post)colonial change; and high levels of unemployment, poverty, and epidemic illness. Taken together, these various processes challenge not only the imagination of African urbanites when navigating these often highly strenuous conditions in the creation of coherent lives but also the imagination of scholars to develop new understandings of these dynamics (Förster 2016), not least with regard to the conceptual and methodological repertoires that we apply when we research and represent the highly diversified experiences and responses of African urbanites in relation to these dynamics.…”

Section: Affect Emotion and Sentiment In The Study Of Religion In Afr...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes

Homewood

2021

Journal of Africana Religions

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The book series examines the religious, cultural, and political expressions of African, African American, and African Caribbean traditions. Through transnational, cross-cultural, and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of religion, the series investigates the epistemic boundaries of continental and diasporic religious practices and thought and explores the diverse and distinct ways African-derived religions inform culture and politics. The series aims to establish a forum for imagining the centrality of Black religions in the formation of the "New World.

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Envisioning the City in Africa: Anthropology, Creativity and Urban Culture

Cited by 18 publications

References 15 publications

Doing the City from the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Urban Marginality

Doing the City from the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Urban Marginality

Affective Capital: Lagos and Nigerian Music Videos

Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotion in African Cityscapes

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