Ethnography on the Road: Infrastructural Vision and the Unruly Present in Contemporary Dakar

Abstract

During his term as President, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal sought to make tangible and proximal his ‘vision’ for the country's future through the construction and rehabilitation of vital arteries in the capital, Dakar. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, this essay takes as its focus these ambitious road projects and their local interpretations and everyday effects. I argue that Dakar's infrastructural transformation made spectacularly visible not only distant and implausible futures but also a very particular vision of the present that rationalized, emphasized, and even celebrated the everyday hardships wrought by infrastructural change. Avowedly ahistorical and centred squarely on the individual, these discourses of hardship cast infrastructural change as a future-focused project brought about through ‘temporary’ inconveniences and disruptions endured for the sake of the nation. What emerges from this analysis is a more complex view of neo-liberal reform and urban change in contemporary Africa.

The Unstable Coastline: Navigating Dispossession and Belonging in Colombo

“…In research on Dakar, Caroline Melly (:387–388) describes how the “everyday hardships wrought by infrastructural change” are understood as “temporary inconveniences and disruptions endured for the sake of the nation”. At the same time, according to Melly (:387), Dakarois’ “discourses of hardship” are “avowedly ahistorical and centred squarely on the individual”.…”

“…In research on Dakar, Caroline Melly (:387–388) describes how the “everyday hardships wrought by infrastructural change” are understood as “temporary inconveniences and disruptions endured for the sake of the nation”. At the same time, according to Melly (:387), Dakarois’ “discourses of hardship” are “avowedly ahistorical and centred squarely on the individual”. Melly’s analysis thus illuminates the complex interplays of nationalism and individualism that emerge in aspirational global cities; while the overall benefits of urban development are understood to be a credit to the broader nation, poorer urban residents are left to deal with change in individualised, atomised ways leaving very little room for collective action against disruptive projects of world‐class city‐making.…”

“…In drawing attention to the ways Mutuwall residents navigate dispossession, I take inspiration from recent studies which have examined subtle forms of compliance, consent and acceptance which characterise urban residents’ ways of relating to oppressive conditions (e.g. Allen ; de Boeck ; Harker ; Harms , ; Melly ; Pettit ; Zeiderman ). The lens of navigation, as I use it, highlights both temporal and spatial dimensions of dispossession which are familiar from other accounts of urban displacement in the scholarly literature, but also diverge from it in important ways.…”

Infrastructures of utopia: ruination and regeneration of the African future

“…The president initiated a policy of infrastructural works comprising the redevelopment of motorways in the congested capital Dakar, which re-energized the neo-modernist belief in the nation's development (Melly 2013). While this gained him much credit, by the end of his first mandate the president had become known for an authoritative style, galloping governmental corruption and a lack of respect for the country's constitution (Dahou and Foucher 2004; Diop 2013; Bouilly and Brossier 2014).…”

Contentious Territorial Alliances: Coalition Politics and Struggles over Urban Development in Pikine, Senegal

“…The district mayor's attempts to spearhead the construction of a middle-class and elite housing project was a central component of his territorial governing strategies. Research on Senegal's current wave of 'speculative urbanism' (Goldman 2011) has pivoted around increased investments in massive infrastructural projects since President Wade's election in 2000 (Galvan 2001;Melly 2013). Often working in tandem with central government actors and private real estate developers, many local urban government officials have also sought to strengthen their urban governance regimes by facilitating the construction of new housing projects.…”