Based on Cohen's fieldwork in the 1960s among the Hausa migrants, a people of the Yoruba area (then the western region of the Federation of Nigeria), Custom and Politics in Urban Africa looks at how ethnic groups use elements of tradition in jostling for power and privilege in new urban situations. This is a landmark work in urban anthropology and provides a comparative framework for studying political processes in African societies.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.
Based on Cohen's fieldwork in the 1960s among the Hausa migrants, a people of the Yoruba area (then the western region of the Federation of Nigeria), Custom and Politics in Urban Africa looks at how ethnic groups use elements of tradition in jostling for power and privilege in new urban situations. This is a landmark work in urban anthropology and provides a comparative framework for studying political processes in African societies.
A selection of papers first delivered at the conference on Africa's Urban Past, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1996.
Garth Andrew Myers' work makes a significant contribution to a long tradition of research on colonial cities and a multidisciplinary body of literature on urban legacies of colonialism. He examines both colonial rule and postcolonial inheritance in these cities, tracing the legacies of colonialism in different and divergent postcolonial settings—a revolutionary left-wing socialist state (Zanzibar) and a reactionary right-wing dictatorship (Malawi). In addition to the examination of urban plans and the African urban majority's responses to them, the book traces the experience of the urban planning process through three different "verandahs of power," or levels of class depiction: the colonial power, the colonized middle, and the urban majority. Interspersed with personal stories, this book illuminates our understanding of the workings of power in African cities by addressing human experiences of that power.
Carnival, that image of sensuous frivolity, is shown by Abner Cohen to be a masquerade for the dynamic relations between culture and politics. His masterful study details the transformation of a local, polyethnic London fair to a massive, exclusively West Indian carnival, known as "Europe's biggest street festival," which in 1976 occasioned a bloody confrontation between black youth and the police and which has since become a fiercely contested cultural event. Cohen contrasts the development of the London carnival with the development of other carnivalesque movements, including the Renaissance Pleasure Faire of California. His valuable analysis of these relatively little-explored urban cultural movements advances further the theoretical formulations developed in his previous studies.
For the first time in history, the majority of the world's population lives in cities, the result of a rapid process of urbanization that started in the second half of the twentieth century. 'Megacities' around the world are rapidly becoming the scene for deprivation, especially in the global South, and the urban excluded face the brunt of what in many cases seems like low-intensity warfare. Featuring case studies from across the globe, including Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Megacities examines recent worldwide trends in poverty and social exclusion, urban violence and politics, and links these to the challenges faced by policy-makers and practitioners.
This book investigates urban tourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the challenges and risks involved, but also showcasing the potential benefits. Whilst much is written on Africa’s rural environments, little has been written about the tourism potential of the vast natural, cultural and historical resources in the continent’s urban areas. Yet these opportunities also come with considerable environmental, social and political challenges. This book interrogates the interactions between urban risks, tourism and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan African urban spaces. It addresses the underlying issues of governance, power, ownership, collaboration, justice, community empowerment and policies that influence tourism decision-making at local, national and regional levels. Interrogating the intricate relationships between tourism stakeholders, this book ultimately reflects on how urban risk can be mitigated, and how sustainable urban tourism can be harnessed for development. The important insights in this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners across Tourism, Geography, Urban Development, and African Studies.
