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- Convenors:
-
Jason Sumich
(University of Essex)
Julie Archambault (Concordia University)
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- Stream:
- Social Anthropology
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.04
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The growth of the urban middle class coincides with efforts to erect urban exclaves. This reconfiguration of urban spaces generates unexpected forms of connections and disconnections both across and within class boundaries. This panel explores the effects of such transformations in Africa.
Long Abstract:
The growing visibility of the rising middle class on the urban landscape has also been coupled with an effort to erect contained spaces that are clearly separate and bounded—urban exclaves. The reconfiguration of urban spaces is generating unexpected forms of connections and disconnections both across and within class boundaries in well-established locales, as well as in emerging sites.
What happens to the performative character of class "boundary work" when material boundaries are erected and policed? How is the supposed rise of the ´middle class´ transforming the urban landscape, with the growth of gated communities, shopping malls, restaurants and fitness centres?
We welcome ethnographically informed papers that explore some of the different ways in which the middle class is both formed and expressed through connections and disruptions, from politics and economy, to wellness and self-making.
We ask how the performance of middle-classness transform and intersects with other ways of inhabiting the city. How do these spatial practices (re)produce and/or subvert discourses of gender, class, race, ethnicity? How is class simultaneously shaped by the connections that these developments encourage and foster and the disruptions that they in turn also promote? What forms of sociality are emerging in these spaces, and how do these spaces shape the creation of alternative kinds of ethical subjectivities centred on class consciousness? We ask, how attention to these dynamics allows us to shed light on broader political, social, economic and ecological transformation underway across the continent.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the growing popularity of fitness and the formation of middle class subjectivities in Mozambique, and reflects on how the globalisation of fitness is inspiring new ways of being and relating that are driven by a combination of health and aesthetic concerns.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the growing popularity of fitness and the formation of middle class subjectivities in Mozambique, and reflects on how the globalisation of fitness is inspiring new ways of being and relating that are driven by a combination of health and aesthetic concerns. What makes the growing popularity of fitness anthropologically intriguing is that, on the one hand, fatness in Mozambique is seen by many not only as aesthetically and sensuously pleasing, but also as a marker of entangled ideals of health, wealth and connectedness; and, on the other, that people generally try to outsource sweat-inducing activities as best they can. Indeed, if wealth and status have commonly translated into particular kinds of bodies—bodies that can accumulate fat and bodies that can avoid sweating—the globalisation of fitness is provoking a redefinition of the articulation between social class and the body, and more specifically between two important bodily substances, namely sweat and fat. I argue that the gym—a relatively new and increasingly significant urban enclave—offers more than a mere platform for the performance of middle classness by showing how the appeal of fitness lies, in part at least, in its transgressive potential. The paper is based on ongoing ethnographic research in the cities of Inhambane and Maputo, and focuses on the experiences of older women who were initially drawn to fitness for weight-related health issues.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how everyday activities are shaping Dar es Salaam's suburban middle class neighbourhoods. I focus on the celebration of birth, marriage and death, and new rituals such as kitchen parties and primary school graduations; health, diet and use of leisure time, and associational life.
Paper long abstract:
In northern Dar es Salaam, new self-built suburbs have emerged over the last two decades. Relatively low-density neighbourhoods, with large houses on large plots, built to individual tastes, dominate the landscape. And yet these suburbs are not (yet) exclusively middle class, as long-term peri-urban dwellers and poorer urban residents nestle in-between their grander neighbours. The suburban built landscape cannot (yet) be read as enclave.
And yet, middle class enclaves are emerging, as much through lifestyle as through land use and residential construction. For example, suburban middle class lifestyles are highly dependent on the private car, a fact of which one is daily reminded when trying to commute to or from the city centre. Middle class residents simply do not go anywhere on foot; walking, or taking public transport, generally denotes lower class status.
This paper develops the point that the lifestyles lived in the new suburbs are significant in the repertoire of middle class boundary work. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the northern suburbs of Kinondoni, I focus on the celebration of rituals such as birth, marriage and death, and new rituals such as kitchen parties and primary school graduations; health, diet and the use of leisure time; and associational life. I argue that these everyday suburban activities are shaping Dar es Salaam's suburbs as middle class neighbourhoods
Paper short abstract:
With Kigamboni in Dar es Salaam as the main case study, the paper explores the strategy of settling in the immediate vicinity of fenced-off urban enclaves as a way of participating in and sharing perceived middle-class values and ideals.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the responses by urban dwellers in anticipation of several large-scale urban enclave projects in Kigamboni, a district in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The specific focus is on how urban dwellers settling in the immediate vicinity to fenced-off urban enclaves seek to take part in the social imaginary of the middle-class through their proximity to the enclave area. In 2008, the Tanzanian government announced the intention to construct Kigamboni New City, a large satellite city located to the South of Dar es Salaam's city centre. Within few years, the immediate urban periphery began experiencing a construction boom, with a range of privatized large-scale housing projects mushrooming along the anticipated project boundary. Promising luxurious housing and proximity to retail and privatized education, the enclaves cater for the Tanzanian elite and rising middle-class. In addition, the land surrounding enclave construction sites has also seen an increase in value and demand. Despite the fenced-off nature of the enclave, the powerful imaginary of their exclusivity draws near urban dwellers who settle in the immediate vicinity in order to benefit from the services provided within the enclaves, as well as the flow of goods and people to the area. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how settling outside of these enclaves is practiced as a way of participating in and sharing perceived middle-class values and ideals. I look at how these ideals are, to an extent, mirrored in the social organization of the emerging neighborhoods that surround the enclaves.