Johannesburg
Subtitle: the elusive metropolis
By: Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembé, eds. ; with an afterword by Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge.
Contributors: Nuttall, Sarah.; Mbembé, J.-A., 1957-
Publisher: Duke University Press; Duke University Press Books
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 398
ISBN-13: 9780822342625; 9780822342847
Subjects: Sociology, Urban -- South Africa -- Johannesburg; Johannesburg (South Africa) -- Social conditions; Johannesburg (South Africa) -- Civilization
Description: Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis is a pioneering effort to insert South Africa's largest city into urban theory, on its own terms. Johannesburg is Africa's premier metropolis. Yet theories of urbanization have cast it as an emblem of irresolvable crisis, the spatial embodiment of unequal economic relations and segregationist policies, and a city that responds to but does not contribute to modernity on the global scale. Complicating and contesting such characterizations, the contributors to this collection reassess classic theories of metropolitan modernity as they explore the experience of 'city-ness' and urban life in post-apartheid South Africa. They portray Johannesburg as a polycentric and international city with a hybrid history that continually permeates the present. Turning its back on rigid rationalities of planning and racial separation, Johannesburg has become a place of intermingling and improvisation, a city that is fast developing its own brand of cosmopolitan culture.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Aesthetics of superfluity / Achille Mbembé; title: People as infrastructure / AbdouMaliq Simone; title: Stylizing the self / Sarah Nuttall; title: Gandhi, Mandela, and the African modern / Jonathan Hyslop; title: Art Johannesburg and its objects / David Bunn; title: The suffering body of the city / Frødøric Le Marcis; title: Literary city / Sarah Nuttall.