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Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis
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Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis Paperback - 2008

by Sarah Nuttall (Editor)

From the publisher

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.

The volume's essays include an investigation of representation and self-stylization in the city, an ethnographic examination of friction zones and practices of social reproduction in inner-city Johannesburg, and a discussion of the economic and literary relationship between Johannesburg and Maputo, Mozambique's capital. One contributor considers how Johannesburg's cosmopolitan sociability enabled the anticolonial projects of Mohandas Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Journalists, artists, architects, writers, and scholars bring contemporary Johannesburg to life in ten short pieces, including reflections on music and megamalls, nightlife, built spaces, and life for foreigners in the city.

Contributors: Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge, Lindsay Bremner, David Bunn, Fred de Vries, Nsizwa Dlamini, Mark Gevisser, Stefan Helgesson, Julia Hornberger, Jonathan Hyslop, Grace Khunou, Frdric Le Marcis, Xavier Livermon, John Matshikiza, Achille Mbembe, Robert Muponde, Sarah Nuttall, Tom Odhiambo, Achal Prabhala, AbdouMaliq Simone

From the rear cover

"An extraordinary exploration of what is so often left out of accounts about cities: what is beneath and what is at the edge. It goes where much of the urban scholarship leaves off or, rather, trails off. The authors' project to write Johannesburg into today's history will serve as a compass to enable researchers and writers to engage other cities that have been left out of history or given a narrow colonial presence."--Saskia Sassen, author of "Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages"

Details

  • Title Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis
  • Author Sarah Nuttall (Editor)
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition [ Edition: Repri
  • Pages 392
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Duke University Press
  • Date 2008-11-01
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780822342847 / 0822342847
  • Weight 1.48 lbs (0.67 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.98 x 6.24 x 1.02 in (22.81 x 15.85 x 2.59 cm)
  • Themes
    • Cultural Region: Southern Africa
    • Demographic Orientation: Urban
  • Library of Congress subjects Sociology, Urban - South Africa -, Johannesburg (South Africa) - Social
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2008019636
  • Dewey Decimal Code 306.096

Media reviews

Citations

  • Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/12/2008, Page 23

About the author

Sarah Nuttall is Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is the author of Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid (forthcoming) and an editor of several books, including Beautiful/Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics, also published by Duke University Press.

Achille Mbembe is Research Professor in History and Politics at WISER. He is the author of On the Postcolony and La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun and a co-editor of Le politique par le bas en Afrique noire.

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Johannesburg – The Elusive Metropolis
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Johannesburg – The Elusive Metropolis

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Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (a Public Culture book)

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