About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherOhio University Press

ISBN-100821423681

ISBN-139780821423684

eBay Product ID (ePID)13038810310

Product Key Features

Number of Pages336 Pages

Publication NameAge of Concrete : Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2019

SubjectUrban & Land Use Planning, Human Geography, Africa / South / General, Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development, Social History

TypeTextbook

AuthorDavid Morton

Subject AreaPolitical Science, Architecture, Social Science, History

SeriesNew African Histories Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight30 Oz

Item Length10 in

Item Width7 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN2019-018753

Dewey Edition23

Reviews"Morton's argument, delivered with passion and power, gives life to a nuanced, deeply personal understanding of how ordinary residents of disadvantaged urban communities not only make their neighborhoods--they reframe the everyday political order. The stories he tells resonate across the continent."--Garth Myers, author of African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice, Morton's argument, delivered with passion and power, gives life to a nuanced, deeply personal understanding of how ordinary residents of disadvantaged urban communities not only make their neighborhoods--they reframe the everyday political order. The stories he tells resonate across the continent.

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal363.5096791

SynopsisAge of Concrete is a history of the making of houses and homes in the sub rbios of Maputo (Louren o Marques), Mozambique, from the late 1940s to the present. Often dismissed as undifferentiated, ahistorical "slums," these neighborhoods are in fact an open-air archive that reveals some of people's highest aspirations. At first people built in reeds. Then they built in wood and zinc panels. And finally, even when it was illegal, they risked building in concrete block, making permanent homes in a place where their presence was often excruciatingly precarious. Unlike many histories of the built environment in African cities, Age of Concrete focuses on ordinary homebuilders and dwellers. David Morton thus models a different way of thinking about urban politics during the era of decolonization, when one of the central dramas was the construction of the urban stage itself. It shaped how people related not only to each other but also to the colonial state and later to the independent state as it stumbled into being. Original, deeply researched, and beautifully composed, this book speaks in innovative ways to scholarship on urban history, colonialism and decolonization, and the postcolonial state. Replete with rare photographs and other materials from private collections, Age of Concrete establishes Morton as one of a handful of scholars breaking new ground on how we understand Africa's cities., Age of Concrete is about people building homes on tenuous ground in the outer neighborhoods of Maputo, Mozambique, places thought of simply as slums. But up close, they are an archive: houses of reeds, wood, zinc, and concrete embodying the ambitions of people who built their own largest investment and greatest bequest to the future., Age of Concrete is a history of the making of houses and homes in the subúrbios of Maputo (Lourenço Marques), Mozambique, from the late 1940s to the present. Often dismissed as undifferentiated, ahistorical "slums," these neighborhoods are in fact an open-air archive that reveals some of people's highest aspirations. At first people built in reeds. Then they built in wood and zinc panels. And finally, even when it was illegal, they risked building in concrete block, making permanent homes in a place where their presence was often excruciatingly precarious. Unlike many histories of the built environment in African cities, Age of Concrete focuses on ordinary homebuilders and dwellers. David Morton thus models a different way of thinking about urban politics during the era of decolonization, when one of the central dramas was the construction of the urban stage itself. It shaped how people related not only to each other but also to the colonial state and later to the independent state as it stumbled into being. Original, deeply researched, and beautifully composed, this book speaks in innovative ways to scholarship on urban history, colonialism and decolonization, and the postcolonial state. Replete with rare photographs and other materials from private collections, Age of Concrete establishes Morton as one of a handful of scholars breaking new ground on how we understand Africa's cities.

LC Classification NumberHD7374.A3M37 2019