In the Skin of the City: Spatial Transformation in Luanda

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In the Skin of the City: Spatial Transformation in Luanda

by António Tomás

Duke University Press, 2022

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-1-4780-1552-9

Paper: 978-1-4780-1815-5

eISBN: 978-1-4780-9446-3 (OA)

eISBN: 978-1-4780-2276-3 (standard)

About the Book

With In the Skin of the City, António Tomás traces the history and transformation of Luanda, Angola, the nation’s capital as well as one of the oldest settlements founded by the European colonial powers in the Southern Hemisphere. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research alongside his own experiences growing up in Luanda, Tomás shows how the city’s physical and social boundaries—its skin—constitute porous and shifting interfaces between center and margins, settler and Native, enslaver and enslaved, formal and informal, and the powerful and the powerless. He focuses on Luanda’s “asphalt frontier”—the (colonial) line between the planned urban center and the ad hoc shantytowns that surround it—and the ways squatters are central to Luanda’s historical urban process. In their relationship with the state and their struggle to gain rights to the city, squatters embody the process of negotiating Luanda’s divisions and the sociopolitical forces that shape them. By illustrating how Luanda emerges out of the continual redefinition of its skin, Tomás offers new ways to understand the logic of urbanization in cities across the global South.

About the Author

António Tomás is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg and author of Amílcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist.

Reviews

"Tomás's analysis is a generous mélange of ethnographic and historical study of Luanda's changing urban condition over time, offering palimpsests of a changing city. . . . [The Skin of the City] is at its best when it focuses on the interconnections between various urban processes, inscribed locally, as well as the borders that enable such urban remaking."

-- Shakirah E. Hudani Journal of Planning History

"A very readable introduction to the city—and one that both draws the reader into an engaged understanding as well as providing plentiful material for further study. . . . [T]he book is highly recommended for emerging generations of urban scholars interested in not only the south and especially Sub-Saharan Africa, but also wider urban space and form, and ongoing dynamic urban transformations worldwide."

-- Paul Jenkins Journal of Southern African Studies

"Tomás’s book is an engaging and exhaustive study of the history, politics, economy, and culture of a constantly changing and unpredictable African capital city. In this sense, it will undoubtedly become a reference for researchers interested in urban studies, history, anthropology, and similar disciplines."

-- Melusi Nkomo Exertions

"In the Skin of the City is a finely crafted book about the political economy of one of the biggest cities in the Global South, which speaks to urban, social, and political theory. It builds on thorough research, engages its audience with a compelling narrative, and is a must-read for anyone who has an interest in Luanda, Angola, and urban Africa more generally."

-- Till Förster American Ethnologist

"Tomás has created a compelling work that combines sociology, architectural theory, and history. Sociologists, historians, and anthropologists interested in urbanization and students of modern Angolan history should consider this work essential reading as it reframes scholarly approaches to the cities of the Global South."
-- Cathy Skidmore-Hess Journal of Global South Studies