Africa Seminar med Dr. Sandra Roque: Ciadade og Bairro – Byrum i Angola

TIME: Thursday, 13 September, 15.15 – 17.00

VENUE: Centre of African Studies, Købmagergade 46, 4th floor, Auditorium 12, 1150 Copenhagen K

TIME: Thursday, 13 September, 15.15 – 17.00

VENUE: Centre of African Studies, Købmagergade 46, 4th floor, Auditorium 12, 1150 Copenhagen K

Like other urban centres that are the product of a colonial history, Angolan towns are frequently described in dualist terms that refer to, on the one hand, a “centre” and, on the other, a “periphery”. This dualist description of urban space is expressed in the case of Luanda through the terms of baixa and musseque and in the case of Benguela through cidade and bairro.

Even if Angolan towns are more complex and heterogeneous in reality than what this conceptual duality portrays, these terms are widely employed and their use strongly entrenched in Angolan society.

This seminar uses the case of Benguela to explore this discursive duality, arguing that such dichotomous terms function as classificatory categories with strong symbolic power.

Here, Cidade is associated with the urban, order and a “proper place” and Bairro with the sub-urban, disorder and chaos. Indeed, the symbolic power of cidade is predicated on historical, social, economic, cultural and political associations with “development”.

Sandra Roque is an Angolan scholar and Consultancy Director of COWI Mozambique, a Danish-linked development consultancy company based in Maputo that covers Mozambique and southern Africa.

Much of her work has addressed the relationship between state and society and urbanisation processes. Her PhD (2009) investigated war-related displacement and its links to concepts of the urban in Benguela, Angola.

She has also published related articles in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies (2008) and in Social Dynamics: a Journal of African Studies (2011).

She is currently part of a collaborative research project in Maputo, looking at the city’s spatial structure, at processes of impoverishment, differentiation and social marginalisation, and at the ways in which these processes inform Maputo’s socio-politics.