Architecture and Politics in Africa presents case studies on the contemporary politics of architecture and cultural identity in select countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. This volume, which grew out of a workshop at the University of Johannesburg in December 2019 titled “The Politics of Architecture in Africa,” consists of an introduction by the editors, eleven essays, and an afterword. In their introduction, the editors draw from Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptualization of habitus and the social production of meaning, Michel Foucault’s analysis of disciplinary society, and Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory to organize the eleven case studies thematically into three sections, titled “Making,” “Living,” and “Imagining.”1 They establish a direct connection between this conceptual triad and Martin Heidegger’s existential interpretation of architecture as building, dwelling, and thinking, and then utilize this connection to explore how governments and populations have jointly influenced their political...
University of California Press