CFP: African Cities: Colonial Speculum and Post-Colonial Urbanism

African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture and Society
Call for Papers
Deadline: May 30, 2006

African Cities: Colonial Speculum and Post-Colonial Urbanism

The Editors of African Identities and the Center for Black Diaspora, DePaul University are pleased to announce a special issue of the journal devoted to exploring African Cities: Colonial Speculum and Post-Colonial Urbanism. The special issue seeks to explore the physical and social construction of African cities and the dense web of intricate social relations, flows, exchanges, appropriations and adoptions that constantly shape and reshape their diverse geographical and social spaces.

In much of the literature on African cities which was derived from the early 20th century urban theory, the primary emphasis has been to generalize about the development of cities at different stages in history as spatially bounded entities, imprinted with a particular way of life as well as a distinct spatial and social divisions of labor. Given this framework, current literature of African cities retains a focus firmly rooted in characterizing African cities as sites of urban disorder, chaos, ungovernability, poverty, physical and symbolic violence. These images of African cities are reproduced and mediated by a grid of knowledge that privileges a particular form of city building processes which developed in Europe and North America. Criticism of this form of urban representation of African cities is extensive, yet the problem of African urbanity both in its colonial and post-colonial urban forms remains under theorized. There is therefore an urgent need to explore the nature of African cities. In part, because African cities are moving away from the "nation building" project assigned to them by the colonial powers and post-colonial states, to spaces in which African inhabitants are reconfiguring and remaking urban worlds, deploying their own forms of urbanity born out of their historical and material circumstances. It is in these new dense urban spaces with all their contradictions that urban Africans are reworking their local identities, building families, and weaving autonomous communities of solidarity made fragile by neo-liberal states. Urban Africans throughout the continent are creating and recreating dense social networks, flows, exchanges, and knowledge with their own architectural and urban development imprints. 1 Indeed, the pace of the new forms of African urbanity has accelerate in recent years by the deepening political and social crisis that has engulfed African cities. We are seeking articles that examine the significance of African urbanitiy, its complexity and vitality in a single region, social or historical context. Throughout the continent, urban Africans despite diminishing resources are appropriating and transforming the colonial city and its ideal of modernity.

Submissions
Articles should be between 6500-8000 words inclusive of notes and references, accompanied by disc in Microsoft Word. Articles may include black and white images scanned to disk at 300dpi. Manuscripts MUST conform to Harvard Reference style.

They should be double-spaced throughout (including notes and references). Because manuscripts are reviewed blind, the author's name, affiliations, address, telephone and, fax numbers (should be on a seperate sheet?-DM)

The deadline for submission is May 30, 2006.

Manuscripts for the special issue of African Identities should be sent
directly to the Guest Editor:
Fassil Demissie, Guest Editor
Public Policy Studies, DePaul University
2320 North Clifton Avenue, Room 150.1
Chicago, IL 60614
Phone: (773) 325-7356
Fax: (773) 325-7514
Email: fdemissi@depaul.edu

African Identities is a peer reviewed international academic journal that provides a critical forum for examination of African and diasporic expressions, representations and identities. The aim of the journal is to open up various horizons of the field through multidisciplinary approaches: to encourage the development of theory and practice on the wider spread of disciplinary approach: to promote conceptual innovation and to provide a venue for entry of new perspectives. The journal focuses on the myriad of ways in which cultural productions create zones of profound expressive possibilities by continually generating texts and contexts of reflective import. With an emphasis on gender, class, nation, marginalization, 'otherness' and difference, the journal explore how African identities, either by force or contingency, create terrains of (ex)change, decenter dominant meanings, paradigms and certainties.