Piet Konings & Dick Foeken (Eds.), Crisis and Creativity: Exploring the Wealth of the African Neighborhood

Abstract

This is a compilation of 11 essays based on research undertaken at various points in the recent past on what the authors regard as African urban neighborhoods. Reading through the book, it becomes obvious that the essays are divided into two broad groups: what the editors call the geographical or spatial approaches to the African neighborhood on the one hand, and an anthropological approach on the other, although the editors do not really indicate where the essays on the first approach end and where essays on the second begin. The first approach, it is argued, represents neighborhood as community of space, while the second portrays neighborhood as community of interest. While the former refers to identifiable spatial units, the latter is much more fluid, as it refers to social networks that often transcend geographical boundaries. The editors argue that the approaches are not incompatible, although the grouping of essays itself does not seem to support this.To the editors, the resurrection of the notion of the neighborhood is provoked by the African urban crisis and the place of the neighborhood in this crisis. The basic question is whether neighborhood-based identities, networks and livelihoods are becoming less or more significant as the urban crisis deepens as a consequence of current economic crisis and economic and political liberalization.Two themes seem to weave together the essays adopting the spatial approach to neighborhood-based networks. The first is their exclusive focus on disadvantaged African neighborhoods and how residents cope with economic crises, characterized by contracting formal sector jobs and falling real wages, as well as deteriorating infrastructure and services. The second is their celebration of the ingenuity of majority of residents in these neighborhoods, who, they argue, "have not passively watched conditions deteriorate…. [but have been] active agents, devising alternative Urban Forum (2011) 22:111-113