African Urbanisms and Their Hinterlands

Contemporary Cultural Imaginaries of Spatial Connections

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

AvFemi Eromosele,Rebecca Fasselt,Lwanga Songsore

2 919 kr

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This volume revisits contemporary cultural and artistic imaginaries of African cities through a focus on their manifold connections with rural hinterlands. Tracing the multidimensional movements and flows between six African cities—Nairobi, Accra, Kampala, Pretoria/Tshwane, Johannesburg, and Lagos—and their respective hinterlands, the book maps similarities between contemporary city–hinterland interactions across the continent.The book brings together contributions by scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including literary studies, urban sociology, media studies, medical anthropology, cultural studies, visual arts, and ethnomusicology. It conceives of the relationship between the urban and the hinterland as non-dichotomous and makes an argument for the complex entanglements between African rural and urban cultural imaginaries. It also engages the historical specificities and complex afterlives of different colonial contexts that shape contemporary renegotiations of the rural–urban nexus. Here, the hinterland is offered as a concept with diverse uses and appropriations across a range of African cultural forms, from screen media and poetry to music, visual arts, and everyday cultural practices.This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in African studies, urban sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, literary studies, media studies, and human geography. It offers fresh perspectives on African urbanism and challenges conventional approaches to studying African cities by foregrounding cultural and artistic practices.The essays in this volume were originally published as a special issue of Social Dynamics.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-09-07
Mått174 x 246 x undefined mm
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor172
FörlagTaylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN9781041374046

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Femi Eromosele is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, Netherlands. His research interests include African literature and the health humanities, African popular culture and African urbanities. He is the author of Mad Fictions: Psychiatry, Disability, and the Politics of Mental Distress in African Literature (2025).Rebecca Fasselt is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her research interests include intra-African migration and diasporic literatures, contemporary South African literature and women’s popular writing. She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature (2025) and The Short Story in South Africa: Contemporary Trends and Perspectives (2022).Lwanga Songsore holds an MA in African Studies. His PhD thesis, titled “Deconstructing the genealogy of sorghum beer (pito) production and use in rural and urban contexts in Ghana,” is currently being assessed for the award of a Doctoral Degree in African Studies at the University of Ghana. His research interests are in the material and consumer cultures of Black people, life writing and Black cosmologies and cosmogonies.

Introduction: African urbanisms and their hinterlands: contemporary cultural imaginaries of spatial connections 1. “Johnny Just Come”: Lagos and the newcomer figure in Nigerian screen media 2. Rural ritual, urban appropriation: night running as an examination of mobility in the city by night 3. Notions of self and community in Kampala urban space in Ugandan poetry anthologies 4. Harare muJoni: musicking, placemaking and everyday citizenship of Zimbabwean immigrants in Johannesburg, South Africa 5. Circular mobilities and health care seeking practices for perceived malaria illness among Nairobi residents in Kenya 6. Ambivalent identities in Kampala city: an interrogation of the “grasshopper delicacy” in Ugandan press photographs 7. “Yesu Adom (God’s grace)” chop bar: liminality and provisionality within Accra Airport City 8. Polyphony, instrumentality and the urban experience for migrants in Accra, Ghana 9. Understanding amapiano and the South African city through the music videos of Big Flexa and Bhebha 10. Reconfiguring Acholi cultural dance: a visual arts mediation of Bwola dance in a performative space of Kampala city