{"title":"Neoliberalism and the state in the African city: informality, accumulation and the rebirth of a Ugandan market","authors":"Graeme Young","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2021.1999834","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Rapid urbanization and the transformations that it brings are raising urgent questions about understanding the African city. This article stresses the value of viewing urban development through a critical lens that focuses on questions surrounding neoliberalism and the state, highlighting how such an approach can provide important insights into the dynamics of informal economic activity. Examining the recent history of Kisekka Market in Kampala, Uganda, it argues that development processes in the informal economy, even when apparently neutral or ostensibly empowering for the urban poor, facilitate forms of accumulation and dispossession that result in the consolidation of political and economic power. The destruction and rebirth of Kisekka Market, despite its changing politics, has consistently benefitted wealthier vendors and external investors, threatened to displace poorer traders and served the interests of President Museveni, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and their allies. Exploring these dynamics demands addressing traditional political economy questions that must serve as the foundation for analysing the institutions, structures and processes shaping contemporary African cities.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"31 1","pages":"305 - 320"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical African Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2021.1999834","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Rapid urbanization and the transformations that it brings are raising urgent questions about understanding the African city. This article stresses the value of viewing urban development through a critical lens that focuses on questions surrounding neoliberalism and the state, highlighting how such an approach can provide important insights into the dynamics of informal economic activity. Examining the recent history of Kisekka Market in Kampala, Uganda, it argues that development processes in the informal economy, even when apparently neutral or ostensibly empowering for the urban poor, facilitate forms of accumulation and dispossession that result in the consolidation of political and economic power. The destruction and rebirth of Kisekka Market, despite its changing politics, has consistently benefitted wealthier vendors and external investors, threatened to displace poorer traders and served the interests of President Museveni, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and their allies. Exploring these dynamics demands addressing traditional political economy questions that must serve as the foundation for analysing the institutions, structures and processes shaping contemporary African cities.
期刊介绍:
Critical African Studies seeks to return Africanist scholarship to the heart of theoretical innovation within each of its constituent disciplines, including Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Law and Economics. We offer authors a more flexible publishing platform than other journals, allowing them greater space to develop empirical discussions alongside theoretical and conceptual engagements. We aim to publish scholarly articles that offer both innovative empirical contributions, grounded in original fieldwork, and also innovative theoretical engagements. This speaks to our broader intention to promote the deployment of thorough empirical work for the purposes of sophisticated theoretical innovation. We invite contributions that meet the aims of the journal, including special issue proposals that offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into African Studies debates.