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Institute of Social Anthropology, Seminar Room (Second Floor), Münsterplatz 19, 4051 Basel
Till Förster: "Making the City: roadsides, curbsides and the formation of social space"
Presentation by Prof. Dr. Till Förster, Chair, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel
This paper looks at the making of places and spaces where urban people meet and encounter each other – in particular at the transformation of Korhogo in northern Côte d’Ivoire. It traces how urbanites morph the built environment of their cities into forms that can accommodate their ways of living, for instance, how urbanites appropriate public squares and streets for gatherings, quarrels, business, sometimes also their feasts and religious ceremonies, how shops, beauty studios, drinking spots, and eateries emerge through the collective agency of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and how buildings are built and re-built whenever the people see a need to do so. How planning is eventually subverted by other actors and how that leads to other practical norms in building and transforming the city is another question raised. The talk concludes with a discussion of whether these interactions and the arrangements that they generate still can feed in a collective image of the city as ‘our’ city.
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