Bottleneck : moving, building, and belonging in an African city / Caroline Melly.

Author
Melly, Caroline [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
  • ©2017
Description
x, 186 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks HN829.D3 M455 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    In Bottleneck, anthropologist Caroline Melly uses the problem of traffic bottlenecks to launch a wide-ranging study of mobility in contemporary urban Senegal a concept that she argues is central to both citizens' and the state's visions of a successful future. Melly opens with an account of the generation of urban men who came of age on the heels of the era of structural adjustment, a diverse cohort with great dreams of building, moving, and belonging, but frustratingly few opportunities to do so. From there, she moves to a close study of taxi drivers and state workers, and shows how bottlenecks physical and institutional affect both. The third section of the book covers a seemingly stalled state effort to solve housing problems by building large numbers of concrete houses, while the fourth takes up the thousands of migrants who attempt, sometimes with tragic results, to cross the Mediterranean on rickety boats in search of new opportunities. The resulting book offers a remarkable portrait of contemporary Senegal and a means of theorizing mobility and its impossibilities far beyond the African continent. -- Amazon.com.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-182) and index.
    Contents
    • Introduction / Embouteillage
    • Making mobility matter
    • Trafficking visions
    • Inhabiting inside-out houses
    • The adjusted state in the meantime
    • Telling tales of missing men
    • Conclusion / Embouteillage and its limits.
    ISBN
    • 9780226488875 (hardcover)
    • 022648887X (hardcover)
    • 9780226488905 (paperback)
    • 022648890X (paperback)
    LCCN
    2017003727
    OCLC
    971462755
    Other standard number
    • 40027569781
    Statement on language in description
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