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SUMMARY:Suburbs of distinction: middle class boundary work in Dar Es Salaa
 m - Dr Claire Mercer (Associate Professor of Human Geography\, LSE) 
DTSTART:20160229T170000Z
DTEND:20160229T183000Z
UID:TALK63750@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:If the African middle class is growing\, what impact is this s
 ocial group having on Africa’s cities? In this paper I examine suburbani
 zation as one important effect of middle class growth in Dar es Salaam\, T
 anzania. Suburbs\, defined as single houses in individual plots\, sometime
 s surrounded by a garden and/or wall\, have existed in Dar es Salaam since
  at least the 1970s sites and services schemes in places like Sinza and Ki
 jitonyama\, located 10-15km from the city centre. These places have now un
 dergone low-rise densification (subdivided plots\, more buildings on plots
 ) and the frontier of suburban growth has moved outwards into the city’s
  former rural hinterland.\nSuburban space provides an important window ont
 o the contemporary practices of middle class distinction in urban Africa. 
 Here I examine these practices through middle class boundary work (Lamont 
 1992). The concept of boundary work draws attention to the on-going social
  and cultural politics of difference. It is always contested and it is not
  always clear what the outcomes will be. What I want to examine in this pa
 per is the ways in which boundary work is inherently material and spatial.
  Space/location is often invoked metaphorically in discussions of the cult
 ural work that goes into the making of middle classness\, such as the maki
 ng of class distinctions ‘above’ and ‘below’ the middle. But in su
 burban Dar es Salaam there are also explicitly spatial tactics that are cr
 ucial to boundary work. The paper outlines two ways in which the boundary 
 work of the middle classes is spatialized: first\, through the claiming an
 d securing – putting boundaries around – land\; and second\, through t
 he narratives attached to particular landscapes. Land matters for the maki
 ng of class distinctions\, not just in the sense of land ownership\, but a
 lso in terms of the aesthetic and physical properties of the landscape.\nT
 he overall effect of spatialized boundary work is the depoliticization of 
 class distinctions in a society where class talk is often achieved through
  indirect and vernacular narratives. People engage in everyday boundary wo
 rk on land and landscape that depoliticizes growing inequality while at th
 e same time reproducing it.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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