Grounding Circulations of the Global in China and Angola
Webinar
January 14, 2024
9:00 AM
Zoom
Event Info
This webinar focuses on how Angola—China relations have been shaped by oil extraction in Luanda and other Angolan regions, exploring topics such as invisible labor, blocos-urbanism, large-scale housing construction, and the circulation/mobility/translation of Chinese master plans. These themes are developed around the speakers' project "Grounding and Worlding Urban Infrastructures (GROWL)." To watch their research-based video BLOCOS URBANISM, please click here: https://vimeo.com/859728871
Webinar International Conference
Grounding Circulations of the Global in China and Angola
Friday, January 19th, 2024
9:00 AM (Pacific Time)
6:00 PM (Luanda, Angola)
2:00 PM (Brazil)
ONLINE EVENT IN ENGLISH
Zoom Webinar Link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/81937292314
This webinar focuses on how Angola—China relations have been shaped by oil extraction in Luanda and other Angolan regions, exploring topics such as invisible labor, blocos-urbanism, large-scale housing construction, and the circulation/mobility/translation of Chinese master plans. These themes are developed around the speakers' project "Grounding and Worlding Urban Infrastructures (GROWL)." To watch their research-based video BLOCOS URBANISM, please click here: https://vimeo.com/859728871
RICARDO CARDOSO
“Blocos Urbanism: Capitalism and Modularity in the Making of Contemporary Luanda”
In this presentation, based on a paper with colleagues, I will portray and unpack the fabric of urban expansion in contemporary Luanda. In doing so, we examine interdependencies and complementarities between the organization of oil extraction off the coast of Angola, the emergence of particular modalities of modernist city planning for the expansion of its capital city, and the proliferation of cement blocks in the making of new urban forms throughout its burgeoning peripheries. By showing how urban development has unfolded through the interconnected realization of multiple kinds of systematizing blocks—namely oil blocks, city blocks and cement blocks—we analyse key material components in the production of new markets and urban spaces in the Angolan capital. By tracing forms of capitalism and modularity in the making of contemporary Luanda, we develop the concept of blocos urbanism to draw attention to modes of standardization and the production of legibility in contemporary processes of urbanization. Through this study, we aim to contribute to the conceptual apparatus for deciphering our global urban condition.
HENRIK ERNSTSON
“The Invisible Labor of the ‘New Angola’: Social Reproduction of Master Plans and Kilamba’s Domestic Workers”
Kilamba, the first of the new centralities in Angola, is increasingly visible in recent urban scholarship about Luanda, further establishing it as the symbol of both this “new” post-war city and the “New Angola.” Within local discourses of progress, its emergence from within “petro-urbanism,” and its size and modern aesthetics are emphasized, while little attention has been directed towards understanding the actual contributions of its workers, particularly the women who spend a significant part of their day cleaning Kilamba’s apartments. In this presentation, based on a paper with Wangui Kimari, I will combine a social reproduction framework with infrastructure studies to trace the labor of Kilamba’s female domestic workers, in order to demonstrate how their everyday practices uphold the status and materiality of this centrality, even as their work is invisibilized. In doing so, we understand their commentaries about this space, often refracted through descriptions of their homes, as critiques of the infrastructural priorities of the “New Angola” and critiques of the social reproduction of oil-infused master planning. This paper was co-authored with Wangui Kimari, American University - Nairobi.
Periphery Path to Kilamba (Photo by Jia-Ching Chen 2018)
JIA-CHING CHEN
“Elliptical Orbits: Satellite City Construction as Itinerary of the State”
Drawing on archival research and fieldwork in China and Angola, we will examine how master planned satellite new towns have become a major pathway for channeling state-controlled capital flows to shape particular pathways of urban development and national economic structure. Analyzing the dynamic entanglements of official development with land dispossession and commodification, the political economy of construction and volatile global markets, we argue that urban space and residents’ lives are shaped as much through ellipses—deliberate omissions in policy, planning and expert knowledge—as through “master planning.” We foreground these dynamics as a form of transnational urbanization, and an argument for relational and multi-sited research approaches.
Suggested Readings and Video to Read/Watch before the Event:
Video: BLOCOS URBANISM
https://vimeo.com/859728871
Reading 1
Cardoso, Ricardo, Jia‐Ching Chen, and Henrik Ernstson (2023) “Blocos Urbanism: Capitalism and Modularity in the Making of Contemporary Luanda.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 1468-2427.13199. doi: 10.1111/1468-2427.13199.
Reading 2
Kimari, Wangui, and Henrik Ernstson. 2022. “The Invisible Labor of the ‘New Angola’: Kilamba’s Domestic Workers.” Urban Geography 1–18. doi: 10.1080/02723638.2022.2145818.
Lab group webpage The Situated Ecologies
http://www.situatedecologies.net/films/
Link to Article
Poster
RICARDO CARDOSO
“Blocos Urbanism: Capitalism and Modularity in the Making of Contemporary Luanda”
In this presentation, based on a paper with colleagues, I will portray and unpack the fabric of urban expansion in contemporary Luanda. In doing so, we examine interdependencies and complementarities between the organization of oil extraction off the coast of Angola, the emergence of particular modalities of modernist city planning for the expansion of its capital city, and the proliferation of cement blocks in the making of new urban forms throughout its burgeoning peripheries. By showing how urban development has unfolded through the interconnected realization of multiple kinds of systematizing blocks—namely oil blocks, city blocks and cement blocks—we analyse key material components in the production of new markets and urban spaces in the Angolan capital. By tracing forms of capitalism and modularity in the making of contemporary Luanda, we develop the concept of blocos urbanism to draw attention to modes of standardization and the production of legibility in contemporary processes of urbanization. Through this study, we aim to contribute to the conceptual apparatus for deciphering our global urban condition.
HENRIK ERNSTSON
“The Invisible Labor of the ‘New Angola’: Social Reproduction of Master Plans and Kilamba’s Domestic Workers”
Kilamba, the first of the new centralities in Angola, is increasingly visible in recent urban scholarship about Luanda, further establishing it as the symbol of both this “new” post-war city and the “New Angola.” Within local discourses of progress, its emergence from within “petro-urbanism,” and its size and modern aesthetics are emphasized, while little attention has been directed towards understanding the actual contributions of its workers, particularly the women who spend a significant part of their day cleaning Kilamba’s apartments. In this presentation, based on a paper with Wangui Kimari, I will combine a social reproduction framework with infrastructure studies to trace the labor of Kilamba’s female domestic workers, in order to demonstrate how their everyday practices uphold the status and materiality of this centrality, even as their work is invisibilized. In doing so, we understand their commentaries about this space, often refracted through descriptions of their homes, as critiques of the infrastructural priorities of the “New Angola” and critiques of the social reproduction of oil-infused master planning. This paper was co-authored with Wangui Kimari, American University - Nairobi.
JIA-CHING CHEN
“Elliptical Orbits: Satellite City Construction as Itinerary of the State”
Drawing on archival research and fieldwork in China and Angola, we will examine how master planned satellite new towns have become a major pathway for channeling state-controlled capital flows to shape particular pathways of urban development and national economic structure. Analyzing the dynamic entanglements of official development with land dispossession and commodification, the political economy of construction and volatile globalmarkets, we argue that urban space and residents’ lives are shaped as much through ellipses—deliberate omissions in policy, planning and expert knowledge—as through “master planning.” We foreground these dynamics as a form of transnational urbanization, and an argument for relational and multi-sited research approaches.