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| Title: | Ethnography on the road: infrastructural vision and the unruly present in contemporary Dakar |
| Author: | Melly, Caroline |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720) |
| Volume: | 83 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 385-402 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Senegal |
| Subjects: | capitals infrastructure roads road construction urban development |
| External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_the_journal_of_the_international_african_institute/v083/83.3.melly.pdf |
| Abstract: | During his term as President, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal sought to make tangible and proximal his 'vision' for the country's future through the construction and rehabilitation of vital arteries in the capital, Dakar. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, this essay takes as its focus these ambitious road projects and their local interpretations and everyday effects. The author argues that Dakar's infrastructural transformation made spectacularly visible not only distant and implausible futures but also a very particular vision of the present that rationalized, emphasized, and even celebrated the everyday hardships wrought by infrastructural change. Avowedly ahistorical and centred squarely on the individual, these discourses of hardship cast infrastructural change as a future-focused project brought about through 'temporary' inconveniences and disruptions endured for the sake of the nation. What emerges from this analysis is a more complex view of neo-liberal reform and urban change in contemporary Africa. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |
