The Political Economy of City-Regions: Lessons Learnt for the Post-Conflict Recovery (original) (raw)
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Violent Conflict and the Centrality of the African Peripheral Urbanities
2022
ollowing a 2.5-hour drive from Goma (North-Kivu, DR Congo) on a winding dirt road that meanders through the villages and green valleys of Masisi, the town of Rubaya suddenly emerges, nested against the slopes of dozens of hills and in the valleys, along the Mumba River. The contrast with the surrounding rural area is striking at first – the sheer number of houses and bustling streets instantly catch the eye – but Rubaya, with its many surrounding farms and on-going agricultural activities, also maintains a distinct rural feel. Overlooking the town, stand expanding cratered hilltops where the mining careers, populated with thousands of artisanal miners, vendors, police and army officers, and (ex-) militiamen, have mushroomed over the past two decades. While presumably ‘remote’ for its geographical location and infrastructural scarcity, Rubaya is just one of many instances of new urban spaces that hold the potential for fundamental disruptions and rethinking of what we understand a ‘city’ to be – in both scholarly and political terms.
AVRUG-bulletin, 2012
This dissertation analyses the dynamic relationship between on the one hand processes of state failure and violent conflict and on the other hand processes of urban transformation in the eastern periphery of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The case study is the city ofGoma (North Kivu province, at the Congolese-Rwandan border) and the form is a political-anthropological urban ethnography that starts from the city as it is today. The central aim of this PhD is to offer an urban perspective on the Congolese crisis, on the one hand by revealing the particular urban outcomes of conflict dynamics, and on the other hand by demonstrating how these particular urban dynamics again produce and influence political processes. The emerging forms of urbanisation and urbanism in a conflict and crisis setting are thus the central focus of this dissertation. I start from the central hypothesis that dynamics of violent conflict in combination with a historical process of state failure, have generated alternative forms of urbanity that are reflected through processes of political, economic, social and spatial transformations. This study offers an original contribution to the academic research on processes of urbanisation and urbanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Africa in general. With the start of the new millennium, in the context of the rapid urbanisation process on the African continent, came a renewed academic interest in urban issues in the DRC. In the significant political and anthropological contribution to this academic research, one can identify two main gaps: its restriction to large, 'primary' cities (such as Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, for example), and the absence of urban studies in Congo's conflict areas. This dissertation forms a modest contribution to fill these gaps. It focuses specifically on urbanity emerging in secondary, peripheral cities, located at the margins of the nation state out of the direct scope and influence of the political centre. In addition, the main case study of this analysis is a city occupying a central position in the regional conflict in Eastern Congo. As such, this PhD also forms an original contribution to the academic micro-analysis of violent conflict in Eastern Congo, by starting from a particular urban perspective. Within research on conflict dynamics in the DRC, the urban focus has remained largely underdeveloped. The centrality of cities in conflict dynamics is however obvious, as they constitute important political and administrative centres, points of
Urban restructuring, social economics and violence after conflict
Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 2019
This paper argues that the spatiality of violence needs to pay attention to the production of space as well as the nature of conflict in postwar conditions. Regimes of violence and how they live on in peace, emphasises the need to see how they are assembled in relation to economic, state and social processes implicated in placemaking. Coercion, control and surveillance are all part of the necessary assemblage of ethnic conflict, and in its aftermath, different forms of violence (or simply the threat of violence) reproduce identarian conflict and simultaneously exploit its reproduction. Liberal and increasingly neoliberal forms of peace fail to connect with the people and places most damaged by conflict and the relationship between poverty, sectarianism and place intensify the conditions for enduring forms of paramilitarism and ultimately violence. The paper draws on Belfast, Northern Ireland to argue that tackling the distinct economic conditions of the most marginal places is a critical but undervalued dimension of violence after peace. The analysis concludes by evaluating the potential of the Social and Solidarity Economy in transitional processes in which the relationship between violence, place and poverty are constitutive of embedded forms of materialist peacebuilding.
Routledge eBooks, 2020
The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen during the conversion of this book from journal articles to book chapters, namely the possible inclusion of journal terminology. Disclaimer Every effort has been made to contact copyright bolders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. Contents Citation Information vii Notes on Contributors ix 1 African cities and violent conflict: the urban dimension of conflict and post conflict dynamics in Central and Eastern Africa 1 Karen Büscher 2 Wartime speculation: property markets and institutional change in eastern Congo's urban centers 19 David Peyton 3 Urbanizing Kitchanga: spatial trajectories of the politics of refuge in North Kivu, Eastern Congo 40 Gillian Mathys and Karen Büscher 4 Agency, social space and conflict-urbanism in eastern Congo 62 Silke Oldenburg 5 The politics of everyday policing in Coma: the case of the Anti-gang 82 Maarten Hendriks 6 Autochthony and insecure land tenure: the spatiality of ethnicized hybridity in the periphery of post-conflict Bukavu, DRC 98 Pons van Overbeek and Peter A. Tamds 7 From rural rebellion to urban uprising? A socio-spatial perspective on Bujumburas conflict history 118 Tomas Van Acker 8 Small towns and rural growth centers as strategie spaces of control in Rwanda's post-conflict trajectory 137 Ine Cottyn vi CONTENTS Humanitarian urbanism in a post-conflict aid town: aid agencies and urbanization in Gulu, Northern Uganda
Cities, conflict and state fragility
2011
Cities have long been connected with processes of bureaucratisation and state building, as they have been to conflict and war. In bringing these two associations together Charles Tilly (1992) provided a useful analytical linchpin by famously highlighting the interaction between cities and war making as a critical factor in state making. He showed how in early modern Europe urban merchants struck bargains with medieval power brokers when agreeing to help fund wars aimed at extending or consolidating sovereignty. The intersection of cities, states and violent conflict remains significant today, although it manifests in different and more complex ways, particularly under conditions of state fragility.
Before and after urban warfare: Conflict prevention and transitions in cities
The rising pressures of urbanization in fragile and conflict-affected countries have increased concerns about the vulnerability of cities to armed threats. Changes in the character of armed conflict during the twenty-first century and its effects on cities in the developing world have exposed gaps in the planning and practice of peace and security, which retain a " nation-State bias " that circumvents local perspectives and agencies. Whereas full-scale use of military power in cities remains as destructive today as it has ever been, international organizations such as the United Nations have called for changed approaches to State tactics in urban areas. Mechanisms designed to prevent conflict or to help countries transition back to peace are particularly key if massive human and economic damages are to be avoided in a world of increasingly dense cities. Another key concern is the vulnerability of developing-world cities to low-intensity, if protracted, forms of violence by non-State actors, particularly in post-conflict contexts.
Working Paper 85. Cities, Conflict and State Fragility
2011
Cities have long been connected with processes of bureaucratisation and state building, as they have been to conflict and war. In bringing these two associations together Charles Tilly (1992) provided a useful analytical linchpin by famously highlighting the interaction between cities and war making as a critical factor in state making. He showed how in early modern Europe urban merchants struck bargains with medieval power brokers when agreeing to help fund wars aimed at extending or consolidating sovereignty. The intersection of cities, states and violent conflict remains significant today, although it manifests in different and more complex ways, particularly under conditions of state fragility. Urban politics are critically important to the way social tensions and antagonisms are managed in cities. We identify four ways in which this occurs: i) manipulation of contestation into violent conflict; ii) deferral and/or suppression of contestation; iii) clientelist cooption of the aggrieved; and iv) fostering of generative engagement. Each of these has a distinct impact on state fragility through processes of state erosion, consolidation and transformation. The third and fourth of these approaches offer the best route for avoiding conflict in the medium and long term; but only the last is likely to allow for state transformation and dynamic development. Civic conflict can be positive and creative, but when violent and destructive it represents a significant contemporary threat to human security, state consolidation and development. Peace settlements and reconstruction processes brokered nationally need to take careful account of their impact on urban populations and the state at city level. 'Post'-conflict urban stability cannot be taken for granted, especially in the context of state fragility, while reconstruction efforts can actually undermine the potential of cities to accommodate inclusive political coalitions that promote development and state transformation in the city and beyond.