Department of social anthropology seminar with Filip de Boeck

The Department of Social Anthropology has the pleasure to invite you to a seminar with Filip de Boeck from the University of Leuven. He will present the following paper:

Publics, public space and the politics of infrastructure in Kinshasa


Abstract
A decade ago, a growing awareness emerged as to the need to approach the issue of urban life from a wider perspective, that of the (urban) Global South, in order to broaden our theoretical scope, and expand our common understanding of what ‘urbanity’ might mean. The figure of Kinshasa is often invoked, used, and abused, as a trope to represent the quintessential postcolonial city. Whether or not this is true, Kinshasa has certainly more than enough decentering power to force us into reconsidering many of the common definitions and taken for granted categories we have used so far to figure out the qualities of urban life today. In this talk I will attempt to look at Kinshasa's infrastructure and the way in which it does (or does not) contribute in shaping the public sphere.


Bionote
Filip De Boeck is professor of anthropology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He has conducted extensive field research in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His publications include Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City, 2004) and Makers and Breakers. Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa (co-edited with Alcinda Honwana, 2005). In 2010 he released Cemetery State, a documentary film about a Kinshasa graveyard.

All interested are welcome!