Pan African Spaces

This book examines the transcultural nature of Black and African identities, globally based on the shifting identities and experiences that have been precipitated by increased migration by Africans and African diasporans.

The diversity and complexity of African vernacular architecture remain widely unknown both to the general public and to architects. Yet Upper Volta (Burkino Faso) encompasses an astonishing variety of design principles and building techniques that belie the widespread image of the primitive hut so readily associated with rural Africa. This provides a convincing interpretation of the relationship between spatial organisation and daily activity in Gurunsi life.

The book focuses on the ways in which gendered and sexualised systems of power are produced in educational settings that are framed by broader social and cultural processes, both of which shape and are shaped by children and young people as they interact with each other. All these nuanced features of gender and sexuality are vital if we are to understand inequalities and violence, and fundamental to our three-ply yarn approach in this book. Focusing on the South African context, but with international relevance, the authors adopt the metaphor of the three-ply yarn (Jordan-Young, 2010): these being the cross-cutting themes of gender, sexuality and violence. Subsequently, the book illustrates the intimate ties that bind gender and sexuality with the social and cultural dimensions of violence, as experienced in educational settings.

This book revisits and updates some classic Anthropology -- the Xhosa in Town series -- based on research in the South African city of East London conducted during the 1950s. The original studies concluded that there were two opposed responses to urbanization in East London’s African locations, one embracing Westernization, European values and Christianity and another opposed to it. The studies have been the subject of intense anthropological debate. Leslie Bank returned to the areas of East London studied in the 1950s to assess how social and political changes have transformed these areas, in particular the apartheid reconstruction of the 1960s and 1970s and the struggle for liberation followed by the post-Apartheid period in the 1980s and 1990s. Bank has added important theoretical insights to this rich ethnography, and forged strong links with issues that transcend the particularities of his urban study.

This peer-reviewed book provides detailed insights into how space and its applications are, and can be used to support the development of the full range and diversity of African societies, as encapsulated in the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Following on from Part 1 to Part 4, which were highly acclaimed by the space community, it focuses on the role of space in supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Africa, but covers an even more extensive array of relevant and timely topics addressing all facets of African development. It demonstrates that, while there have been significant achievements in recent years in terms of economic and social development, which have lifted many of Africa’s people out of poverty, there is still a great deal that needs to be done to fulfill the basic needs of Africa's citizens and afford them the dignity they deserve. To this end, space is already being employed in diverse fields of human endeavor to serve Africa’s goals for its future, but there is much room for further incorporation of space systems and data. Providing a comprehensive overview of the role space is playing in helping Africa achieve its developmental aspirations, the book will appeal to both students and professionals in fields such as space studies, international relations, governance, social, rural and technical development.

Travel and the Pan African Imagination explores the African Atlantic world as a productive theater or space where modernity, racialized dominance, and racialized resistance took form. The book stresses the importance of placing three Atlantic figures—the Charleston, South Carolina-based armed resistance leader Denmark Vesey; the West African emigration advocate Edward Wilmot Blyden; and the Christian missionary and teacher in Liberia as well as the United States, Alexander Crummell—within an Atlantic context and as African world community figures between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The book also examines the religious origins of Black Power ideology and modern Pan Africanism as products of the intense dialogue within the African world community about concepts of modernity, progress, and civilization. Tracy Keith Flemming identifies how travel and social mobility led to the generation of an ever more complex and dynamic Atlantic world and of a fluid and adaptive African world community imagination for those figures who were forced to operate within and against a racially framed universe. The vexing social position and symbolic figure of “the African” was central to the dilemmas facing the racialized imagination of African world community figures and the discipline of Africology.

"The City of Cape Town is heading for disaster and is already in deep crisis if one cares to look close enough. The recent proliferation of public construction, public squares and public housing along the N2 towards the airport is little more than a mirage compared with the direction of more underlying trends. Cape Town's grim future is born out of the confluence of the globalised economic and ecological collapse that is fast becoming the defining feature of the twenty-first century. It is manifested most starkly in the dire situation that faces the majority of the city's residents, who are excluded from the formal economy and must rely on substandard public services and their own makeshift shelters. The scenario is serious enough to draw everyone's attention but should be set against the broader issues of long-term economic resilience and environmental sustainability to achieve a low-carbon society - so we have our work cut out for us. The purpose of this volume is to demystify these challenges and present readers with a creative portfolio of thinking, practice and strong vision to show that we can find alternatives - and, moreover, that these alternatives are already emerging in (marginal) sections of the state, civil society and the business sectors."--Introduction.

In this book the background and context of Africa’s political and socio-economic landscape is presented and unpacked through a primary needs approach which focuses on climate, biodiversity, health, water, education, and space-related capacity building. African theoretical contributions from the International Relations field are discussed, and Africa’s new Space Policy and Strategy, along with debates around the establishment of an African Space Agency, are explored. The African International Space Ecosystem is then analyzed, including its dimensions of intra-African space relations and initiatives, African participation in COPUOS, and international space activities, agreements, and initiatives in Africa. The final part is dedicated to the national space infrastructure and activities of African states.