Urban Modernity versus the Blood Diamond Legacy: Angola’s Urban Mining Settlements in the Aftermath of War

Cristina Udelsmann Rodrigues

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2017, vol. 43, issue 6, 1215-1234

Abstract: For most of the latter half of the 20th century, war carved the contours of settlement and mining activity in Angola. The aim of this article is twofold: first, to contrast migrant and urban livelihoods during the war, distinguishing between artisanal guerrilla diamond-digging settlements and the refuge ‘government cities’, and, secondly, to compare recent patterns of migration, livelihoods, mineral production and aspirations among urban residents. This article focuses on four urban settlements in the Lundas’ diamond-producing provinces, tracing wartime diamond growth in boom towns and cantonment in government cities. Post-war urban regeneration is characterised by investment in formal planned cities, and constraints on the informal mining boom towns and their garimpo artisanal miners. Questions are posed regarding these settlements’ population movements, livelihoods, residents’ conceptions of urban life and their quest for modernity. Amidst the multiplicity of wartime legacies and the envisaged reconstruction, renewed perceptions of urban life are increasingly focused on non-mining livelihoods.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2017.1375329 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:43:y:2017:i:6:p:1215-1234

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2017.1375329

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().