Suturing the City: Living Together in Congo's Urban Worlds

Suturing the City: Living Together in Congo's Urban Worlds

An ethnographic and photographic investigation into the complex meanings of living in Congo's urban worlds today. Focusing upon the 'urban now', a moment suspended between lingering precolonial references, the broken dreams of a colonial past, and the not yet realised promises of neoliberal futures, this book provides an ethnographic and photographic investigation of the complex meanings of living – and living together – in Congo's urban worlds today. The authors, anthropologist Filip De Boeck and photographer Sammy Baloji, take the reader on a tour of specific urban sites in Kinshasa and beyond. In their detailed analysis these sites emerge as suturing points in which the possibilities of collective urban action and dreams of a shared future continue to be explored. This brilliant collaboration between an anthropologist and a photographer has resulted in not only a handsome volume that does justice to word and image alike, but also something far more important ? a beautifully successful balance between thoughtful ethnography, thought-provoking and appropriate theory, and a visual essay that sensitively and imaginatively investigates its themes rather than just illustrating them. -- Christopher Morton, University of Oxford Suturing the City is a vivid image for the kind of attentive, careful but also painful practices which bring a city into existence. It is a specific place of urban becoming, and a particular collaboration from which this urban anthropological photo-book stems. -- Abdoumaliq Simone, The University of Sheffield Suturing the City is a vivid image for the kind of attentive, careful but also painful practices which bring a city into existence. It is a specific place of urban becoming, and a particular collaboration from which this urban anthropological photo-book stems. -- Abdoumaliq Simone, The University of Sheffield Filip De Boeck is a professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven. Sammy Baloji is a visual artist based in Brussels and Lubumbashi. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.