Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T06:55:11.893Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inside-Out Houses: Urban Belonging and Imagined Futures in Dakar, Senegal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Caroline Melly
Caroline Melly
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Smith College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In every neighborhood of Dakar, Senegal, large houses in various stages of construction stand as witnesses to and evidence of transnational movements of labor and capital. These ambitious building projects, funded by Senegalese migrants living and working abroad, have utterly transformed the city landscape, and their pervasiveness leads many Dakarois to assume that everyone must be migrating. Intended as eventual family homes, investment properties, or a combination of the two, the innovative layouts and architectural flourishes of these not-yet houses echo lives lived elsewhere while drawing on local aesthetics and approaches to spatial design. Though some houses seem to near completion within just a year or two, most structures linger for several years or even a decade, slowly eroding as families and hired contractors wait for money transfers from abroad. Some constructions boast newly laid bricks or fresh paint, while others are obscured by overgrown vegetation and debris.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 37 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ba, Awa. 2008. Les Femmes Mourides à New York. Une renégociation de l'identité Musulmane en Migration. In Diop, Momar-Coumba, ed., Le Sénégal des Migrations: Mobilités, Identités, Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 389–408.Google Scholar
Babou, Cheikh A. 2002. Brotherhood Solidarity, Education, and Migration: The Role of the Dahiras among the Murid Muslim Community of New York. African Affairs 101, 403: 151–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, Issa. 2008. Émigrés, Transferts Financiers et Création de PME dans l'Habitat. In Diop, Momar-Coumba, ed., Le Sénégal des Migrations: Mobilités, Identités, Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 133–52.Google Scholar
Betts, Raymond. 1971. The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 41, 2: 143–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloch, Maurice. 1971. Placing the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organization in Madagascar. London: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Bop, Mamadou Lamine. 1983. The “Improved Parcels of Land” Project. In Taylor, Brian Brace, ed., Reading the Contemporary African City. Singapore: Concept Media, 129–30.Google Scholar
Bouilly, Emmanuelle. 2008. Les enjeux féminins de la migration masculine: Le collectif des femmes pour la lutte contre l'immigration clandestine de Thiaroye-Sur-Mer. Politique Africaine 109 (Mar.): 16–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1970. The Berber House or the World Reversed. In Pouillon, Jean and Maranda, Pierre, eds., Echanges et communications: Mélanges offerts à Claude Lévi-Strauss. Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Buggenhagen, Beth Anne. 2001. Prophets and Profits: Gendered and Generational Visions of Wealth and Value in Senegalese Murid Households. Journal of Religion in Africa 31, 4: 373–401.Google Scholar
Buggenhagen, Beth Anne. 2004. Domestic Object(ion)s: The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Politics of Marriage Payments, Love, and State Privatization. In Weiss, Brad, ed., Producing African Futures: Ritual and Reproduction in a Neoliberal Age. Leiden: Brill, 21–53.Google Scholar
Bugnicourt, Jacques. 1982. Dakar without Bounds. Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World, Seminar Seven. Dakar: Concept Media, Ltd.Google Scholar
Carsten, Janet and Hugh-Jones, Stephen. 1995. Introduction. InCarsten, J. and Hugh-Jones, S., eds., About the House: Lévi-Strauss and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Donald Martin. 1997. States of Grace: Senegalese in Italy and the New European Migration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Cruise O'Brien, Donal B. 1971. The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
DeHart, Monica. 2004. “Hermano Entrepreneurs!” Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 13, 2/3: 253–78.Google Scholar
Delgado, Christopher L. and Jammeh, Sidi, eds. 1991. The Political Economy of Senegal under Structural Adjustment. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Diatta, Marie Angelique and Mbow, Ndiaga. 1999. Releasing the Development Potential of Return Migration: The Case of Senegal. InAppleyard, Reginald, ed., Migration and Development. Geneva: International Organization for Migration and the United Nations, 243–66.Google Scholar
Diouf, Mamadou and Rendall, Steven. 2000. The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of a Vernacular Cosmopolitanism. Public Culture 12, 3: 679–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ebin, Victoria. 1992. A la Recherche de Nouveaux ‘poissons’: Stratégies commercials mourides par temps de crise. Politique Africaine 45: 86–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Fouquet, Thomas. 2008. Migrations et “Glocalisation” Dakaroises. In Diop, Momar-Coumba, ed., Le Sénégal des Migrations: Mobilités, Identités, Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 241–76.Google Scholar
Galvan, Dennis C. 2001. Political Turnover and Social Change in Senegal. Journal of Democracy 12, 3 (July): 51–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Jane. 2004. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Mark. 1971. Building, Dwelling, Thinking. In Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Hernandez, Esther and Coutin, Susan. 2006. Remitting Subjects: Migrants, Money, and States. Economy and Society 35, 2: 185–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hestflatt, Kristin. 2003. The House as a Symbol of Identity among the Baba of Melaka. In Sparkes, Stephen and Howell, Signe, eds., The House in Southeast Asia: A Changing Social, Economic, and Political Domain. London: Routledge Curzon, 67–82.Google Scholar
Howell, Signe. 2003. The House as Analytic Concept: A Theoretical Overview. In Sparkes, Stephen and Howell, Signe, eds., The House in Southeast Asia: A Changing Social, Economic, and Political Domain. London: Routledge Curzon, 16–33.Google Scholar
Kane, Abdoulaye. 2002. Senegal's Village Diaspora and the People Left Ahead. In Bryceson, Deborah and Ulla, Vuorela, eds., The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. New York: Berg Publishers, 245–63.Google Scholar
Kapur, Devesh. 2005. Remittances: The New Development Mantra? In Kapur, Devesh, ed., Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Publications, 331–60.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 1995. The Spoken House: Text, Act, and Object in Eastern Indonesia. American Ethnologist 22, 1: 102–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, Michael C. 2002. Longing for Exile: Migration and the Making of a Translocal Community in Senegal, West Africa. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Larkin, Brian. 2004. Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy. Public Culture 16, 2: 289–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1983. The Way of the Masks. London: Jonathon Cape.Google Scholar
Manchuelle, François. 1997. Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas 1848–1960. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Mbodji, Mamadou. 2008. Imaginaires et migrations: Le cas du sénégal. In Diop, Momar-Coumba, ed., Le Sénégal des Migrations: Mobilités, Identités, Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 305–19.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel. 2001. Possessions. In Miller, D., ed., Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors. Oxford and New York: Berg, 107–22.Google Scholar
Ndione, Emmanuel and Soumaré, Mohamed. 1982. Growth and Evolution of the Dakar Suburbs: The Case of Grand-Yoff. Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World, Seminar Seven. Dakar: Concept Media, Ltd.Google Scholar
Osella, Filippo and Osella, Caroline. 2000. Social Mobility in Kerala: Modernity and Identity in Conflict. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Pellow, Deborah. 2003. New Spaces in Accra: Transnational Houses. City & Society 15, 1: 59–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
République du Sénégal Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances, Direction de la Prévision et de la Statistique. 2004. Rapport de synthèse de la deuxième enquête sénégalaise auprès des ménages (ESAM-II). Dakar.Google Scholar
Riccio, Bruno. 2005. Talkin' about Migration: Some Ethnographic Notes on the Ambivalent Representation of Migrants in Contemporary Senegal. Vienna Journal of African Studies 8: 99–118.Google Scholar
Robben, Antonius. 1989. Habits of the Home: Spatial Hegemony and the Structuration of House and Society in Brazil. American Anthropologist 91, 3: 570–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simone, Abdou Maliq. 2004a. Uncertain Rights to the City. Africa & Mediterraneo, www.africaemediterraneo.it/rivista/documents/ArsUrbisSimone.pdf.Google Scholar
Simone, Abdou Maliq. 2004b. For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Stoller, Paul. 2002. Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tall, Serigne Mansour. 1994. Les Investissements Immobiliers à Dakar des Emigrants Sénégalais. Revue Européene Des Migrations Internationales 10, 3: 137–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tandian, Aly. 2008. Des Migrants Sénégalais Qualifiés en Italie: Entre Regrets et Résignation. In Diop, Momar-Coumba, ed., Le Sénégal des Migrations: Mobilités, Identités, Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 365–87.Google Scholar
Tell, Kari. 2007. Entangled Biographies: Rebuilding a Sasak House. Ethnos 72, 2: 195–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Phillip. 1998. Conspicuous Construction: Houses, Consumption, and “Relocation” in Manambondro, Southeast Madagascar. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4, 3: 425–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Der Geest, Sjaak. 1998. Yebisa Wo Fie: Growing Old and Building a House in the Akan Culture of Ghana. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 13: 333–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waterson, Roxanna. 1990. The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilford, Justin. 2008. Out of Rubble: Natural Disaster and the Materiality of the House. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, 4: 647–62.Google Scholar
Willems, Roos. 2008. Les “Fous de la Mer”: Les Migrants Clandestins du Sénégal aux Iles Canaries en 2006. In Diop, Momar-Coumba, ed., Le Sénégal des Migrations: Mobilités, Identités et Sociétés. Paris: Karthala, 277–303.Google Scholar