The role of the state in shaping the processes and aesthetics of urbanisation at the peripheries in Mozambique

The role of the state in shaping the processes and aesthetics of urbanisation at the peripheries in Mozambique General topic

The role of the state in processes of peripheral urbanisation in Mozambique; how encounters between people and the state shape the landscape in urban peripheries; and what effect this has (for the landscape, its aesthetics, and the legitimacy of the state). Research questions 1. How does the state shape processes of peripheral urbanisation?

a. In what ways is the state felt, affectively and functionally, through both its absence and presence on urbanising peripheries?

b. Are there 'blanks' (Nielsen, 2007) in what people know and how they think about the state, and if so, how do these get filled?

2. In what ways do encounters between people and the state become 'stencilled' (Sumich & Nielsen, 2020, p. 1217) into the fabric of the landscape? What is the effect of this 'stencilling' for the aesthetics produced, and for the legitimacy of the state?

3. To what extent is the state challenged or reproduced in urban peripheries outside of the middle-classes and elites in Maputo? Do those political and class dynamics reach places on the urban edges, how far and in what ways? Origins and development of this proposal - previous research

This proposal builds on my master's dissertation for MSc Urbanisation and Development where I explored house-building, temporality, and urbanisation over three periods of research in a locality near Inhambane, Mozambique. That project stemmed from an observation that the way people were building houses and the landscape was being transformed (with new shops, government administrative functions, roads, schools) was out of kilter with what much of the literature on peripheral urbanisation in Africa would suggest.

By looking specifically at who was building houses, how, where, with what aesthetics, and the effect of this, I argued the area was urbanising in a locally rooted way that emerged out of a specific historical context and was entangled with other places and times.

However, throughout I was also struck by the relationship between house-builders and urbanisation, and the state. On the one hand, there was almost universal dissatisfaction and commentary about the government, corruption and the state stifling domestic building and infrastructure projects. On the other hand, there was a discrepancy between who had their projects (seemingly arbitrarily) halted or stopped by officials, compared with those who could continue, and who was fined, how, and when.

While people increasingly had better access to services, it was also not clear why the state provided some forms of infrastructure (like electricity) but left others to local businessmen (like water) and the complaints about officials and the government were much greater than in last seven years that I have visited. When I asked why everyone was building now, I was told it was because people were worse off than ever before.

Yet their response to political economy uncertainty was to funnel money into building and infrastructure that indicated visible signs of growing prosperity.