University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.
Physical Space and Spatiality in Muslim Societies: Notes on the Social Production of Cities
Mahbub Rashid
You don't have access to this book. Please try to log in with your institution.Log in
Mahbub Rashid embarks on a fascinating journey through urban space in all of its physical and social aspects, using the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, Lefebvre, and others to explore how consumer capitalism, colonialism, and power disparity consciously shape cities. Using two Muslim cities as case studies, Algiers (Ottoman/French) and Zanzibar (Ottoman/British), Rashid shows how Western perceptions can only view Muslim cities through the lens of colonization—a lens that distorts both physical and social space. Is it possible, he asks, to find a useable urban past in a timeline broken by colonization? He concludes that political economy may be less relevant in premodern cities, that local variation is central to the understanding of power, that cities engage more actively in social reproduction than in production, that the manipulation of space is the exercise of power, that all urban space is a conscious construct and is therefore not inevitable, and that consumer capitalism is taking over everyday life. Ultimately, we reconstruct a present from a fragmented past through local struggles against the homogenizing power of abstract space.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Introduction
Part I: On Physical Space and Spatiality
Chapter 1. A Brief Intellectual History of Physical Space
Chapter 2. Describing Physical Space and Spatiality in Cities
Chapter 3. Theorizing the Social Production of Physical Space and Spatiality in Cities
Chapter 4. Approaches to Study the Social Production of Physical Space and Spatiality in Cities
Part II: On Physical Space and Spatiality in Traditional Muslim Societies
Chapter 5. Physical Space and Spatiality in Traditional Muslim Societies
Chapter 6. Physical Space and Spatiality in Ottoman Algiers
Chapter 7. Physical Space and Spatiality in Omani Zanzibar
Figure 7.21. Tombs and graveyards in Omani Zanzibar. (a) The Khoja Shia Ismaili Mosque and Burial Grounds in Mnazi Mmoya, Zanzibar Stone Town. Photo by J. Sturtz. (b) Other Burial Grounds in Mnazi Mmoza. [Source: The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies Winterton Collection, Northwestern University.)
Figure 7.22. “Zanzibar Town from the Sea.” From Sir Richard Francis Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration. 2 Vols. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860.
Figure 7.23. Map of Zanzibar City in 1922. The map shows the creek being gradually reclaimed from the Ng’ambo side. It also shows a railway line on the north and a new road on the south connecting Zanzibar town with the mainland across the creek. (Source: Author.)
Figure 7.25. An enhanced drawing of Lanchester Plan, Map VI, showing integrated improvement schemes. The schemes include new port facilities on reclaimed land, new hotel and museum on the sea front, new road networks in Ng’ambo and the center city, a tidal basin and a canal, official residences, Indian quarter, and Goanese village. (Source: H. V. Lanchester, Zanzibar: A Study in Tropical Town Planning. Cheltenham: Burrow, 1923. Enhanced by the author.)
Figure 7.26. Lanchester’s proposed plan for the extension of Zanzibar city. (Source: H. V. Lanchester, Zanzibar: A Study in Tropical Town Planning. Cheltenham: Burrow, 1923.)
Figure 7.27. The axial map (a) and the segment map (b) of Zanzibar Town in 1922, colored using the choice value of each line. In these renderings, the color ranges from red representing higher values to blue representing lower values. The lines/segments with the highest choice values now include the newly built Creek Road on the eastern edge of the Town. (Created by the author.)
Figure 7.28. The axial map (a) and the segment map (b) of Zanzibar Town in 1922, colored using the integration value of each line. In these renderings, the color ranges from red representing higher values to blue representing lower values. The lines/segments with the highest integration values now include the newly built Creek Road on the eastern edge of the town. (Created by the author.)
Figure 7.29. The axial map (a) and the segment map (b) of Zanzibar and Ng’ambo, colored using the choice value of each line. In these renderings, the color ranges from red representing higher values to blue representing lower values. The lines/segments with the highest choice values appear to have shifted to the areas connecting Zanzibar and Ng’ambo. (Created by the author.)
Figure 7.30. The axial map (a) and the segment map (b) of Zanzibar and Ng’ambo, colored using the integration value of each line. In these renderings, the color ranges from red representing higher values to blue representing lower values. The lines/segments with the highest integration values appear to have shifted to the areas connecting Zanzibar and Ng’ambo. (Created by the author.)
Figure 7.31. An enhanced drawing of Lanchester Plan, Map IV, showing “racial distribution” in neatly contained zones. Such a clear racial separation, however, might not have existed in the town. (Source: H. V. Lanchester, Zanzibar: A Study in Tropical Town Planning. Cheltenham: Burrow, 1923. Enhanced by the author.)
x
This site requires cookies to function correctly.