Speculative Cities: Housing and value conversions in Maputo, Mozambique with Professor Morten Nielsen
| Dates: | 19 April 2021 |
|---|
| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
|---|
| What is it: | Seminar |
|---|
| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
|---|
| How much: | FREE |
|---|
| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Current University students |
|---|
|
‘Speculative Cities: Housing and value conversions in Maputo, Mozambique’ Prof Morten Nielsen, National Museum of Denmark
Based on ethnographic research carried out in Maputo, in this presentation, I explore the significance of housing in an urban context infused by spectacular speculation. As I will argue, in order for different rationalities to become commensurable through speculative investments, they may have to manifest and activate unique and even opposing horizons of value and economic orientations. Hence, by considering housing beyond conventional dichotomies – Global South vs. Global North, informality vs. formality, global vs. local – we may acquire a more nuanced understanding of those manifold forms of urban engagements that make housing a way of establishing a sense of order and belonging by activating often contradictory moral orientations and hierarchies of value.
Morten Nielsen has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. He is currently a research professor at the National Museum of Denmark where he heads the Social Urban Modelling Research Centre (SUMO). Based on his fieldwork in Mozambique, Scotland, and USA, he has published on issues such as urban citizenship, time and temporality, comedy, human creativity, urban aesthetics, materiality, infrastructure, and political cosmologies. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Social Analysis, and Social Anthropology. Together with Morten Axel Pedersen and Mikkel Bunkenborg he has co-written a book on Chinese infrastructural interventions in Mozambique and Mongolia which will be published with Cornell University Press in 2022 entitled 'Collaborative Damage. An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization’.
UoM Social Anthropology Seminar 4-5.30pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/94209216674
Meeting ID: 942 0921 6674
Passcode: 114642
Travel and Contact Information
