Sociospatial Transformations in the ‘Postsocialist’ Periphery: The Case of Maputo, Mozambique

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1463-1491 ◽  
Author(s):  
J D Sidaway ◽  
M Power
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Portuguese Colonialism ◽  
Do So

As Mozambique was one of a number of Third World states that embraced Marxism-Leninism during the 1970s, the establishment and subsequent collapse of a socialist development project since independence in 1975 has had profound social, political, and economic consequences. Against these contexts, and through a chronological account which begins with the impacts of Portuguese colonialism and Mozambican nationalist responses, we analyse the contradictory impact of political and economic changes accompanying colonialism, independence, attempted socialist transformation, and the end of socialism in Mozambique as they are mediated through the built environment of the Mozambican capital city of Maputo. The combined political, social, and cultural facets within these transformations and continuities are evident throughout the account and we specify some of the ways in which these are intertwined with the political economy of urbanization. In the conclusion we reconsider what the changing trajectory of Maputo represents in global and comparative terms. We do so with reference to debates about the changing forms of international capitalist regulation and the reconfiguration of dependency.

The Saint with Indra's Sword: Khruubaa Srivichai and Buddhist Millenarianism in Northern Thailand

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Bowie
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The Political ◽  
Northern Thailand ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Modern Context ◽  
A Charge ◽  
Social Causes

AbstractDespite a growing literature revealing the presence of millenarian movements in both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist societies, scholars have been remarkably reluctant to consider the role of messianic beliefs in Buddhist societies. Khruubaa Srivichai (1878–1938) is the most famous monk of northern Thailand and is widely revered as atonbun, or saint. Althoughtonbunhas been depoliticized in the modern context, the term also refers to a savior who is an incarnation of the coming Maitreya Buddha. In 1920 Srivichai was sent under arrest to the capital city of Bangkok to face eight charges. This essay focuses on the charge that he claimed to possess the god Indra's sword. Although this charge has been widely ignored, it was in fact a charge of treason. In this essay, I argue that the treason charge should be understood within the context of Buddhist millenarianism. I note the saint/savior tropes in Srivichai's mytho-biography, describe the prevalence of millenarianism in the region, and detail the political economy of the decade of the 1910s prior to Srivichai's detention. I present evidence to show that the decade was characterized by famine, dislocation, disease, and other disasters of both natural and social causes. Such hardships would have been consistent with apocalyptic omens in the Buddhist repertoire portending the advent of Maitreya. Understanding Srivichai in this millenarian context helps to explain both the hopes of the populace and the fears of the state during that tumultuous decade.

Colonizing the Sacred: Allahabad and the Company State, 1797–1857

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faridah Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Form ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Built Heritage ◽  
The Social

This article rethinks the complicated encounter between the East India Company and the built heritage of India in the early nineteenth century. Through an extended case study of the imperial mosque in Allahabad, which was periodically subject to British intervention over some sixty years, it traces vicissitudes in attitudes towards history, religion, and the social existence of Muslims in India generally and Allahabad in particular. The article argues for the need to look beyond the narrative of Britain's relationship with architecture as artefact or heritage—a relationship that took on institutional form in the 1860s—to the comparatively less familiar story of the Company State's prolonged and serious interest in the built environment, and specifically religious buildings, as part of the political economy of its rule. It demonstrates that such an interest was simultaneously a logical outcome of and a tension within the legitimating discourses that the Company State fashioned during the last half-century of its rule in India.

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