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Landlords and Lodgers

Socio-Spatial Organization in an Accra Community

Landlords and Lodgers analyzes the results of a long-term study of a Ghanaian zongo, or “stranger quarter”—a place of refuge for Hausa migrants from northern Nigeria who have relocated to the city of Accra. Deborah Pellow explores the relationships among community members both in terms of the built structures—rooms, doors, communal structures, and hallways—and of the social networks, institutions, and routine activities that define this unique urban neighborhood. This volume will be useful to students and scholars of the relationships between architecture, migration, and social change.
 
“This richly observed and lovingly constructed portrait of a distinctive community will be of interest to spatially informed scholars of religion, immigration, minority communities, and gender.”—Gender, Place and Culture
 
“This theoretically informed, well-researched, and closely written book should be quite useful. . . . A fine case study of urban sense of place in a unique, yet in some ways emblematic, West African neighborhood.”—Gareth Myers, Professional Geographer
 
 

280 pages | 8 halftones, 4 maps, 45 figures | 6 x 9 | © 2008

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Reviews

Landlords and Lodgers presents a valuable study of the interconnectedness between the built environment, social practices, and changing identity. Pellow’s intimate familiarity with the setting, history, and people of Sabon Zongo has enabled her to produce a rare urban ethnography that does justice to the macro structure and functions of the city without losing sight of the individual actors who inhabit and reproduce Accra’s physicality and meaning. . . . This book should be a welcome addition to undergraduate and graduate course reading lists in the anthropology of space and place, West Afdrican ethnography, and urban planning.”

Traditional Dwelling and Settlements Review

“This richly observed and lovingly constructed portrait of a distinctive community will be of interest to spatially informed scholars of religion, immigration, minority communities, and gender.”

Gender | Place and Culture

“Pellow describes in a vivid and compelling way the distinctiveness of the Sabon Zongo. . . . She manages to convince the reader that the architectural space is conducive for particular forms of social and commercial encounters.”

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“This theoretically informed, well-researched, and closely written book should be quite useful in middle- and upper-level urban geography classes as well as in African geography classes as a fine case study of urban sense of place in a unique, yet in some ways emblematic, West African neighborhood.”

Professional Geographer

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Glossary
Preface

1    Introduction
2    The Urban Cultural Context
3    Strangers, Struggles, and the Creation of Sabon Zongo
4    Sabon Zongo: Environmental Delimitations
5    Ties That Bind
6    Everyday Life
7    Anthill Architecture: The Involuted Compound
8    Compound Social Space: Transformations through Living
9    Conclusion: Zongwanci

Appendix
Bibliography
index

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