New Books in African Studies Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024)
Oct 31, 2025
Claudia Gastrow, an anthropologist and assistant professor, delves into the urban transformation of Luanda post-civil war, emphasizing the clash between grand government projects and the rich, vernacular heritage of musseques. She reveals how the aesthetics of urbanism reflect deeper issues of belonging and identity for residents. Through immersive research, Claudia highlights how displaced communities resist these mega-projects and critique their 'foreign' designs, sparking a movement that reclaims their Indigenous urban spaces.
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Belonging As An Aesthetic Experience
- Belonging in Luanda is expressed through built environments and aesthetics rather than only legal status.
- Claudia Gastrow reframes citizenship as an embodied, aesthetic experience tied to materials, design, and sensation.
Immersive, Mixed-Method Fieldwork
- Gastrow lived in Angola for over a year and a half and combined interviews, archival work, and photographs.
- She gained access to both affected residents and nearly all state planners to capture competing visions of Luanda.
Musseques As Indigenous Urbanism
- Musseques are long-standing, skill-built urban formations with construction trades and histories.
- Gastrow calls them 'indigenous urbanism' and links their practices to centuries of city-building excluded by planners.
