New Books Network 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 anthropology assistant professor at North Carolina State University, discusses her book on post-war urbanism in Luanda. She delves into how aesthetics shape belonging in the city, highlighting the political implications of infrastructure and design. Gastrow reframes informal neighborhoods, or musseques, as skilled Indigenous urban formations rather than mere slums. She also reveals the struggles residents face due to violent evictions and critiques of foreign design as expressions of dissent, especially after the oil boom's collapse.
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Belonging Is Aesthetic, Not Just Legal
- Belonging in Luanda is experienced through aesthetics of the built environment rather than only legal citizenship categories.
- Design, materials, and sensory experience register political claims and inclusion in the city.
Long Immersion Across Musseques
- Gastrow did 18 months of deep fieldwork across musseques and interviewed residents, NGOs, and state officials to understand demolitions and feelings of displacement.
- She combined interviews with archival research, photographs, and state pamphlets to reconstruct Luanda's urban history.
Musseques Are Indigenous Urbanism
- Musseques are products of long histories of local building expertise and not just 'informal' anomalies.
- Treating them as indigenous urbanism reframes them as central, historically-rooted city forms deserving resources.
