Another fascinating study of an African city that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities, Tasha Rijke-Epstein’s forthcoming Children of the Soil: The Power of Built Form in Urban Madagascar, is scheduled to be published soon, in October 2023, by Duke University Press. In this book, “Rijke-Epstein offers an urban history of the port city of Mahajanga, Madagascar, before, during, and after colonization. Drawing on archival and ethnographic evidence, she weaves together the lives and afterlives of built spaces to show how city residents negotiated imperial encroachment, colonial rule, and global racial capitalism over two centuries. . . . In tracing the centrality of Mahajanga’s architecture to everyday life, Rijke-Epstein offers new ways to understand the relationships between the material world, the more-than-human realm, and the making of urban life.” This title will be of interest to scholars and readers of African history, African/Africana studies, urban studies, and architectural and design studies. For more information about Children of the Soil, please visit the publisher’s website here.
SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES 