People as infrastructure An ethnographic study of urban inequality in the neighborhoods of Dakar

Abstract

This thesis explores the ways in which security, class and prestige, inequality and forms of housing is structured and lived in times of urbanization and development in urban Dakar. I view these topics in the different scales they are organized and unfold, through felt experiences of the city and, last how they are structured on political and economic levels. Particularly, I seek to explore how modernism, traditionalism and prestige are navigated alongside a long period of globalization and French influence. Further I discuss security through privatization of the city and prestige as a part of the urban inequalities of the city. These topics are intertwined, I argue and relevant to measure and understand the ways in which urban inequality is lived and structured in Dakar. Through the analytical framework of “people as infrastructure”, this thesis explores the extent to which contemporary Dakar can be understood in this manner. Relational connections and networks have been seen as the infrastructure of many African cities, but as my ethnography shows, this is challenged by increased forms of security measurements, privatization and enclaving. Additionally, these elements are used to show prestige and express class differentiation and thus exclusion of marginalized citizens in significant parts of the city. La Corniche Ouest, illustrated on the front page of the thesis, has become both a symbol of a metropolis and embodied upper-class space making visible the urban inequality and spatial segregation. However, the concept of Téranga is still emphasized as an important marker of the sociability, namely hospitality and the idea that you should be helpful and open to your neighbor. I discuss whether this concept, relating to people as infrastructure can maintain within the continuous stream of new people and new forms of housing, transforming the physical infrastructure in some parts of the city and leaving everything up to its residents in less favored areas of a reconfigured urban order.