Precarious Modernities - by Cristiana Strava (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Using rich ethnographic detail, Precarious Modernities offers an immersive account of the multiple scales and entangled actors involved in the objectification and instrumentalization of Casablanca's margins as part of ongoing and contingent processes of 'modernization'. Focusing on the everyday lives and spaces of a mythicized community, and its interaction with heritage activists, international development agendas and technocratic planning regimes, the book documents how the depoliticization of the urban margins aids the consolidation of deeply unequal social, spatial, and economic orders.

The result is a unique account of the political continuities, security logics, economic ideologies and competing forces that shape the possibilities open to precarious communities in a storied and sprawling metropolis. As marginalized inhabitants develop pragmatic ways of appropriating or resisting powerful agendas, unanticipated and novel forms of political engagement emerge. These signal the revival and reconfiguration of notions of class and open up creative and alternative spatial avenues for participation in an era of increasing authoritarianisms.

Review Quotes

Precarious Modernities makes an outstanding contribution to a longstanding and highly respected tradition of conducting anthropological research in Morocco. Strava provides a medium through which residents of an historically contentious area of Casablanca - one that has suffered from violence, deprivation, and marginalization - can identify what they want for their homes, their neighbourhoods, and their locale. She illustrates the tensions between the closed, static concepts states and often private developers use and the far more fluid, contradictory understanding of past, present, and future residents have of place. The continued expansion of urban centers means that her research will resonate for a long time.
Shana Cohen, University of Cambridge, UK

A brilliant anthropology of and in Casablanca's urban margins. Cristiana Strava cogently explores and unravels the practices and spaces of everyday life in Hay Mohammadi, a well-known urban laboratory in the country's colonial and postcolonial history, and shows us how the (re-)production of Morocco's urban margins were crucial for the consolidation of social, spatial and economic order. A thoughtful and in-depth study. Highly recommended.
Koenraad Bogaert, author of Globalized Authoritarianism: Megaprojects, slums, and class relations in Urban Morocco

About the Author

Dr. Cristiana Strava is Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Netherlands.