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Space of Transformation

Kigoma-Ujiji, a Global History of a Liminal Town since the Mid-Nineteenth Century
  • Geert Castryck
  • Funded by: Universität Leipzig
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025
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Africa in Global History
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About this book

Open Access

Drawing on a wide range of archives, historical publications, oral history, graphic, audiovisual and web sources, Geert Castryck presents Kigoma-Ujiji as both shaping and being shaped by global transformations. On the surface, the book offers almost two centuries of urban history on Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania, close to the Burundian and Congolese borders, in a place that has been a transport hub throughout that time. Beneath the surface, it is also about major transformations on a global scale, and about people dealing with and coping with these global challenges far from the supposed global powerhouses.

Urbanization and infrastructure, colonization and decolonization, liberalization and democratization, war refugees, world heritage and translocal identities are the entry points for interpreting transformations that are local and global at the same time. The author uses the analytical categories of "liminal space" and "portal of globalization" to link the marginality and uncertainty that characterize the successive transformations in Kigoma-Ujiji with the urban resilience and creativity used to manage these transformations.

Author / Editor information

Geert Castryck, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / Universität Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
August 22, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9783111436623
Hardcover published on:
August 22, 2025
Hardcover ISBN:
9783111436616
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
17
Main content:
264
Illustrations:
7
Coloured Illustrations:
6
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