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Housing middle-classness: formality and the making of distinction in Luanda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

Claudia Gastrow
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Abstract

As one of the primary personal sites of financial investment, expression and public performance, housing has stood at the centre of contemporary studies of class in Africa. This article adds to the existing literature on housing and class by exploring residents’ desires for formal housing in post-conflict Luanda, Angola. Luanda's residents increasingly believed that access to formal housing, not necessarily always legally but rather aesthetically defined, was a primary means of affirming middle-class status. By highlighting the links between class, urban formality and the state, the article argues that formal housing became a means for both the state and Luandans to produce middle-classness. Existing beliefs about comportment and urban aesthetics, which anchored subjective understandings of class in the house, intersected with a political economy in which the state played a central role in enabling access to new residences. As such, formality has become a key means through which middle-classness is transforming urban landscapes, opening up discussions about aesthetic belonging, financial stability and the role of the state in the making of Africa's middle classes.

Résumé

Résumé

En tant que l'un des principaux terrains personnels d'investissement financier, d'expression et de performance publique, le logement est au cœur de l’étude contemporaine des classes en Afrique. Cet article complète la littérature existante sur le logement et les classes en explorant les désirs de logement formel des résidents dans le Luanda (Angola) post-conflit. Les résidents de Luanda croyaient de plus en plus que l'accès au logement formel, pas toujours forcément défini légalement mais plutôt esthétiquement, était un moyen essentiel d'affirmer le statut de classe moyenne. En soulignant les liens entre la classe, la formalité urbaine et l’État, l'article soutient que le logement formel est devenu un moyen, tant pour l’État que pour les Luandais, de produire le « classe-moyennisme » (middle-classness). Les croyances existantes concernant le comportement et l'esthétique urbaine, qui ont ancré des interprétations subjectives de classe dans la maison, se sont recoupées avec une économie politique dans laquelle l’État a joué un rôle central en permettant d'accéder à de nouvelles résidences. En tant que tel, la formalité est devenue un moyen clé par lequel le classe-moyennisme transforme les paysages urbains, ouvre des discussions sur l'appartenance esthétique, la stabilité financière et le rôle de l’État dans la formation des classes moyennes d'Afrique.

Type
The lived experiences of the African middle classes
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 509 - 528
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Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

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