At Marikana in 2012 we saw migrants crouched on a hill cloaked in blankets that concealed pangas and sticks. They were preparing to face the might of the South African police. It was a startling image which was projected across the world, as they fell to police bullets. Their bodily dispositions and the cultural orientations seemed strangely archaic, like footage from an old movie reel from yesteryear, something out of the historical archive of 1960 Mpondo, or earlier moments of African primary resistance.

So what is the relationship then between the urban and the rural in Africanist politics, identity and cultural formation in South African cities? Are we right to assume that ANC- aligned formations have embraced progressive modernist politics and identities, while Africanists have generally turned back to their rural and traditional roots, as the migrants at Marikana did, as a cultural compass and source of strength, inspiration and imagination of freedom. This paper explores the complex issues in the formation of Africanist urban politics in South Africa. I focused particularly on what I call "cowboy revolutionaries", youth who spent their days in bioscopes watching westerns and in their township shacks plotting a revolution to overthrow the South African state. To understand the connections between leisure and politics, consciousness and social action it is fundamental to reflect on the question of "encounter" and "distanciation" in the urban setting.

The everyday act of walking through Ga Mashie, an area of central Accra, is an important process of place-making for Accra's boxing community. I focus on the long-standing association between boxing and this small area of Accra. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, I analyse walking as a quotidian process of creating affective bonds between persons and their environment. Walking through Ga Mashie facilitates encounters on a bodily scale between the boxing community and the public; encounters which are sought by both parties. In contrast, movement by other means, by car for instance, is considered spatially and socially distancing. Walking through Ga Mashie is an ethical practice of presence for the boxing community, which affirms both identity and place.

The association between boxing and this area is central to the pugilistic community's success in the global boxing industry. Thus pedestrian encounters become a way of engaging with the wider world. The exceptional is juxtaposed against the ordinary when pedestrians encounter renowned boxers in person beside material icons of the same sportsmen and women, such as posters and murals. In these everyday encounters the exceptional becomes banal, creating a sense of being in a place of global relevance.

I develop De Certeau and Ingold's approach to walking as a creative process of annunciation, and argue that place and identity emerge simultaneously as parts of a single phenomenon. This framework allows us to address the relationships between place, body and the global which are implicit in everyday practices.

In this paper I examine the tactics and processes through which urban security is produced and maintained in a volatile, 'disorderly' urban environment. I argue that the production of urban security rests on processes of contingency and adaptation, as much as it relies on spectacle and the enactment of force. Research from Johannesburg's inner-city reveals that even powerful actors, such as private security personnel, have to engage in contingent, everyday practices which adapt to the socio-spatial realities they are confronted with in order to effectively create regimes of security and order. Whilst research about urban management, security and governance in Johannesburg has concentrated on spectacular displays of force, such as police raids and 'crackdowns', I demonstrate that, whilst these displays are important for the performance of urban governance and policing, the creation of an urban order rests on more mundane and everyday processes too. As the session conveners note, actors, although creative, are also shaped by the material environment which they are located in. My presentation demonstrates this theoretical insight in practice, by showing how urban management and security personnel, although engaged in practices which actively shape a particular urban environment and the ways people can behave in it, also have to adapt their views and ideals of order and management and practices in relation to the urban social reality they are present in. Thus, management and security are not only spectacular acts of force, but are everyday, contingent processes and practices in which spatial reality, power and agency are mutually-constitutive.

In the face of rapid demographic growth, Sub-Saharan African cities are expanding fast - horizontally and vertically. The majority of this expansion has very little regulation or guidance from the state - i.e. local authority planning and/or building control. Nevertheless there are strong socio-cultural values that regulate and guide such development. This paper examines how these are manifested in two cities/countries as far apart as could be in the macro-region: Maputo in Mozambique and Dakar in Senegal.

There are remarkable similarities in processes of how peri-urban land and housing is developed in both countries despite significant social and cultural differences - underpinning key aspects of socio-cultural regulation of wider importance. The everyday practice of dwelling in these cities is arguably producing forms of 'popular' urban architecture - i.e. something between the 'erudite' architecture designed by architects and the 'vernacular' traditions that were developed previously in rural areas.

The paper focuses on how design ideals and desires are produced in these urban areas and which influences are prevalent? It discusses the issue of the production of urban commons, as state-led interventions often are minimal. Finally it looks at how leisure and security are manifested in the emerging built environment.

In conclusion the paper attempts to highlight how professionals engaged in urban development and housing may learn from these practices and how low-income and middle-class residents can be assisted to improve these themselves? The paper examines at how knowledge is embedded socially and culturally in these processes as the key to answering such queries. (this paper was developed together with Paul Jenkins)

In Senegal, fashion and the presentation of the bodily self play a decisive role in the configuration and negotiation of identities. Fashion as part of material culture and expression of sociocultural and aesthetic practices is an omnipresent phenomenon in Dakar and shared by all spectra of society. Especially textile markets and tailor shops function as social spaces, and the streets of Dakar resemble a gigantesque catwalk. Moreover, life cycle and religious ceremonies provide an opportunity for the public display of new fabrics and styles. The cityscape and its inhabitants have been shaped for centuries by translocal and transnational encounters, references and imaginations. While the city of Dakar is a source of inspiration for tailors and designers, the so-called traditional robes are subject to change as people meet the claims of urban lifestyles. The frequent and often excessive changing of one's clothing, which is widely shared via social media, as well as the shaping and styling of the body are popular activities connected to prestige and social mobility. I argue that analyzing the interplay between everyday fashion practices as both spectacular and ordinary and the urban environment can foster new perspectives on old dichotomies like local/global or traditional/modern and provide us with useful approaches to trace the formation of urban subjects.