Conceptualizations and organizations of space and architecture are always open to negotiations and strongly related to feelings of belonging and cultural identity. The panel will discuss the importance and impact of organization of space and architecture on African identity formation in an increasingly globalized world, with special attention to processes of urbanization and migration from rural to urban areas.
The organization of space and architectural forms may be seen as the active and interactive context within which social relations and social structures are produced and transformed. The conceptualization of housing structures, space and architectural form is in this context never neutral, neither is it permanently fixed or static. The conceptualization and organization of space and architecture is a product of enacted practices, available resources and power relations – thereby reflecting shifting values and social differences. In this perspective it is strongly related to feelings of belonging and to maintenance of identity, social and cultural.
In Africa much of existing historic and monumental constructions date back to the colonial era, now inhabited by the Africans themselves. At the same time there exist also examples of a genuine African traditional architecture and housing tradition.
In search of an African identity in an increasingly globalized world in the postcolonial era, forms of housing architecture and organization of space are to be seen as highly important manifestations of value orientations and conceptualizations of social and cultural structures and patterns. In this perspective studies of housing and architectural forms, both historic and modern, in the fast growing cities of Africa, will be of importance for the understanding of both identity formation and modernization processes.
The creation of the built environment has not only been determined by physical and natural resources, there is often an underlying cultural value attached to creation of traditional spaces (Oliver, 1987). As culture varies from one place to the next, one community to the next; so will the cultural meaning and use of space also be different. A community’s identity will thus be formed in the way they build and more interestingly, the way they use and give meaning to their created spaces.
The Luo, Kenya’s third largest ethnic group, have both functional and cultural meanings to layout of spaces. The layout of the Luo hut and even of the homestead may at first sight have some semblance of spaces in other African communities. However, on further investigation one finds that the meanings attached to these spaces and the way they are used are specific to the Luo. It is the use and meaning of space that makes it be identified as Luo space.
From the ‘grave to the cradle’ a Luo uses space in a manner that identifies him as a Luo. From the level of the hut, through the homestead to the village, a Luo gives meaning and uses space like no other community does. This, and more are what this paper intends to investigate to illustrate how ‘some’ communities’ identity can be formed in the way they create, use and give meaning to architectural space.
Cultural identities in Africa and elsewhere always have a spatial dimension. Just as cultural identities are mutable, so is the spatial logic informing them. This paper examines the relationship between the spatial transformation of the small Etulo kingdom in Nigeria’s Benue Valley and the evolution of their cultural identity. As the Etulo made circular enclosures the central architectural motif of their reconstructed polity, they ritualized their cultural identity, infusing it with sacred overtones and secrecy. Circular enclosures became both defensible space against the incursions of their neighbors and a symbol of “Etuloness”. This reorganization of Etulo society equally entailed a transformation of social space. Previously, the Etulo had lived in lineage enclaves. Now lineages were dispersed through a constellation of stockaded wards. In addition to the military advantages of this arrangement, it also fostered a pan-Etulo identity at the expense of overly parochial lineage ties. In contemporary Etulo culture, their spatial distinctiveness has become the bulwark of their ethnic exclusiveness and has influenced community plans for future development. They now make no distinction between physical boundaries and ethnic ones. Even as their domestic architecture changes--zinc roofs replace straw ceilings and rectangular cinder block houses are the norm instead of mud brick circular structures--the theme of enclosures and fortified wards continues to dominate and organize Etulo self-definition.
On the basis of observations made in a peri-urban village in Botswana the importance of spatial factors for constructing and expressing identity will be outlined. Due to a new system of land administration, and an increasing land-shortage, traditional patterns of settlement clustering patrilinear relatives can hardly be realized any longer. Nevertheless, some take considerable (and sometimes illegal) efforts to find a residential plot in the vicinity of these relatives. Others are looking for big plots in a wealthy neighbourhood, or try to escape witchcraft by moving. All these actions are not neutral. They are statements of belonging and actions deeply transforming social relationships.
A compound house in Kasenaland (NE-Ghana) originates at the converging of different paths of moving people, ancestors, goods, and flows of life. A house is a body in motion, which is continuously remoulded by daily movements of its inhabitants for whom it is a nexus of belonging. Mythological discourse explains the contrasting movements of wandering or roaming (exemplified in the figure of the hunter) and sitting/dwelling (in the figure of the host). Where both movements meet –dwelling and roaming–, the house bulges out of the land as a pleat in the earth.
Today the movement of roaming is of topical interest since many young men and women move towards the South for seasonal labour and other reasons. Many higher educated sons and daugther leave parts of the house emptied, often built in expensive materials and with modernized designs, as witnesses of their being part of a larger modern world.
This paper discusses the migrational movements in the light of mythological discourse and its socio-cultural implications for dwelling and belonging in an alienated appendix of the paternal compound house.