Monrovia Modern - Urban Form and Political Imagination in Liberia

Danny Hoffman is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington and the author of The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia, also published by Duke University Press. As a photojournalist, he documented conflicts in southern Africa and the Balkans from 1994 to 1998.

List of contents

Illustrations  xiii
Preface  xvii
Acknowledgments  xxiii
Introduction  1
1. Live Dangerously, My Brothers: Ex-Combatants and the Political Economy of Space  33
2. The Ministry of Defense: Excessive Architecture  61
3. E. J. Roye: The Corporate (Post)Modern  91
4. Hotel Africa: The Uncritical Ruin  115
5. Liberia Broadcasting System: Three Utopias  143
6. Finding Urban Form: A Coda  175
Notes  183
References  189
Index  203

About the author

Danny Hoffman

Summary

Danny Hoffman uses the ruins of four iconic modernist buildings in Monrovia, Liberia as a way to explore the relationship between the built environment and political imagination, showing how these former symbols of modernist nation building transformed into representations of the challenges that Monrovia's residents face.

Product details

• Authors: Danny Hoffman
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2017
• EAN: 9780822358848
• ISBN: 978-0-8223-5884-8
• No. of pages: 277
• Dimensions: 178 mm x 254 mm x 19 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Architecture; Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Ethnology