Request: Needed: 3d participant for ASA panel

Dear all,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our three-person panel for the upcoming ASA meeting is down to two participants. And so we are looking for a third participant to help us fill out the panel, which is about new forms of aspiration that emerged in late-colonial urban Mozambique (abstract below). If you are interested, please let chair Lilly Havstad (lhavstad@bu.edu) know as soon as possible with a proposed title (an abstract can follow afterward). Contributions that would give the panel a comparative dimension – i.e. that address other parts of PALOP or post-independence Mozambique -- are very welcome.

Regards,

Lilly Havstad, chair, Boston U.

David Morton, U. of British Columbia

Panel Abstract:

This panel will offer a reexamination of late colonial era urban Mozambique that moves away from the focus on the early institutional formation of FRELIMO and the liberation struggle that dominates Mozambican historiography for the period. Together our papers will consider the impacts of new imperial policies, industrial expansion, and economic and social opportunity in 1950s and 1960s urban Mozambique. Our papers will explore themes of consumerism, arts, leisure, and everyday life in the context of urban expansion and creativity, drawing on oral histories, photography, archival records, and newspapers. David Morton’s paper will detail the role of African sales agents in the spread of a new consumer culture in Lourenço Marques as a response to new levels of disposable income among African inhabitants of a deeply racially divided city where access to many consumer goods was spatially restricted. Lilly Havstad’s paper will look at the emergence of Moçambicanidade (Mozambicanness) in Lourenço Marques to explore the multiracial and multicultural heritage of the city in shaping middle class ideas and aspirations for the future of the imperial relationship between Portugal and Mozambique.