Street Archives and City Life

"Under the revered Nyerere a peculiar dialectic was put in place: a strong villagization and thus anti-city rhetoric in the face of the persistent migration of rural dwellers into the city. This is the focal point of Emily Callaci's Street Archives and City Life, and by exploring this she gives us a distinctive account of the relation between African postcolonial socialist politics, the city of Dar, and the aspirations of the thousands of Tanzanians who flocked to the city. Callaci's book is without a doubt going to be a classic in studies of the African city." - Ato Quayson author of Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism

“Street Archives and City Life is an enormously eloquent contribution to scholarship on the postcolonial politics of gender and the formation of new writing and reading publics. By locating a plethora of Swahili-language sources—ranging from advice booklets and magazines to dance songs and pulp fiction—in the material infrastructures and moral imaginations from which they emerged, Emily Callaci produces a deeply humanizing account of creativity and precarity in 1970s Dar es Salaam.” - Lynn M. Thomas, author of Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya

"A brilliant book. . . . Callaci’s original approach enables readers to better understand the making of urban life beyond colonial and postcolonial cities. . . . She does this in such a way that the reader is engrossed by novelty and guided by a sense of theoretical clarity." - Patrick Hege, H-Soz-Kult, H-Net Reviews

"Explores a variety of texts—didactic booklets aimed at young women, pulp fiction novellas, and song lyrics . . . A notable strength of the book is its treatment of these sources not only as reflective and productive of a particular moral imagination but also as inextricably entangled in the making of material gender positionalities through the material and reputational economies involved in the creation of these texts. . . . A valuable contribution to the historiography of this well-studied city [Dar es Salaam] and its inhabitants." - Leander Schneider, American Historical Review

"Callaci has provided an excellent exploration of a crucial aspect of Tanzanian history and urban studies, and in the process, she creates a model for scholars seeking a broad understanding of African city dwellers and communities. This volume will be valuable reading for upper division students as well as graduate students and scholars in history, African Studies, post-socialist studies, urban studies, qualitative sociology, and anthropology." - Anne S. Lewinson, International Journal of African Historical Studies