Street-Naming Cultures in Africa and Israel

Liora Bigon (PhD in Architecture, the University of Manchester) is an urban (planning) historian. She specialises in (post-)colonial urban history and planning cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on West Africa. A senior staff member at Holon Institute of Technology, she has published widely in these fields. Her latest book – Grid Planning in the Urban Design Practices of Senegal (with Prof. E. Ross, Springer, 2020) – included an in situ survey of a dozen important Senegalese Sufi urban localities.Michel Ben Arrous is an architect by training (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) and a doctor in geography (PhD, Université de Rouen). North Africa born, he served as a journalist in Southern and West Africa prior to a long companionship with CODESRIA (the Dakar-based Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa). He has lectured and published extensively on the history of geographic ideas and fantasies in their relation to citizenship crises, media and conflict, urban cultures and the production of space and place.

"Street-Naming Cultures in Africa and Israel is an insightful, analytically rigorous and theoretically fluent comparative examination of the toponymic processes that link Africa and Israel – and France ‒ within broader semantic, textual and visual urban practices. The range, breadth and depth of the chapters and the elegance of the language provide an exceptional concreteness to cross-systemic analysis of street naming." Professor Wale Adebanwi, Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, Oxford University, UK"This valuable and unique contribution to critical place-name studies upends longstanding Eurocentrism in the field of toponymy in its empirical sites for comparison and its approach. It brings the discourses around street-naming alive, analytically, visually and culturally. The analysis is cogent and the juxtapositions both novel and striking." Professor Garth Myers, Trinity College Hartford, CT, USA"Liora Bigon and Michel Ben Arrous offer here a lively, knowledgeable and pleasant back-door entry into the contemporary city. By taking us through the logics of place-naming, both of official decision-makers and of people’s practices, they make us hear many of the voices that shape the lived city experience. Deep down, the authors show that the polynomy of places in Africa as well as in Israel is at the same time a journey, an invitation, and an encyclopaedia in the making." Profssor Doutor César Cumbe, Universidade Pedagógica, Maputo, Mozambique"This excellent book provides a much-needed focus on non-western politics of urban naming through detailed and fascinating case studies of cities in Israel and Africa. It highlights the entanglements of people and things, as well as the contentious and convoluted histories, which characterise the process of naming. It is a book that should provide inspiration to all scholars interested in urban politics and history." Professor Rhys Jones, Aberystwyth University, UK

• Foreword by Frédéric Giraut Preface 1. Introduction: Toponymic cultures and the study of place naming in African (and Israeli) contexts 2. Names in the city: Street signage in urban Africa and Israel 3. A Tale of two Brazzas: Intertwining (post-)colonial namescapes 4. Beyond street names: A tapestry of toponymic legacies in Dakar, Senegal 5. An off-the-grid toponymic ambiguity at the heart of a world city: The case of Givat Amal, Tel Aviv 6. Conclusion: The worldling of toponymic legacies Notes Bibliography Index