Refracted governmentality: space, politics and social structure in contemporary Luanda António Andrade Tomás Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Of Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Columbia University 2012 © 2012 António Andrade Tomás All rights reserved ABSTRACT Refracted governmentality: space, politics and social structure in contemporary Luanda António Andrade Tomás My thesis argues that political authority produces very particular regimes of informality. The description of the city of Luanda that I undertake is concerned with explaining the process of political transformation. The city of Luanda was mostly built during colonialism to spatially accommodate extant race and class divisions. The million or more Angolans who occupied those differentiated spaces in the aftermath of independence challenged the colonial distribution of space. I explain the recent transformation that the city has undergone by focusing less on the theory and practice of urban planning, and more on the inscription and influence of political patronage onto space. Political power, then, has been a force in the spatial transformation of Luanda. These developments have taken place against backdrop of a very particular politico-economic structure, which has two consequences that I explore in the remainder of the dissertation. The first one concerns the disjuncture in formal terms of the relationship between the state and society. As one of the second largest oil producing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria, the Angolan government is not dependent on the population for the extraction of tax resources. Consequently, the government is not only unaccountable to the population and civil society, but by being out of joints with large swaths of the population forces most Angolans to reproduce themselves beyond any formal intervention of the state. The second consequence can be seen in the informal links between rulers and the ruled which are sustained by other institutions of intermediation, such as the ruling party, but even more importantly the family. In post-socialist and neo-liberal Angola, family is no longer the domain of private relationships. Family has come to signify the intermediation between the state and society. For affluent Angolans, family ties to the political elite allow them to share the distribution of national resources. For poor Angolans, family is the unit of production by means of which ends can be met. TABLE OF CONTENTS AKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………………….V INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………..1 Argument and Scope of the Dissertation………………………………………..………….………….....…..20 Luanda: field/home…………………………………………………………………………….…….……….....35 PART ONE………………………………………………………………………………..…………..46 CHAPTER ONE: THE COLLAPSE OF LUANDA AND ITS METAPHORS……..…………...47 My uncle: a short story…………………………………………………………….………......………………..49 Past inscriptions.....................................................................................................................................56 Ruins/Collapse………………………………………………………………………………………….………...72 Specular economies................................................................................................................................83 CHAPTER TWO: RESTRUCTURING. OR THE (POLITICAL) ORDER OF IT…………….91 Quinaxixe Square…………………………………………………………………………………..….96 Splintering Urbanisms.........................................................................................................................107 Political spaces…………………………………………………………………………...……...…..115 The order of things……………………………………...........………………………………………122 CHAPTER THREE: CONSTITUTION AND (REFRACTED) GOVERNMENTALITY…….128 War and the contours of power…………………………………………………...………………….134 dos Santos’s constitutional coup………………………………………………………….........…….139 Refracted governmentality……………………………...……………………………...…………….144 PART TWO…………………………………………......…………………………………………..154 CHAPTER FOUR: THE ECONOMIES OF ROQUE SANTEIRO………………..……….…..155 Transition: from socialism to neo-liberalism.......................................................................................163 Patron-client relations…………………………………………………….……………………….....172 The management of Roque Santeiro.....................................................................................................185 CHAPTER FIVE: A FAMILY IN THE MARKET……………...………....……………...……..197 Money and the social………………………………………………………………........……………204 Family as a unit of production…………………………………………………….......…….……….208 The funeral of Maria……………………………………………………………………….......…….220 CHAPTER SIX: THE CITY THAT CANDONGUEIROS HAVE CREATED……………..…226 The system of collective transportation……………………………………………………………....231 Practices of Labor……………………………………………………………………..……….…….236 From salary to Falida……………………………………………………………………...……...…243 Moreno’s traffic accident…………………………………………………………….....……………250 PART THREE…………......…………………………………………………………....………..…258 CHAPTER SEVEN: FAMILY AND THE PRODUCTION OF A SIGN…………….....………259 (Not) giving name…………………………………………………………………………....….……262 The seller of past and genealogical anxieties…………………………………………………..….…269 Family as the economic infrastructure……………………………………………………………….279 Symbolic reproductions…………………………………………………………..…………………..287 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF INFORMALITY………...….…………..297 The Party in the market………………………………………………………..……………………..302 The informal networked infrastructure……………………………………………..………….…….312 Government is the people’s father………………………………………………...………….………326 i CONCLUSION……………………..……………………………………………….…......………..333 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………..………………………………....………………….……..…….….343 ii AKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this work is the final phase of a long process during which I became indebted to a number of people who supported me in various ways. I would not have made the decision to come to the United States to pursue my doctoral studies without the support, mentorship and friendship of Kesha Fikes, to whom I dedicate this dissertation. Additionally, Fikes has also accompanied me throughout this journey, reading my work at various stages and contributing to its improvements with insightful comments and sharp suggestions. In the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, I found a number of people whose work, teaching and intellectual pursuits motivated and helped me to refine my own ideas and projects. Among those, I would like to thank the professors whose courses I have taken or for whom I have worked as a teaching assistant: John Pemberton, Michael Taussig, Elizabeth Povinelli, Nadia Abu-El-Haj, Nicholas de Geneva, and David Scott. I travelled to Luanda at the end of 2008 to conduct fieldwork under very difficult circumstances, and my work was only possible thanks to the help and the encouragement of many people. I would first like to thank the Instituto Nacional de Bolsas de Estudos, for the Fellowship that allowed me to do fieldwork in Luanda, and, in particular the then Minister of Education, António Burity da Silva, who personally interceded on my behalf so that the support could be authorized. My work has also benefited from the help of many other people, who, found time to elucidate for me the intricacies of Angolan society and economy, namely Ricardo Viegas d’Abreu, José Cerqueira, and the Minister of iii Labor António Pitra Neto. I would also like to mention the help of many colleagues who gave me tips and suggestions, namely the researchers at the Centro de Estudos e Investigação Científica of Universidade Católica de Angola, such Noelma Viegas d’Abreu, Nelson Pestana and Manuel Alves da Rocha. I would also like to thank the many colleagues who work in Angola, and with whom I have had very inspiring conversations, namely Aline Afonso Pereira, Claudia Gastrow, and Ana Catarina Teixeira. For my research in Roque Santeiro, I had to rely on a number of people who granted me authorization to study, or transported me for one place to another, protected me against assaults, and who found time to talk to me. I would like to thank the authorities of Sambizanga and the Roque Santeiro market, namely José Tavares and Victor Kitecolo. My immersion in Roque Santeiro would not have taken place without the help of Makassamba. He opened his home to me, shared his food with me, and allowed me to observe his family and how he makes ends meet in such harsh circumstances. At the height of his generosity, he shared with me his own journal, which contained valuable information about his life in Roque Santeiro. In Luanda, I felt lucky enough to have been surrounded by people who knew far more than me on various aspects of life there that I deal with in the course of this dissertation. Their insights, ideas, suggestions, corrections, and especially disagreements helped me to refine my own ideas, or, at the very least to understand, to know better why I disagree with them. I would like to thank Anabela Vidinhas and Paula Costa. During the two years and a half that I spent writing this dissertation, I have also contributed a column to the weekly Novo Jornal, published in Luanda, and the feedback from readers iv as well as from my colleagues was also an important source of knowledge. For this, I would like to thank Pedro Cardoso, Gustavo Costa, Victor Silva, and Fernando Pereira. I also benefited from the presence of the my friend and human rights activist Rafael Marques in the United States in the final stage of my writing, during which time I enjoyed extensive phone conversations,