seriously, i'm listening to like my seventh episode. ?now playing:
which pokes its fingers in the eye of neo-darwinism, hiho
On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 5:44 PM Todd Rhoads < Todd@...> wrote: that's a great spelling if i weren't such an ardent anti-francophile i'd legally adopt that as name just to finally get to appear snooty and mess with people. On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 2:37 PM David E. Ford Jr. < ottoemezz@...> wrote: despite the fact that he's a casual peruser, m?reauxdz?deserves credit for digging up that new books network podcast. ?this site goes deep
On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 3:37 PM Todd Rhoads < Todd@...> wrote: Hi David - no long no see but i had heard things about you over the years from Joe, or Dan when you were in Brazil, etc. Obviously of course no worries about the name spelling, but as an aside i'll take the opportunity to mention a few facets (it's misspelled as often as correct - i had to point out to my wife when she decided at the last minute to change her surname to this one, and then needed to register a new email for a different reason, that we Rhoads can never use our last name in an email address). One thing interesting to me, i understand San Diego's relation to Romance languages where all the syllables/vowels are pronounced separately, but it's still peculiar?to me that as often as not, when the grocery store clerks here read the print-out on the screen and address, "Did you find everything today, Mr. ......pause.......'Rho--ahds"?? ? ?One more point - after a few sojourns as a newspaper reporter (just domestic nothing internationally interesting like yourself), and selling out and going to law school, i've now been in the law field long enough to have witnessed a switch from when law clerk/student applicants would apologize and be humble when i pointed out that they spelled "Rhoades or Rhodes or Roades"?in their cover letter (just to see how they would react, or to point out the need for detailed accuracy in legal work); to at some point, many of them instead now react with a defensive entitlement, "well, I spelled it correctly in the email" (that sent the incorrectly spelled cover letter); or "it must have been spelled (by me I'm assuming) in the job posting."
Anyways - i initially listened to portions of your podcast chat about your book - i liked your story of going to South Africa and being struck with the the import and significance of buildings/dwellings/neighborhoods and their formal/informal planning (types of "zonings") and control and meanings in that complex nation and how that led you to your topic - certainly i'm much more of a casual peruser of knowledge than mr. ford when he is intellectually struck/motivated by something, but i find your subject interesting - not "i'm going to Africa any time soon" interesting, but interesting.?
Where did you come from,?David E. Ford Jr?! I was able to write this book only by imagining a readership that doesn't actually exist (200 copies sold), and then Joe finds me you: an ideal reader. Thank you so much for your interest, your sharp attention, and your kind words. Let's get on the Zoom! Just gimme a time. (I've never read Collis, but I've now put that book in the Amazon queue. If you are interested in Portugal's history of nautical adventurism, I suggest .)
Also, Todd? Apologies for misspelling your name.?
On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 9:37 AM David E. Ford Jr. < ottoemezz@...> wrote: Hello, David Morton,
What can I say except that I'm sincerely grateful for your willingness to share some of your time to help me with my quixotic project. I will confess that I'd been trying to read your book so that I can appear well-informed in the event we exchanged communication, but i've known of your existence for less than a week, so i've only managed to read the introduction (is this the sort of thing that historians say to each other when they meet at conferences?). For the benefit of the rest of the readership and decidedly not in an attempt to ingratiate myself, I will say that there's more than a little to be excited about from the intro. the insights you begin to tease out about the manifold anxieties of land, tenancy and ~informality~ have a lot of relevance in post-colonial urban spaces around the world. one of my other pet interests is dravidian south india, mediated largely through tamil language movies and some contemporary tamil fiction. this might be an exaggeration but it seems like fully half of tamil movies that i've seen feature some element of this ancient anxiety, whether it's among the tamil community of contemporary kuala lumpur (e.g. Kabali), that of mumbai's Dharavi "slum" (Kaala) or?the hardscrabble dockside neighborhoods of north chennai (as in Vada Chennai?by the great Vetrimaaran). hell, much of the post-independence political struggle in the city of mumbai can be read through the anxieties of the communities that asserted competing claims on the city's increasingly rarefied spaces. I also really appreciate the note you make about the obsession with "informality" in describing some of these developing and post-colonial economies/societies and how the concept masks the often byzantine unwritten rules that underlie how things operate--this applies so deeply to the india that i've experienced.
Also extremely important, in my view, is this sentence:?
Those who would govern and those who would be governed also reached desperately for one another--usually without success.
This is so good because it acknowledges (something extremely rare) that a government that in hindsight is deemed to have been a failure, or worse (and this seems to be the consensus about the?Frelimo state), can also be acknowledged to have been comprised of people with legitimate aspirations of benefiting their societies. This sort of compassion seems pretty rare in?contemporary humanistic/social scientific scholarship and it's the sort of thing that is required at moments of grotesque social division.
Also, this one:
The Frelimo state was . . . an almost fictive entity needing people to fill it with content and meaning.
This is really evocative and I think I understand what you're getting at, but i'll give the discussion of your work a rest now aside from noting the allied scholarship you mention regarding these issues in South Africa, Dar and Zanzibar. But, in all seriousness, what is it with the peculiar darkness that seems to attend Portugal's post-colonial spaces?
I'm going to have to write again to give you an idea of what my pending travel to Tanzania is all about (hint, mainly birds, but humans and history and politics always play a role in the things that move me), but that promises to be a long email and i've got legislative histories to compile just now. I was going to say that I'd send this longer email directly but now that this whole group of men-of-a-certain-age has been party to the beginnings of this encounter, who am i to deny them the satisfaction of seeing it through?
more soon, david ford
p.s. speaking of portugal's history of nautical adventurism, any of y'all ever read The Land of the Great Image?by Maurice Collis?
Dear Dave Ford,
We have a lot to talk about. And we have plenty?of time to talk about it. Let's zoom sometime between now and...December?
Todd Rhodes: good detective work.
And a hat tip to Dan and Reechard.
I'd be honored to attend a bimonthly zoom chat of this particular gang.
D.?
On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 7:43 PM Joe Steinberger < joe@...> wrote: Dave Morton, meet Dave Ford.?
Dave Ford, meet Dave Morton.
Dave (Morton), you may be surprised to see that a fine group of people many of whom you don't know are discussing your professional work.?(
Todd Rhoads did some good googling on you.)? ? Well, we are.? Dave Ford will be going to Tanzania this December and he is curious to hear any knowledge of the region you may be able to share.??
I don't know if you have any spare time between now and December... and I don't know if you actually like to talk to people who are interested in your professional work about the?things you have been investigating, but if so, please reach out to Dave (Ford).? Perhaps we could even have you on as a guest lecturer on one of our bimonthly zoom chats.??
what?do you think?
joe
On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 4:25 PM Todd Rhoads < Todd@...> wrote: that topic is really interesting to me because the same as the favelas and other unplanned "Communidades" in Brazil - super dangerous of course?because squatting/built on unused hillsides usually,? and very vulnerable to rain/flooding/mudslides/landfill-slides; but they can be anywhere, right next to nice neighborhoods (where the wood-burning smoke pollutes everything) and with magnificent?views.
On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 4:21 PM Todd Rhoads < Todd@...> wrote: Joe's of course his friend i only met him a little bit but here's some info on him -??
and here's a podcast -?
?
?about his book???(Ohio University Press, 2019) describes the incremental process through which Maputo’s?suburbios?– popular neighborhoods outside the formally planned city – were built and occupied. Through key episode’s in Mozambique’s urban history – from colonial responses to migrant labor to independence-era responses to flooding, he interprets the routine forms of house construction as critical political acts through which ordinary residents of the city have inserted themselves into the city and concretized urban belonging. The materiality of different building materials are central this story. The risks and obstacles of constructing permanent, concrete, housing in the face of politically enforced urban impermanence an d ambiguous legal status kept the popular?suburbios?in suspension. David Morton talks to host Jacob Doherty about the ways that the built environment both reflects and shapes the changing aspirations and achievements of the city’s residents. Offering a critical contribution to the process of decolonization in African cities, Morton examines the racial and spatial effects of colonial Portugal’s officially race-blind ideology as well as the ambivalent anti-urban bias of the early FRELIMO regime.
On Sun, Apr 26, 2020 at 3:59 PM David E. Ford Jr. < ottoemezz@...> wrote: oh, joe steinberger, will you remind me the details of your friend who went rm (that's right, right?) and is now a mozambique specialist?
David Earl Ford Jr. :??
See you all who can come in 40 mins
If Eric is in we'll do 10:30 pm EST. If Eric is not in, we'll do earlier. Let me know!
Dan
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