"As Long as They Don't Bury Me Here". Social Relations of Poverty in a Namibian Shantytown

An increasing number of poor Southern Africans live in poverty-stricken urban slums or shantytowns. Focusing on four shantytowns in the northern Namibian town of Oshakati, this book analyzes the coping strategies of the poorest sections of such populations. The study is based on fieldwork conducted intermittently during a period of ten years. It combines theories of political, economic and cultural structuration, and of the material and cultural basis for social relations of inclusion and exclusion as practice. The poorest shanty dwellers are marginalized or excluded from vital urban and rural relationships and forced into social relations of poverty among themselves. Having experienced long-term processes of impoverishment, the very poorest and most destitute in the shantytowns tend to give up improving their lives and act in ways that further undermine their position.