Angola 2025: The Future of the “World's Richest Poor Country” as Seen through a Chinese Rear‐View Mirror

Abstract: As Africa's foremost “emerging market” Angola is receiving increasing recognition for its oil wealth, leading to attempts to engage it as a strategic partner, especially amongst the “rising powers”. In particular, there has been considerable escalation in development cooperation between Angola and China recently, though relatively little is known about the precise terms of this “partnership” despite China's key role in Angola's post‐conflict reconstruction. The growing importance of Chinese credit lines and increasing presence of Chinese corporate agencies across Angolan territory raise important questions about development, poverty reduction and inequality; governance and labour relations; and Angola's institutional capacity and the social structure of its cities. This paper critically examines the specific outcomes of Angola's “partnership” with China along with the hybrid conceptions and tangled geographies of “development” produced as a result. In particular, it seeks to interrogate the visions of Angola's future articulated by the Angolan state and the reference points and “models” of development that they draw upon.     

Deconstructing twinned towers: Lisbon's Expo '98 and the occluded geographies of discovery

This paper develops a critique of Western representations of discovery, centrality and self-identity via a focus on Portugal's Expo '98. Two of the towers of the title were incorporated into the site of Expo '98 (the last universal exposition of the twentieth century), which offered the chance to reiterate the importance of Portugal's imperial discoveries on a global stage and to reaffirm Portuguese national identity in the process. The paper examines how historical and geographical narratives of imperialism and the ‘Portuguese voyages of discovery’ were reworked in Expo '98 to resurrect a national sense of pride in belonging to and pioneering Europe. Critical postcolonial perspectives which break with Eurocentrism are required if the role of other cultures and histories in the Portuguese contribution to the making of modernity is to be appreciated. Such perspectives enable wider reflections about the constitution of the West and the non-West in the making of a multifaceted modernity of which expositions (and monumental towers) are concentrated expressions.

Portugal's was the pioneer empire in more ways than one, and it exhibited all the defects as well as all the glories of the age it inaugurated. No Nation of the fifteenth or sixteenth century ever saw more, reported a greater variety of things, or left more of its imprint on the modern world, whose chief characteristic, after all, is mobility. (Diffie and Winius 1996 Diffie, B.W. and Winius, G.D. 1996. Foundations of the Portuguese Empire 1415–1580, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  [Google Scholar]: 434)     

Book reviews

Nicholas Tarling: South East Asia: Past and Present, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1966, pp. 334, $5.55.

W. H. C. Eddy, ed.: Studies In Demoracy, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1966, pp. 178 + xi, $3.75.

Ruth Knight: Illiberal Liberal, Robert Lowe in New South Wales, 1842–1850, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1966, pp. 299 ‐f ix, $6.00.

B. D. Graham: The Formation of the Australian Country Parties, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1966, pp. 320 ‐f xiv, $6.90.

C. Sanders, ed.: Technical Education for Development, University of Western Australia Press, 1966, pp. 302 ‐f‐ vii.

Cyril Pearl: Wild Men of Sydney, Cheshire‐Lansdowne, pp. 255, $2.50 paper, $4.20 bound.

Bruce Mansfield: Australian Democrat, Sydney University Press, 1965, pp. 322, $3.00.

T. H. Rigby, ed.: Stalin, Great Lives Observed series, Spectrum Books, Prentice‐Hall, N.J., 1966, pp. 182, paperback $1.95, boards $4.95.

D. G. Bettison, C. A. Hughes and P. W. van der Veur, eds.: The Papua‐New Guinea Elections, 1964, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1965, pp. 545, $9.00.

Denis Warner: Reporting South‐East Asia, Angus & Robertson, 1966, pp. 342, $4.50.

Patrick Ford: Cardinal Moran and the A.L.P.—A Study in the Encounter Between Moran and Socialism, 1890–1907, Melbourne University Press, 1966, pp. 319 + xxii, $7.50.     

Book reviews

T. B. Millar, The Commonwealth and The United Nations, Sydney University Press, Sydney 1967, pp. 237 + xv, $5.50.

A. C. Palfreeman, The Administration of the White Australia Policy. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne 1967, pp. 184 + ix, $6.00.

Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: Vietnam, Andre Deutsch, London 1966, pp. 404 + xii, $5.45.

Elias Duek‐Cohen, ed., Utzon and the Sydney Opera House, Morgan, Sydney 1967, pp. 128, paperback, $1.20.

G. C. Bolton, Dick Boyer, An Australian Humanist, A.N.U. Press. Canberra 1967, pp. 295 + viii, $5.40.

Richard Rose, Influencing Voters: A Study of Campaign Rationality, Faber & Faber, London 1967, pp. 288, $7.35.

Ian Turner, Sydney's Burning, Heinemann, London 1967, pp. 245 + xv, $6.75.     

Processional walking: Theorising the ‘place’ of movement in notions of dwelling

This article rethinks dwelling as an active and emergent process through which (re)connections to place are valorised by humans collectively walking with each other in a recursive manner. We revisit Heidegger's notion of dwelling, often criticised for perpetuating enclosure and stasis, by revealing the interconnections between dwelling and movement. Drawing on a two‐century old religious procession—the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks—as an empirical example, our interpretive analysis is centred around three themes. First, we demonstrate how dwelling becomes embodied in performative and collective movement. Second, we examine how dwelling in this context is reinforced through repetition and iteration of that movement. Third, we show how such movement is reliant on repair and maintenance work, which facilitates the (re)emergence of dwelling. We contribute, therefore, empirical insights into how dwelling emerges from a movement through place which, in turn, cements a being in place. Finally, this article has important implications for thinking about how the movement of citizens through processional forms of walking can be a powerful tool for underpinning feelings of dwelling and related concepts of sense of place and civic pride.     

New Excavations at Border Cave,KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds, rhizomes, and charcoal, provide a profile of palaeo-vegetation through time. A bushveld vegetation community is implied before 100,000 years ago. The density of lithics varies considerably through time, with high frequencies occurring before 100,000 years ago where a putative MSA 1/Pietersburg Industry was recovered. The highest percentage frequencies of blades and blade fragments were found here. In Members 1 BS and 1 WA, called Early Later Stone Age by Beaumont, we recovered large flakes from multifacial cores. Local rhyolite was the most common rock used for making stone tools, but siliceous minerals were popular in the upper members.