Lubumbashi and cobalt: African city at the crossroads of global decarbonization and neocolonialism

IF 6 1区经济学 Q1 URBAN STUDIES

Cities Pub Date : 2024-10-23 DOI:10.1016/j.cities.2024.105521

Brandon Marc Finn , Patrick Brandful Cobbinah

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Lubumbashi is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) southernmost province of Haut-Katanga,¹ and it lies at the crossroads of global decarbonization and neocolonialism. Drawing on our research in the Copperbelt region of the DRC, we present an analysis that serves to unsettle urban theory by placing Lubumbashi at the center of historical geopolitical events over the 20th and 21st centuries. The city's centrality to geopolitics remains today, as Lubumbashi is the headquarters for major mining companies extracting copper and cobalt – minerals essential to decarbonization. We tie Lubumbashi's historical urban development to the region's immense natural resources and extractive potential. We show that the human rights abuses associated with contemporary cobalt mining, such as child labor, social displacement, and structural marginalization, are new forms of old colonial practices. We aim to encourage an expansive critical imagination in urban planning and geography that invites theorizing the history and global significance of understudied African cities,which are central to but often silent within analyses of global capitalism.

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卢本巴希与钴：处于全球去碳化和新殖民主义十字路口的非洲城市

卢本巴希是刚果民主共和国（DRC）最南端上加丹加省1 的首府，位于全球去碳化和新殖民主义的十字路口。根据我们在刚果（金）铜带地区所做的研究，我们将卢本巴希置于 20 世纪和 21 世纪历史地缘政治事件的中心，从而提出了一项有助于颠覆城市理论的分析。由于卢本巴希是开采铜和钴的大型矿业公司的总部，而铜和钴是去碳化所必需的矿产，因此该城市在地缘政治中的中心地位至今依然存在。我们将卢本巴希历史上的城市发展与该地区巨大的自然资源和开采潜力联系起来。我们表明，与当代钴矿开采相关的侵犯人权行为，如童工、社会流离失所和结构性边缘化，是旧殖民主义做法的新形式。我们的目标是鼓励在城市规划和地理学中开展广泛的批判性想象，从而将未被充分研究的非洲城市的历史和全球意义理论化，这些城市是全球资本主义分析的核心，但在分析中却往往保持沉默。

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来源期刊

Cities URBAN STUDIES-

CiteScore

11.20

自引率

9.00%

发文量

517

期刊介绍： Cities offers a comprehensive range of articles on all aspects of urban policy. It provides an international and interdisciplinary platform for the exchange of ideas and information between urban planners and policy makers from national and local government, non-government organizations, academia and consultancy. The primary aims of the journal are to analyse and assess past and present urban development and management as a reflection of effective, ineffective and non-existent planning policies; and the promotion of the implementation of appropriate urban policies in both the developed and the developing world.