JOHANNESBURG, the elusive metropolis

398pp., illus., paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2008

ISBN: 9781868144730

Also published in the USA in 2008.

Contributions include:

"Aesthetics of Superfluity" by Achille Mbembe

"Stylizing the Self" by Sarah Nuttall

"Gandhi, Mandela, and the African Modern" by Jonathan Hyslop

"Art Johannesburg and Its Objects" by David Bunn

"Instant City" by John Matshikiza

"Johannesburg, Metropolis of Mozambique" by Stefan Helgesson

"Soweto Now" by Achille Mbembe, Nsizwa Dlamini and Grace Khunou

"From the Ruins: The Constitution Hill Project" by Mark Gevisser

"Reframing Township Space: The Kliptown Project" by Lindsay Bremner.

"An extraordinary exploration of what is so often left out of accounts about cities: what is beneath and what is at the edge. It goes where much of the urban scholarship leaves off or, rather, trails off. The authors project to write Johannesburg into today's history will serve as a compass to enable researchers and writers to engage other cities that have been left out of history or given a narrow colonial presence." Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From medieval to global assemblages

Sarah Nuttall is Director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand.

Achille Mbembe is Research Professor in History and Politics a the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) University of the Witwatersrand.