Contenu du sommaire : Villes africaines

C. Camara —~~ Ondo, a Pre-Colonial City in Nigeria.~~ Geo-graphy, short history, and description of social and political institutions of a Yoruba town.

R. Gouellain — ~~Douala : Formation and Development of the City during the Colonial Period.~~ Metaphysical history of space organisation among the Duala prior to German occupation. Colonial ideology and dominance in relation to urbanisation process and native résistance.

P. Haeringer — ~~Land Holding and Urbanisation Policies in Douala~~. Effects of political and legal (land holding and land-claim regulations) factors upon space organisation. The Duala were not dispossessed of their land rights by the French colonial administration and the spontaneous organisation of space in the 'European' and 'business' areas of the city was rather successful. On the other hand it led to serious problems in the 'African' wards occupied by non-Duala who were unable or unwilling to buy or rent land as the European did.

A. Osmont — ~~The Formation of a Local Community in Dakar~~. Story of the development of a local community in a co-operative housing estate. The first stage is marked by the appearance of a sense of common, solidary interest, based at first upon objective institutions (the rules and by-laws governing co-operative building societies) ; then cornes the passage from a one-purpose to a multi-purpose association. In a third stage the experience of communal action leads to the assumption of locality-based power.

P. Teisserenc — ~~Urban Milieu and Search for Cultural Identity: High-School Students in Fort-Archambault and Abeche (Chad)~~. Reactions of school-children, in the upper grades of secondary education, to the culture conflict created by modem, western-type, urban-oriented education. Reconciliation and/or conflicts in world-view and explanation of natural phenomena. Choice/refusal of value Systems. Influence of African social structure and religion (moslems v. christians/pagans).

J.-M. Gibbal — When New Townsmen Return to their Village: a Field Report with Some Methodological Consider- ations. How do new townsmen achieve continued integration within their birthplace community? When going back to their village they visit people following a definite order: first their kinsfolk, then traditional authorities and people belonging to the modernized sector of rural life. Likewise they try to participate in family transactions first, then in general village affairs. Funerals are ail important in both respects. Despite these attempts there remain areas of conflict resulting from the difierences, at times contradictions, and misunderstandings resulting thereof, between urban and rural life. Case studies and suggestions for further systematic studies.

G. Bernard — ~~The African and the City~~. Growth and development of Kinshasa, before and since independence, collective représentations of city life and urban problems, from résidents' interviews.

V. Vernière — ~~Reflexions on Mavginality, with Illustrations from Fieldwork in African Urban and Suburban Milieux~~. The concept of marginality as developed by the American urban sociologists of the Chicago school is to a large extent irrelevant in new African towns and French specialists have proposed to speak, instead, of "under-integrated urban growth." While typologies with a technical basis (importance and nature of collective equipments and amenities, land rights, etc.) remain very useful it may be more convenient to classify marginal townsmen in two groups: those who are expelled from the urban centres by the authorities and resettled on peripheral official allotments; those who spontaneoulsy start squatting down illegally in the urban fringe. Official resettlement is usually repressive by nature and finally less successful than spontaneous squatting as shown by recent developments in Dakar and Douala.