Becoming Jinja The Production of Space and Making of Place in an African Industrial Town

Abstract: The years immediately preceding and following W.W.II marked a turning point in British colonial policy in Africa. In this doctoral thesis, which focuses on colonial and post-colonial Uganda, this turning point is approached in terms of a shift in would-be hegemonic socio-spatial diagrams of power. In turn, the town of Jinja is approached in terms of having constituted a strong point with shifting functions in a series of contested diagrams of power over time. Certain agents and spatial enclosures are examined in terms of having risen and fallen in terms of deemed efficiency in actualising specific lines and modalities of power; the ”African” housing estate, the ”Asian” and the ”Chief” being important among these. Drawing on the theoretical work of Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari, and Lefebvre, particularly that pertaining to discursive regimes of power-knowledge, space and the subject, I seek to show how projects and architectures of socio-spatial ordering instituted by dominant producers of space (principally the colonial and post-independence states, and capital) have impacted on – and in turn been influenced and translated by – the everyday projects of people in place. Much of this focus, and also the fieldwork, is channelled through the Walukuba Housing Estate that was built in the post-W.W.II colonial era. The study is based on archival research, extensive ethnographic fieldwork and secondary literature.