Have Your Yellowcake and Eat It
Men, Relatedness and Intimacy in Swakopmund, Namibia
Jack Boulton
ISBN 9783906927299
Foreword by Steven Van Wolputte
Basel Namibia Studies Series 23, May 2021
214 p., paperback, four colour laminated, 170 mm x 244 mm, maps, illustrations, index
ave Your Yellowcake and Eat It is a story of men, monsters and uranium in Swakopmund, a small coastal city in the west of Namibia. Founded by German settlers in the late nineteenth century, Swakopmund remains a popular holiday destination for Namibians and international visitors alike.
How do young African men make their home in this peculiar town of pretty beaches and luxury hotels, a brutal colonial history and a large uranium mining industry? Are their close relations affected by global changes in the price of uranium? And how do we describe their life worlds which straddle many homes, neighbourhoods, and establishments – sometimes even existing beyond the limits of the post-colonial city?
Employing a reflexive narrative and based on two year’s fieldwork, Jack Boulton explores the myriad ways in which intimacy develops and manifests for men in a city defined predominantly by racialised difference and local and global forces of inequality.
Jack Boulton is associate researcher at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), University of Leuven, and editor-in-chief of inter-disciplinary journal Stimulus Respond. His current work explores men’s selfhood and self-making practices in urban Namibian contexts.