Between 1966 and 1986 the Mengo neighborhood of Kampala, the capital of Uganda, was militarized. This dissertation examines how and why the urban dwellers of this neighborhood chose to stay in the city during this period of high insecurity. Successive governments turned several spaces and buildings in the city into army administration headquarters and barracks for soldiers. The army literally moved next door to city residents, leading to constant threats to people’s lives and their property. In order to examine Kampalans’ strategies for surviving in an insecure and dangerous urban environment, this dissertation relies on the oral histories of the men and women who lived through militarization. In so doing, I also examine how the African city of Kampala became resilient amid crisis. I argue that Kampalans relied on a set of practices and stances of defiance and subtle resistance, locally collectively known as Okujeema, to maintain their urban lives; they had inherited these strategies and modified them to suit their new challenges. From the beginning of military rule, many Kampala residents understood that the military meant to push them out of the city as a punishment for their political opposition and allegiance to the Buganda Kingdom. Okujeema is how Kampalans defined resilience and endurance. Residents displayed this trait when they resisted eviction orders, hid their property, and protected each other’s lives. They also insisted on earning a livelihood and enjoying leisure time in the midst of economic collapse. Kampala had long been a city of powerful women, a gender dynamic now challenged by the arriving soldiers. Not surprisingly, Okujeema therefore often took highly gendered forms as when traditional gender roles were inverted and women became protectors of men. All Kampalans, men and women, were urbanites, and they meant to retain that identity. The very notion of living in the city was an act of Okujeema during Kampala’s two decades of militarized crisis. / 2020-11-06T00:00:00Z

Wie formen die Raumgestaltungspraktiken von Künstlern städtische Räume? Wie ist es möglich, dass Kunsträume ohne kommerzielle Galleriestrukturen im städtischen Wettbewerb überleben? Welche Konzepte, Strategien und Formen nehmen sie an? Wie sind diese urbanen Auseinandersetzungen im Hinblick auf den umfassenden Zwang zur Kreativität oder das neue Mobilitätsparadima aufgestellt? Und was verraten diese räumlichen Konsequenzen dieser Praktiken über die städtischen Möglichkeitsräume? Die Kritiken der vergleichenden Stadtforschung werden operationalisiert um diese Fragen zu beantworten. Statt Peking und Berlin kategorisch als Orte des Vergleichs voneinander zu trennen, wird eine breite Ontologie des Urbanen als Bezugsraum etabliert, um über die Kunsträume in ihrer Verbundenheit nachzudenken. Unter Verwendung einer engen Definition von Kunsträumen besteht die qualitative Feldforschung aus Interviews, Beobachtungen vor Ort und interpretativer Bündelung von Themen. Die empirischen Ergebnisse sind um konzeptuelle Motivationen, Raumgestaltungstrategien und räumlich-zeitliche Folgen der Kunsträume organisiert. Vom empirischen Material rückwärts theoretisierend wird der Mythos der „Frontier“ als Legitimation für Eroberung durch der Narrative von Erkundung und Zirkulation neu betrachtet - die „Frontier“ als Möglichkeit des Fortschritts wird durch eine Vorstellung von phoretischen Beziehungen in einem Raum nomadischer Kreuzfahrt ersetzt. Diese Konzepte bieten durch ihre Illustration eine alternative Interpretation von Mobilität als konstituierender Aspekt von Raum statt Mobilität zwischen Räumen an. Kunsträume als Möglichkeitsräume zu betrachten fordert Wahrnehmungen von Unvermeidlichkeit heraus, beschwört aber auch Risiken herauf, etwa in Form einer isolationistischen Geste. Schließlich wird eine Reflektion des heuristischen Präsentismus‘ der Studien von Mobilität verbunden mit einem Aufruf für mehr Längsschnittsmethodologien. / How do artists’ place-making practices shape urban space? How is it possible that art spaces with no commercial gallery structure survive in the competitive urban arena? What concepts, strategies and forms do they take? How are these urban contestations situated with regards to the ubiquitous creativity imperative or the new mobilities paradigm? And what do the spatial consequences of these place-making processes reveal about the urban spaces of possibility? The comparative urbanism critiques are operationalized to address these questions. Rather than categorically dividing Beijing from Berlin as comparative sites, a broad ontology of the urban as a relational space is established to think about the art spaces in connection to one another. Employing a narrow definition of art spaces, the qualitative fieldwork is comprised of interviews, on-site observation and interpretive clustering around themes. The empirical results are organized around conceptual motivations, place-making strategies and spatio-temporal consequences. Theorizing back, the myth of the urban frontier as a legitimation of conquest through the figure of the pioneer is reconsidered through narratives of exploration and circulation; the urban frontier as progressive possibility is displaced with empirically-sourced ideas of nomadic cruise ship space and phoretic relationships. These concepts offer an alternative to understanding mobility between places, through its illustration of mobility as constituted by a particular kind of place. Considering art spaces as spaces of possibility challenge perceptions of inevitability, but also evoke risks, such as the isolationist gesture. Finally, a reflection on the heuristic presentism of studying mobility is coupled with a call for more longitudinal methodologies in order to achieve a better balance for a comparative approach that overcomes presumed categories of difference without ignoring historically constituted structures of power.