The right to the city, a term coined by Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s, has been consistently invoked by activists in favour of a greater equality in urban governance. It asks us who has the power to control changes to the built environment? And who benefits?
This talk extends a modern conceit to an ancient setting to consider examples of elite intervention in the neighbourhoods of North Africa’s cities from the late Punic to the Late Antique. Positioning elite actions beyond the well-studied euergetism that occurred during the height of Roman power, and considering the ways elite pursuits impacted non-elite populations, helps to contextualize civic benefaction as but one of many elite strategies to shape urban developments.
About the Speaker
J. Andrew Dufton is an Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Dickinson College. His work introduces ideas, tools, and methods from literature on cities like New York, London, or New Orleans to refocus the study of North African cities on the social lives of their inhabitants. He’s currently a co-director of the Acholla Archaeological Project, an international collaboration surveying an ancient city on the Tunisian coast.
