Author:

Keywords:

Arts & Humanities, Architecture, displacement, Khartoum, mobility, material culture, home, PATTERNS, 1201 Architecture, 1203 Design Practice and Management, 1604 Human Geography, 3301 Architecture, 3303 Design, 4406 Human geography

Abstract:

This article displays the complexity and ambivalences that emerge as a result of a long-lasting condition of displacement. It discusses the experiences of war displaced persons, more specifically within the borders of their own countries, taking Sudan as a case study. Sudan is the country which has witnessed the largest number of ‘internally displacement persons’ (IDPs) worldwide. The paper focuses on both the physical displacement of the southern Sudanese IDPs who have arrived at the borders of a capital city (Khartoum), and the other forms of displacement related to the complex multitude of changes in their social, cultural and economic environment. This has caused the displaced to design their own distinct ways of perceiving and interacting with space; drawing their own stand-points of resistance towards an all encompassing forceful urban environment that is in every way different from the lands and cultures from which they were forced to flee. ‘Home’ in this condition might be redefined to suit the tactics of resistance which are devised to deal with the conditions of displacement, tactics that engage with a condition of rather continuous mobility and detachment’ ‘Home’ in such a case might no longer be the stable statuary physical manifestation which is rooted concretely to a specific ‘place’ but rather the “mobile symbolic habitat” which can be taken to the next place in the next journey.