Missions Resources - Bibliography
Planet of Slums
Authors: Mike Davis
ISBN: 1844670228
Publisher: Verso
Number of pages: 256
Type of cover: Hard Cover
Summary:
reviewed by Paul Grant
If the typical 19th century city was one of brick foundries, crowded tenements
and filthy alleys, the 20th century city was marked by soaring skyscrapers,
superhighways and power lines.
The typical 21st century city, Mike Davis argues, is a squalid slum with no running water, electricity or jobs. The majority of all urban dwellers now live in slums, and if present trends continue, by mid-century the majority of all humans will live in slums.
All across Africa, enormous slums dominate urban life. The same holds for the glittering cities of China and the high-tech cities of India; the Muslim cities of the Middle East, and the Catholic cities of Latin America.
Slums occupy the cheapest land, which is to say, the most dangerous, flood-prone and polluted land. In Venezuela, Davis reports, shanties crawling up the mountainsides surrounding Caracas lie higher than can be reached with fire equipment. Slums everywhere, including in North America, are built on top of or next to toxic dumps.
Everyone should have the privilege of reading a Mike Davis book. His wide-ranging interests and his aggressive writing style more than make up for his tiresome Marxist politics. In fact, Planet of Slums retains less class-struggle than his usual work, in favor of basic humane appeal and outrage.
So the slums are inhuman and unlivable. Why should the world care? As a matter of fact, Davis says, much of the world doesn’t care—at least those parts of the world focused exclusively on commercial profit. But where the World Bank looks the other way, the Pentagon—entrusted with the security of the United States—has been forced to pay attention. Slums are the seedbeds of wild armies. It’s no longer the jungles and high deserts: some of today’s most dangerous places are those slums led by charismatic leaders. People like Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, virtual king of the gargantuan Sadr City slum in Bagdad, wield more power than entire nation-states.
Since 2003, a series of showdowns with the Shi’ite clergy in Iraq have highlighted Muqtada’s power, and analysts have wracked their heads trying to figure him out. Mike Davis points out that Sadr City, and its 2 million impoverished residents, must be understood in the context of global slums, more than as a feature of terrorist movements. The slums of the world are the places of misery, and the places of revolt. Langston Hughes once discussed what happens when a dream is deferred. “Does it explode?” he asked.
As the slums of the world get bigger and poorer with each passing year, security becomes more costly for the middle class neighborhoods. Gated communities in Cairo, modeled after those found in Southern California, and named for “Beverly Hills” and “Orange County,” increasingly resemble fortresses in fields of misery and violence.
But as Christians who want to see God’s kingdom established among the nations, we must neither be pawns of the revolutionaries nor of the reactionaries. We are on a different program altogether. We must see Christ proclaimed in those places where even the military is scared to go, places unfit for children, places without hope. Where will those people come from? Who will go, and risk everything, and still go?
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register