“Everyone knows what a city is, except the experts:” Western Perspectives on Urbanization in Nigeria, 1950-1990
Date
2025-06-26
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Between 1950 and 1990, Lagos, Nigeria, was more than a city undergoing rapid urban change. It became a canvas onto which Western observers projected their anxieties, expectations, and ideological investments. From colonial ethnographers to Cold War-era development experts and international journalists, outside commentators often portrayed Lagos as emblematic of Africa’s broader developmental struggles. Urban growth was rarely seen on its own terms; instead, it was filtered through Eurocentric lenses that equated modernity with Western norms, and deviation from those norms with dysfunction. Early anthropological and geographical accounts cast Lagos as culturally and spatially deficient, invoking tropes of primitivism and underdevelopment. These frameworks lingered well into the postcolonial period, where modernization theory and development studies dominated academic and policy circles. At the 1965 Airlie Conference, for instance, Western scholars debated Africa’s urban future using abstract, universalist models that frequently ignored local contexts and reinforced neocolonial logics. By the 1970s and 1980s, as Lagos underwent a dramatic oil-driven expansion, journalistic portrayals framed the city in the language of failure, marked by corruption, chaos, and stalled progress, often shaped by the Cold War and global economic interests. What emerges is not simply a record of external observation, but a pattern of narrative control. Representations of Lagos helped shape policy frameworks, international perceptions, and enduring myths about African urbanism. Drawing on Edward Said’s Orientalism and employing discourse analysis, this thesis argues that Western portrayals of Lagos operated as ideological instruments. They legitimized external authority while marginalizing African agency in defining what urban modernity could mean. In re-examining these portrayals, the study exposes the deeper power structures behind how cities like Lagos have been (mis)imagined within global development discourse.
Description
Keywords
Lagos, Urbanization, Orientalism, Development discourse, Oil politics, Cold War, Western representations, Western perspectives, Modernization theory, African cities, Discourse analysis, Edward Said, Lagos, Nigeria, Western journalistic gaze, Nigeria, Urban studies, Colonial legacies, Colonial anthropology, Postcolonial modernization theory, Cold War-era journalism
Citation
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
History
Program
History