Cristina Rodrigues
Abstract
The analysis of social change in the city of Luanda reveals the persistence and reinforcement of social networks and groups based on kinship, whose creation and way of functioning spring from the traditional matrix. On the other hand, new types of solidarity bonds emerge or are recreated, leading to new forms of social structuring. Thus, social status is based both on inherited structures and on newly created solidarity bonds. This process creates substantially hybrid and syncratic social patterns.
There are, however, certain aspects of the urban society and of the sources of social change that should be outlined. On the one hand, the strength and intensity of the solidarity and reciprocity bonds engender specific social groups, in which social status is built and acquires meaning. These groups, along with their dissemination in an urban context, bring about a type of social structuring in which the various social segments are vertically organised instead of being horizontally organised along class lines. On the other hand, there is a reinforcement of the significance and meaning of urbanity - the integration, adoption and assimilation the urban lifestyle that is usually associated with modernity - which concurs with the social differentiation of transversal layers of society. The influence of urbanity is visible in aspects such as religion, education, forms of family and economic activities, and permeates urban practices and rationalities. Despite social transformation of Luanda being a long-term historical process, the past few decades reveal an acceleration of this process, and its analysis - albeit incomplete and bound by the hybridity and pace of the changes - shows that there are a number of elements that indicate new tendencies.
