The Gift

The gifting of architecture during the Cold War was a spectacular means for socialist countries to manifest a new vision of international relations for the decolonizing world. Soviet, Eastern European, Chinese, and Cuban institutions donated factories, schools, hospitals, and housing to newly independent states in Africa and Asia, transforming cities and landscapes in Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mongolia, Vietnam, and elsewhere. This book shows how the moral, temporal, and racial dynamics of gift-giving conditioned the design, construction, and afterlives of these buildings. It debates how the generosity and violence specific to gift exchange, and the social bonds that it creates, shaped and continue to shape everyday urbanism across Africa and Asia. By rereading these encounters, The Gift offers a uniquely differentiated genealogy of global urbanization and its architecture.