
Worlding Home
An Urban Ethnography of Peacekeeping Camps in Goma, DRC
Maren Larsen(Author)
Indiana University Press
Published on 28. October 2025
Book
Hardback
274 pages
978-0-253-07447-8 (ISBN)
Description
Worlding Home interrogates the social, spatial, and architectural lifeworlds of United Nations (UN) peacekeepers accommodated in contingent camps throughout Goma, the capital of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From 2017 to 2019, more than twenty of these camps existed in and around the city, operating as sites of global outreach even as they generated new ways of being at home for peacekeepers and the peace-kept population.
Through multisited ethnography and deep engagement with anthropological and urban theory, Worlding Home explores the entanglements of camp and city. Pushing against readings of Goma's peacekeeping camps as either more privileged enclaves or as outliers in camp studies when compared to refugee camps, author Maren Larsen argues for an understanding of "camp" as a process and practice. Between dwelling and journeying, "here" and "there," the everyday lives and embodied practices of Goma's peacekeepers and Congolese civilians co-construct a "city as elsewhere" in which camping is a vital urban practice.
By offering a more expansive understanding of how UN peacekeeping camps fit within Goma's urban fabric, Worlding Home reveals the intertwined socio-spatial processes of making a home, building a city, and re-imagining the world.
Through multisited ethnography and deep engagement with anthropological and urban theory, Worlding Home explores the entanglements of camp and city. Pushing against readings of Goma's peacekeeping camps as either more privileged enclaves or as outliers in camp studies when compared to refugee camps, author Maren Larsen argues for an understanding of "camp" as a process and practice. Between dwelling and journeying, "here" and "there," the everyday lives and embodied practices of Goma's peacekeepers and Congolese civilians co-construct a "city as elsewhere" in which camping is a vital urban practice.
By offering a more expansive understanding of how UN peacekeeping camps fit within Goma's urban fabric, Worlding Home reveals the intertwined socio-spatial processes of making a home, building a city, and re-imagining the world.
Reviews / Votes
"By considering the camp as a social and urban formation, Larsen's fine-grained ethnography offers a key reading for scholars interested in the complex geographies of encampment and urbanity in the context of global humanitarianism." - Timothy Raeymaekers, author of The Natural Border: Bounding Migrant Farmwork in the Black Mediterranean"This beautifully written book contributes to and challenges efforts to reformulate global urban studies through a lively, engaged ethnography of placemaking among Global South peacekeepers." - Garth Myers, author of Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Bloomington, IN
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
23 b&w illus.
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
541 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-253-07447-8 (9780253074478)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2025
Indiana University Press
€43.99
Available for download
Person
Maren Larsen is Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Basel.
Content
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
Introduction: The City as Elsewhere
1. Urbanization and Encampment: A Century in the City
2. Through the Gates
3. The (Extra-)Ordinary Spaces of Peacekeeping
4. At Home in the Camp
5. Being Global in Goma
Conclusion: Camping the City
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Acronyms
Introduction: The City as Elsewhere
1. Urbanization and Encampment: A Century in the City
2. Through the Gates
3. The (Extra-)Ordinary Spaces of Peacekeeping
4. At Home in the Camp
5. Being Global in Goma
Conclusion: Camping the City
Notes
Bibliography
Index