Abstract A close reading of Lukala—a small town that grew around a cement plant during the colonial rule of Belgium over what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo—demonstrates how scrutinizing spatial transformations of the African ‘hinterland’ can be an important analytical tool for studying colonialism. More than colonial cities (often planned along segregationist lines), these hinterland places can be conceptualized as the unplanned outcome of an everyday activity pattern, as landscape. Therefore, their spatial transformations expose the complexity of a colonial society beyond the standardized colonizer-colonized perspective. Confronting fieldwork observations with archival material, the case of Lukala serves as an example: fragments of the contemporary landscape are related to the frictions between different (unexpected) actors of the cement-making society. Although the archival research would probably have highlighted the same frictions, the analysis of these fragments of ‘imperial debris’ ground the historical narratives in the present.

中文翻译：

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丛林中的瓦砾：刚果民主共和国卢卡拉水泥景观的零碎传记

摘要 仔细阅读卢卡拉——一个在比利时殖民统治今天刚果民主共和国期间围绕水泥厂发展的小镇——展示了仔细研究非洲“腹地”的空间变化如何成为重要的分析工具研究殖民主义。不仅仅是殖民城市（通常沿着种族隔离线规划），这些腹地地方可以被概念化为日常活动模式的意外结果，如景观。因此，他们的空间转换暴露了殖民社会的复杂性，超出了标准化的殖民者-殖民视角。用档案材料面对实地考察，卢卡拉的案例就是一个例子：当代景观的碎片与水泥制造社会的不同（意外）参与者之间的摩擦有关。尽管档案研究可能会强调同样的摩擦，但对这些“帝国碎片”碎片的分析为现在的历史叙述奠定了基础。