This article analyses post-apartheid public spaces through social and spatial practices at the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) Waterfront mall in Cape Town. Our empirical evidence suggests that these public spaces involve much more than just consumption patterns, as they sustain and support novel ways of asserting social identities in a new political situation. These changes are, however, quite complex and fraught with ambivalence. Consequently, we scrutinize how race is staged in that space, and how racial diversity produces various kinds of boundaries. We then argue that these urban practices lead us to an understanding of the precarious balance between private and public spaces. We propose the notion of 'publicization' -the process whereby private spaces acquire a more public dimension.
Cette introduction au numéro spécial « Terrain de je » reprend la question du terrain pour en faire un problème scientifique et un objet de recherche épistémologique, en se plaçant à la fois du point de vue du sujet-cherchant – et de la question de son identité – et dans une perspective spatiale. Elle rend compte des principaux débats du colloque qui s’est tenu à Arras sur ce sujet, pour ensuite discuter la question du terrain des points de vue théoriques et épistémologiques. Les apports des épistémologies féministes anglophones (dimension politique, réflexivité et positionnalité, relationnalité, corporalité) sont mis en regard d’une approche française longtemps plus strictement méthodologique mais en plein renouvellement (rapport des spatialités de l’objet et de la pratique, esthétique du terrain, réflexivité). Enfin, cette introduction présente deux propositions : celle d’utiliser le terrain comme levier pour une histoire latourienne de la géographie, où gestes, dimensions matérielles et processus d’écriture seraient centraux ; celle d’aller au-delà des épistémologies existantes pour travailler, avec la psychanalyse transitionnelle, l’idée d’un régime haptique et figuratif de connaissance spatiale autour de l’investigation des dimensions relationnelles et performatives de la pratique et de l’expérience de terrain.
Résumé : Le traitement de la nature dans les colonies de peuplement prend en Afrique du Sud une dimension particulière. La gestion de la nature y fut remarquablement instrumentalisée dans le cadre d'une ingénierie territoriale de la ségrégation coloniale puis de l'apartheid, au point d'être l'une des pièces maîtresses des dispositifs territoriaux et de l'idéologie qui les sous-tendait. Dans la nouvelle Afrique du Sud, elle constitue l'un des terrains privilégiés du raccommodage socio-spatial, et ceci à trois niveaux. Au niveau local avec le développement de formes participatives communautaires de gestion et d'appropriation qui ne vont pas sans poser de problème avec une municipalisation qui privilégie la démocratie représentative ; au niveau national avec un certain consensus autour de la promotion et la restauration d'un patrimoine naturel autochtone d'où l'on doit extirper les plantes allochtones ; et au niveau international avec la transformation des parcs frontaliers en des objets internationaux de développement, les transfrontier peace parks. Mots-clefs : Afrique du Sud, nature, environnement, territoire, ségrégation, conservation, colonisation, instrumentalisation, apartheid. Abstract:In South Africa, nature management has been instrumentalised for spatial engineering during the colonial and apartheid eras. In the new South Africa, 'Nature' has remained an essential tool for repairing the socio-spatial fabric. At a local level, nature management has allowed new, participative, forms of administration to develop, even if they are sometimes inconsistent with new, democratic, municipal structures. At a national level, a consensus for the preservation of an indigenous natural heritage has been agreed upon and "alien plants" have become an enemy to destroy. At an international level, transfrontier peace parks planned for development have replaced former natural parks used as military buffer zones.
Myriam HOUSSAY-HOLZSCHUCH ENS Lettres et Sciences humaines 3 "Benefits beyond boundaries" Slogan du Ve congrès mondial des parcs tenu à Durban en 2003.
We argue here that public space research might benefit theoretically from the Southern Turn in urban studies. Our first objective is theoretical and methodological: unpack the idea of public space to make it suitable beyond its original location. Détienne's work on Comparing the Incomparable, combined with Staeheli and Mitchell's notion of "regimes of publicity" offer the theoretical tools for such a displacement. We end up thinking about public space as various, context-specific configurations of loosely structured, juridical, political, and social elements that take on new shapes and are prone to partial dislocation when dislocated. We test this model by displacing it to a piece of vacant land-Rondebosch Common in Cape Town. In so doing, we deal with our second objective: offering a detailed empirical analysis of the Occupy Rondebosch Common 2012 events, which relates to broader public space debates in contemporary, liminal, South Africa. "We are the 99%"-this Occupy Wall Street motto resonates somewhat differently, but no less strongly, when heard from the majority world, also known as the South. Occupy Wall Street was the spark for analyzing majority claims and how they use public spaceagain showing how actual events shape political thought, but also how much our theorizations tend to rest on iconic Western cases and concepts. Public space is such a
Scholars are increasingly declining to offer their services in the peer review process. There are myriad reasons for this refusal, most notably the ever-increasing pressure placed on academics to publish within the neoliberal university. Yet if you are publishing yourself then you necessarily expect someone else to review your work, which begs the question as to why this service is not being reciprocated. There is something to be said about withholding one’s labour when journals are under corporate control, but when it comes to Open Access journals such denial is effectively unacceptable. Make time for it, as others have made time for you. As editors of the independent, Open Access, non-corporate journal ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, we reflect on the struggles facing our daily operations, where scholars declining to participate in peer review is the biggest obstacle we face. We argue that peer review should be considered as a form of mutual aid, which is rooted in an ethics of cooperation. The system only works if you say ‘Yes’!
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