Making Experience Legible: Spaces of Participation and the Construction of Knowledge in Khayelitsha

Storey, Angela D.

doi:10.1080/02589346.2014.975935

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…As several studies have suggested (Hagerty and Williams 1999;Martinez-Alier 2002;Wilkinson and Marmot 2003;Storey 2014), when communities are not satisfied with the access or quality of their water (or other conditions), residents feel motivated to engage in their community-what we term the "Necessity hypothesis." The corollary we termed the "Apathy hypothesis"-if someone's water is easy to access and of high quality, there may be little incentive or interest in to actively engage (recall discussion of Kaika 2005, above).…”

Section: Necessity and Apathy Hypotheses (Negative Relationship Betwementioning

confidence: 99%

Water Materialities and Citizen Engagement: Testing the Implications of Water Access and Quality for Community Engagement in Ghana and South Africa

Harris

Kleiber

Rodina

et al. 2017

Society & Natural Resources

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We analyze the relationship between perceptions of domestic water access, and quality, in relation community engagement. While others have suggested linkages between material conditions of water access and engagement (e.g., that poor water access might spur engagement), to date there have been no studies those test these relationships using statistical methods. Based on a quantitative analysis of survey data from underserved sites in Accra, Ghana, and Cape Town, South Africa, our results show that water access and quality are both predictive of community engagement. The analysis also makes a strong case that there are different dimensions when considering the material conditions of water-in this case, water access and quality each condition engagement in opposite directions. Furthermore, consistent with other studies, our study also shows different demographics (notably gender) mediate these relationships in important ways. Introduction: Community Engagement and Materialities of Water Recent conceptual debates have highlighted linkages between conditions of environmental resources and community engagement-from work in environmental citizenship (Latta and Wittman 2012), to "environmentality" (Agrawal 2005) or notions of "hydraulic citizenship" (Anand 2011). While several works have suggested that material conditions of resources influence and shape sociopolitical processes of engagement, governance, or citizenship, there is still limited understanding of these dynamics. To address this gap, we offer a statistical analysis of the relationship between water materialities and community engagement. Drawing on survey data from underserved urban areas of Accra, Ghana, and Cape Town, South Africa, the analysis considers two dimensions of water materialities: access and quality. Results suggest that water access and quality are significant predictors of community engagement, albeit in opposite directions (access has a negative relationship, and quality a positive one). As such, our study lends support to the broad interest in the ways that material resource conditions influence sociopolitical processes, while also underscoring the need for clarity regarding specific facets of materialities. Our results also validate arguments in the literature related to the variability of water-society linkages 2 with respect to gender and country context. Resource Materialities: Debates from Political Ecology, Science and Technology Studies, and Allied Fields Literatures on materiality from political ecology, science and technology studies, and allied traditions have pointed to the biophysical and ecological characteristics or qualities of resources, suggesting that material and infrastructural conditions have important consequences for sociopolitical processes, including the ways in which resources are used, governed, or imagined (cf., Bakker 2003). For instance, Kaika (2005) discusses how infrastructures that enable easy access to water (by simply turning on a home tap) may contribute to a sense of disassociation between residents and...

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Section: Necessity and Apathy Hypotheses (Negative Relationship Betwementioning

confidence: 99%

Water Materialities and Citizen Engagement: Testing the Implications of Water Access and Quality for Community Engagement in Ghana and South Africa

Harris

Kleiber

Rodina

et al. 2017

Society & Natural Resources

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“…What is imperative is not to over-design informal public space, but to leave room for democratic negotiation and ingenuity — Sennett’s ( 2007 ) notion of “incomplete space”. The viewpoint leans towards Storey’s ( 2014 ) creative or invented spaces rather than creating invited places for others, revealing the need for positive traces of co-produced micro-interventions. Caldeira ( 2017 ) expresses “spaces that never quite done, always being altered, expanding and elaborated on” (p. 5), where they operate with a “specific form of agency and of temporality” (p. 4).…”

Section: Crafting Shadowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spaces of Transformative Practice: Co-producing, (Re)Making and Translating Fractional Urban Space in Gugulethu, Cape Town

Ewing

2021

Urban Forum

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Reimagining neglected urban space offers the potential for social cohesion, integration, and connectivity. The intimate, interstitial or fractional spaces of a city represent a key component of social infrastructure in a neighbourhood. The smallest of interventions in urban space adds value and complexity to urban life. However, fractional, yet deeply transformative, urban space is often unrecognised and undocumented. Transformative practice seeks to accommodate, anticipate and represent inclusive public life but requires discovering new content and definitions on public space to decode emerging processes of incremental place-making in an African context. The narrative focuses on a network of place-making intervention projects as part of an urban upgrading programme in Lotus Park informal settlement, located in Gugulethu, Cape Town. A set of tracings, integrated with theoretical frames, reveal the impact of upgraded urban space through firstly, emerging centres and the (re)making of place on the periphery; secondly, disrupting edges and the co-production process involved in the negotiation of space; and lastly, crafting shadows and interpreting traces of micro-interventions. The purpose is to explore urban space as continually adapting to the intrusions in the city grid to translate (1) innovative modes of spatial production; (2) dynamic forms of local agency; (3) marginal ways of operating; and (4) interconnected and multi-scalar urban processes of everyday place-making. The practice of co-producing and (re)making urban space in Gugulethu uncovers alternate mechanisms for governance, partnerships and operations.

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“…At the time of the research, some areas reportedly have one communal tap for every three households, with the worst areas having only one tap per 56 households. The City's target ratios are one tap for every 25 households, and one toilet for every five households (Storey, 2014). For electricity, pre-paid meters are available in most households, although a few areas remain without any electricity.…”

Section: The Heightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community leaders as intermediaries: How everyday practices create and sustain leadership in five informal settlements in Cape Town

Vivier

Sanchez-Betancourt

2020

Leadership

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Community leaders are expected to navigate different social and institutional contexts, but they must do so without the direction, authority or legitimacy available to leaders within formal organisations. In this article, we draw on qualitative data from a participation initiative to explore how community leaders get involved in everyday maintenance of public services in informal settlements in Cape Town, in order to understand how they fulfil this intermediary role. Applying the lens of leadership-as-practice, we identify four practices that connect the communities and city, and which facilitate access to public services. We unpack how these practices emerge in and are shaped by the service maintenance system and material conditions of informality. We argue that community leaders fulfil their intermediary role through everyday improvisations to find ‘what works’, and in the process, they also create and sustain relations of dependence and interdependence that reinforce those very roles.

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Making Experience Legible: Spaces of Participation and the Construction of Knowledge in Khayelitsha

Abstract: This paper examines how knowledge and accountability are framed and challenged within participatory spaces.

Cited by 10 publications

References 29 publications

Water Materialities and Citizen Engagement: Testing the Implications of Water Access and Quality for Community Engagement in Ghana and South Africa

Water Materialities and Citizen Engagement: Testing the Implications of Water Access and Quality for Community Engagement in Ghana and South Africa

Spaces of Transformative Practice: Co-producing, (Re)Making and Translating Fractional Urban Space in Gugulethu, Cape Town

Community leaders as intermediaries: How everyday practices create and sustain leadership in five informal settlements in Cape Town

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