Navigating urban encounters: an infrastructural perspective on violence in Johannesburg’s taxi industry

Danielak, Silvia

doi:10.1080/23802014.2019.1647795

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Research here has started to reveal some of the broader consequences of digitalisation, stretching beyond a preoccupation with the nature of digital employment in and of itself. Recent studies of digital ridehailing, for example, highlight how the "Uber-isation" of urban transport systems affects not just the lives and livelihoods of newly connected digital workers but also wider dynamics within (and even beyond) the sector, as the following examples show: new patterns of asset ownership, rent accumulation and extractive activity rewire the nature of local labour relations and development (see Carmody and Fortuin [2019] and Pollio [2019] on Cape Town); traditional or "analogue" taxi drivers respond in diverse ways to rising app-based competition, from subtle forms of everyday politics (see Turner and Hanh [2019] on Hanoi) to more explosive deployments of violence and intimidation (see Danielak [2019] on Johannesburg); and reciprocal networks providing a modicum of social security find themselves splintering under the weight of renewed labour force fragmentation (see Rekhviashvili and Sgibnev [2018] on Bishkek and Tbilisi; Reilly and Lozano-Paredes [2019] on Cali). Writing in relation to Nairobi's informal motorcycle-taxi (or boda boda) sector, anthropologists Ibrahim and Bize (2018: 87) propose that the emergence of ride-hailing apps "presents the greatest threat to the future of associational life as a source of labour solidarity", as the physical and social infrastructure of the taxi stand loses relevance and the "idle time" previously used to build relationships slowly evaporates.…”

Section: Digital Labour In the South: Emerging Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing the "Changing Nature of Work" through a Precarity Lens

Mallett

2020

GLJ

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This article reviews the concept of precarity and offers critical reflections on its contribution to thestudy of contemporary labour and livelihoods. A stock-take of key and recent literature suggeststhat, despite conceptual ambiguity and overstretching, “thinking with precarity” continues to provea valuable and worthwhile exercise – so long as that thinking is carefully articulated. This involvesunderstanding precarity as: 1) rooted in concrete labour market experiences but also connected tobroader anxieties over social and political life; 2) a process-focused concept rather than end-statedescriptor; and 3) speaking to longer histories and wider geographies than its commonplace statusas a residual term or category implies. The analytical advantages of thinking in such a way areillustrated through a critical analysis of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2019 on the“changing nature of work”, and in particular its handling of digital labour.KEYWORDS: precarious work; politics of precarity; livelihoods; digital labour; gig economy

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Section: Digital Labour In the South: Emerging Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing the "Changing Nature of Work" through a Precarity Lens

Mallett

2020

GLJ

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“…Beyond structural violence, the concept of infrastructural violence has also been used to describe the direct violence that can occur as a result of or through infrastructure. This includes: dispossession and displacement during the construction of new infrastructure (Roy 2011;Isaacman and Isaacman 2013); the risk and consequences of breakdown for those living in infrastructural spaces (Chu 2014); violent encounters between users of infrastructure (Danielak 2019); and the possibility of critical infrastructures becoming a target of violence with ripple effects for surrounding populations (Rao 2007;Graham 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More-Than-Human Infrastructural Violence and Infrastructural Justice: A Case Study of the Chad–Cameroon Pipeline Project

Enns

Sneyd

2020

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

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As a new wave of infrastructure expansion takes place globally, there has been a parallel turn to infrastructure in geographical research. This article responds to recent calls within this research for less human-centred engagement with the infrastructure turn. More specifically, this article aims to destablise anthropocentric discussions about infrastructural violence and infrastructural justice. Using the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project as a case study, we advance two main points.First, we show that infrastructural violence is not always directed at humans. Rather, all agents, objects, and conditions -from humans to fish to carbon sequestration -entangled in webs of relations within zones of infrastructural expansion risk being subjected to violence when new and existing infrastructures meet. To illustrate this point, we detail two examples of competitions between new and existing infrastructures along the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline route, which together reveal the various forms of violence experienced by the more-than-human world when new infrastructural arrangements are layered on top of already existing ones. Second, we advance debates on infrastructural justice by adopting a more-than-human perspective in our conceptualization of this term. Recent writing on infrastructural justice has reflected on efforts to repair and rebuild infrastructures to produce more just futures (Sheller 2018). Drawing on the observations and reflections of our fieldwork along the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline route, we argue that just infrastructure projects must not only be inclusive of marginalized human and nonhuman populations, but they must also avoid interfering with the infrastructural work done by nature to sustain the more-than-human world.

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The spatiality of violence in post-war cities

Elfversson

Gusic

Höglund

2019

Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal

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The world is urbanising rapidly and cities are increasingly held as the most important arenas for sustainable development.Cities emerging from war are no exception, but across the globe, many post-war cities are ravaged by residual or renewed violence, which threatens progress towards peace and stability. This collection of articles addresses why such violence happens, where and how it manifests, and how it can be prevented. It includes contributions that are informed by both post-war logics and urban particularities, that take intra-city dynamics into account, and that adopt a spatial analysis of the city. By bringing together contributions from different disciplinary backgrounds, all addressing the single issue of post-war violence in cities from a spatial perspective, the articles make a threefold contribution to the research agenda on violence in post-war cities. First, the articles nuance our understanding of the causes and forms of the uneven spatial distribution of violence, insecurities, and trauma within and across post-war cities. Second, the articles demonstrate how urban planning and the built environment shape and generate different forms of violence in post-war cities. Third, the articles explore the challenges, opportunities, and potential unintended consequences of conflict resolution in violent urban settings. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Navigating urban encounters: an infrastructural perspective on violence in Johannesburg’s taxi industry

Cited by 5 publications

References 34 publications

Seeing the "Changing Nature of Work" through a Precarity Lens

Seeing the "Changing Nature of Work" through a Precarity Lens

More-Than-Human Infrastructural Violence and Infrastructural Justice: A Case Study of the Chad–Cameroon Pipeline Project

The spatiality of violence in post-war cities

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