Unpacking State Practices in City-Making,in Conversations with Ananya Roy

Bénit-Gbaffou, Claire

doi:10.1080/00220388.2018.1460469

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(31 reference statements)

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“…First, engaging in co-production can generate urban services and possibilities as a process in which state officials depart from their mandates and frame their interventions in ways that complement the activities of local communities and other partners (Ostrom, 1996;Bénit-Gbaffou, 2018). The delegation of the public mandate to carry out a particular public function can be seen as one element of the co-production, which influences the state's capacity to act and facilitates entering social spaces it had limited access to before (Rubin, 2018).…”

Section: The Commons As Commoning Between Informalities and The Constmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, manufacturing uncertainty operates along the gap or confusion of knowledge framed as 'unmapping spaces' (Roy, 2009b;Bénit-Gbaffou, 2018). It may appear as the choice of ignorance to keep flexibility in state interventions (Roy, 2009b).…”

Section: The Commons As Commoning Between Informalities and The Constmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our purpose in this article is to analyse how the process of urban commoning co-exists with complex relations and distributed agencies linking collective initiatives and informal state actions. We approach this matter mainly by way of three modalities that accommodate informality and translate it into governing institutions: engaging in co-production, manufacturing uncertainty, and playing on porosity (Bénit-Gbaffou, 2018; see also Roy, 2009a). We claim that these modalities become a significant source of informality, and, consequently, a constituent of the urban commons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

Pikner¹,

Willman²,

Jokinen³

2020

Int J Urban Regional Res

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This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, making the claim that, through these processes, informality becomes translated into institutionalized city planning. Commoning is analysed through a comparative study that utilizes contingent features of urbanity and three modalities accommodating the informality-formality meshwork during urban change. The article contributes to research on urban transformations by integrating commons, informality dynamics and the constitution of state institutions. This focus is elaborated with reference to collective gardening practices in the context of two of the less studied European cities, Narva in Estonia and Tampere in Finland. The results of the study indicate that urban commoning takes place through delegating a public mandate and enacting uncertainty, two processes that informalize city government practices. Particular differences appeared in regard to the institutional porosity that enables unregulated spaces of collective gardening to be mobilized as part of urban politics. We argue that networked movements appear as an essential part of the urban logic of action producing meaningful connections in an informal-formal meshwork and bringing together multiple sites in the commoning process.

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Section: The Commons As Commoning Between Informalities and The Constmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Commons As Commoning Between Informalities and The Constmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

Pikner¹,

Willman²,

Jokinen³

2020

Int J Urban Regional Res

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“…Informal practices of the state, building on Bénit-Gbaffou’s (2018b) definition, bridge the ‘grey’ area of contradiction between the state’s intentions and the reality on the ground, which formal practices cannot address. Other scholars argue along similar lines: informal practices highlight the shortcomings and weaknesses of formal practices, ‘unmaking’ them (Menkhaus, 2010; Roy, 2009).…”

Section: Potential Of Informal Practices To Improve State Capability mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the state’s informal practices on organisational capability and social inclusion: Three cases of city governance in Johannesburg

Pernegger

2020

Urban Studies

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Despite state actors’ uses of informal practices in urban governance, their prominence in changing policy is little acknowledged by scholars. Their effects are even less examined. Such informal practices inextricably link with and impact on formal ones, and have consequences for the state and citizens, especially at the local level. This article presents three cases of contested urban governance from Johannesburg’s post-apartheid city administration. The cases reveal pivotal informal practices in response to challenges encountered in local urban governance, informed by multiple complex and (sometimes absent) formal practices, contexts, timings and players. Responding to different pressures, local-level state actors deliberately applied different sorts of informal practices. These pressures included the need to cope with immediate problems, conflictual relationships, political agendas, lobbying groups, competing priorities and resource limitations. The effects of informal practices on the local government’s organisational capability and citizens’ social inclusion are evident and varied. Findings imply that the state’s informal practices and their effects shape governance in ways that undermine or uphold democratic ideals, thus warranting more mindful scrutiny than given so far.

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“…A particularly useful contribution has been that of Partha Chatterjee, who has pointed out how in the colonial world, the techniques of biopolitical government did not follow in the wake of modern forms of sovereignty and democratic citizenship as they did in Europe, but separately from them, incorporating colonial subjects in 'political society' long before they were included in 'civil society' (Chatterjee 2006). Additionally, Foucault's work influenced the fields of urban studies and human geography, where the analysis of the dissemination of neoliberal governmentality to the 'global South,' including South Africa, has become a veritable industry (Miraftab 2004(Miraftab , 2007Barnett 2005;Clarke 2008;Parnell and Robinson 2012;Von Schnitzler 2016;Bénit-Gbaffou 2018).…”

Section: Distributional Regimes and Biopoliticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

Toit

2018

The Journal of Peasant Studies

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This paper connects Marxist approaches to the agrarian political economy of South Africa with post-Marshallian and Foucauldian analyses of distributional regimes and late capitalist governmentality. Looking at South Africa's stalled agrarian transition through the lens of biopolitics as well as class analysis can make visible otherwise disregarded connections between processes of agrarian change and broader contests about the terms of social and economic incorporation into the South African social and political order before, during and after Apartheid. This can bring a fresh sense of the broader political implications of the course of agrarian change in South Africa, and helps contextualise the enduring salience of land as a flashpoint within South Africa's unresolved democratic transition.

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Unpacking State Practices in City-Making,in Conversations with Ananya Roy

Cited by 18 publications

References 30 publications

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

Urban Commoning as a Vehicle Between Government Institutions and Informality: Collective Gardening Practices in Tampere and Narva

Effects of the state’s informal practices on organisational capability and social inclusion: Three cases of city governance in Johannesburg

Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

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