IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/agspub/v3y2014i2p179-201.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Shack Settlement as a Site of Politics: Reflections from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Pithouse

    (Richard Pithouse, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, South Africa. Email: r.pithouse@ru.ac.za)

Abstract

In South Africa, the shack settlement has become a site of acute political intensity in recent years. However, political action organized from the shack settlement is frequently presented as being outside of the domain of the political—as a spasmodic response to deprivation, as criminal or consequent to external conspiracy. This paper argues that liberal, as well as some currents of Marxist and nationalist thought, have demonstrated an inability, or refusal, to recognize popular political agency in the shack settlement. It suggests that Partha Chatterjee’s work on the idea of political society, and Ananya Roy’s thinking about subaltern urbanism provide useful analytical tools to enable more effective recognition of political agency in the shack settlement. However, it notes that while it is necessary to think the shack settlement as a particular situation, it is also important to be attentive to insurgent modes of political agency that transcend that situation.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Pithouse, 2014. "The Shack Settlement as a Site of Politics: Reflections from South Africa," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 3(2), pages 179-201, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:agspub:v:3:y:2014:i:2:p:179-201
    DOI: 10.1177/2277976014551490
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277976014551490
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2277976014551490?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ananya Roy, 2011. "Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 223-238, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Malini Ranganathan, 2014. "Paying for Pipes, Claiming Citizenship: Political Agency and Water Reforms at the Urban Periphery," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 590-608, March.
    2. Almeida, Renan P. & Hungaro, Lucas, 2021. "Water and sanitation governance between austerity and financialization," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    3. Ugo Rossi & Arturo Di Bella, 2017. "Start-up urbanism: New York, Rio de Janeiro and the global urbanization of technology-based economies," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(5), pages 999-1018, May.
    4. Christine Hentschel, 2015. "Postcolonializing Berlin and The Fabrication of The Urban," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 79-91, January.
    5. Anguelovski, Isabelle & Martínez Alier, Joan, 2014. "The ‘Environmentalism of the Poor’ revisited: Territory and place in disconnected glocal struggles," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 167-176.
    6. Harshavardhan Jatkar, 2024. "BODIES AGAINST MODERNITY: Politics of Slum Rehabilitations in India," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 111-125, January.
    7. Jane Zheng & Xiaohua Zheng, 2022. "Does Public Participation Matter to Planning? Urban Sculpture Reception in the Context of Elite-Led Planning in Shanghai," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-22, September.
    8. Seth Schindler, 2014. "Producing and contesting the formal/informal divide: Regulating street hawking in Delhi, India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(12), pages 2596-2612, September.
    9. Chihsin Chiu, 2024. "Greening informality through metabolic coordination: An urban political ecology of governing extralegal housing forms in Taiwan," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(6), pages 1127-1146, May.
    10. jiali, Wan & yanfang, Liu & xiaoling, Zhang, 2021. "Conflict in informal rural construction land transfer practices in China: A case of Hubei," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    11. Tom Goodfellow, 2017. "Urban Fortunes and Skeleton Cityscapes: Real Estate and Late Urbanization in Kigali and Addis Ababa," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 786-803, September.
    12. Antoaneta Tileva, 2022. "Anything but micro—no small change: Informality practices at a nonprofit microlender in Washington, DC," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 72-83, January.
    13. Jennie Gamlin, 2022. "Coloniality and the political economy of gender: Edgework in Juárez City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(3), pages 509-525, February.
    14. Tony Sparks, 2017. "Citizens without property: Informality and political agency in a Seattle, Washington homeless encampment," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(1), pages 86-103, January.
    15. Özgür Sayın & Michael Hoyler & John Harrison, 2022. "Doing comparative urbanism differently: Conjunctural cities and the stress-testing of urban theory," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(2), pages 263-280, February.
    16. Tom Goodfellow, 2018. "Seeing Political Settlements through the City: A Framework for Comparative Analysis of Urban Transformation," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(1), pages 199-222, January.
    17. Michael Storper & Allen J Scott, 2016. "Current debates in urban theory: A critical assessment," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(6), pages 1114-1136, May.
    18. Bert Suykens, 2015. "The Land that Disappeared: Forceful Occupation, Disputes and the Negotiation of Landlord Power in a Bangladeshi Bastee," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 46(3), pages 486-507, May.
    19. Yi Jin & Yimin Zhao, 2022. "THE INFORMAL CONSTITUTION OF STATE CENTRALITY: Governing Street Businesses in (Post‐)Pandemic Chengdu, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 631-650, July.
    20. Jill Wigle, 2014. "The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco, Mexico City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 573-589, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:agspub:v:3:y:2014:i:2:p:179-201. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.