This paper explores the use of personal solicited diaries as a qualitative research tool within social geography. Diaries were used with women from South Africa who recorded their experiences of violence over a period of one month. The paper analyses diaries in terms of their longitudinal benefits, their socially constituted nature, their use in conjunction with interviews and finally their potential for empowerment. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the diary as a methodological tool.

This paper builds on work which celebrates insurgent planning practices, and which recognises the possibilities for repression inherent within these. Calling for more attention to the practice of so-called repressive insurgencies, it uses two case studies from Durban, South Africa to unsettle some assumptions arguably embedded in notions of "anti-democratic" or repressive insurgency. The cases tell the stories of marginalised women who participate through insurgency in shaping their city. Their contributions to resolving unmet housing and employment needs represent acts of insurgency against a state which has, in part, retreated from the provision of shelter and employment through its commitment to a neoliberal agenda. These insurgent practices parallel other celebrated insurgent contributions to cities. The women, however, also manage crime and violence in their local areas, using a range of strategies, some of which can be considered insurgent, as they directly challenge the authority and competence of the state. These crime management practices are, however, at times very violent, as the women's insurgent practices involve forms of vigilantism to achieve their purposes. Yet given the marginalised status of the women, and the reality of an absent state, trying to make sense of these practices (from the perspective of planning theory) proves challenging. Labelling them anti-democratic and repressive is arguably inadequate. The paper makes use of this contradiction to unsettle the concept of insurgency and develop further ideas about the difficulties of celebrating or condemning the contributions of the marginalised to diverse and unequal cities.

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