Community Governance in Urban South Africa: Spaces of Political Contestation and Coalition

Katsaura, Obvious

doi:10.1007/s12132-011-9138-5

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Urban community organizations generate spaces and moments of public gathering, participation and action targeted at improving the local socio-economic, political and cultural setting (Alinsky 1971;Katsaura 2012). In doing so, they mediate people's experiences of the city.…”

Section: Reading the Multinational City With Habermasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated multinational urbanism: a Johannesburg exemplar

Katsaura

Abe

2016

Social Dynamics

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With increased international immigration, South African cities have come to contend with the threat of a violent multinational urbanism. Xenophobia, in its violent and symbolic manifestations, signifies this challenge. From an empirical grounding in Johannesburg, this paper explores the possibility of living together in contexts of multinational urbanism. It argues that strategic action and communicative action, in the Habermasian sense, are essential to the everyday mediation of multinational urbanism.

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Section: Reading the Multinational City With Habermasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediated multinational urbanism: a Johannesburg exemplar

Katsaura

Abe

2016

Social Dynamics

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“…What two normative analyses of local politics (celebrating the merits of decentralization on the one hand, warning of the dangers of clientelism on the other) have in common, for instance, shapes at least two specific features of local leadership (Bénit‐Gbaffou, ): (1) the personalization of representatives — local leaders can develop personal relationships with their constituency, and emphasize their accessibility and their commitment to people and place; and (2) the flexibility of policy, solutions or responses to local issues, as leaders are grounded in a relatively small space that they get to know in depth, spatially, socially and politically. In this respect, however, the local leader is never alone at the neighbourhood level, and has to engage in competition and alliances with other local leaders for access to resources and political recognition (Katsaura, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community Leadership and the Construction of Political Legitimacy: Unpacking Bourdieu's ‘Political Capital’ in Post‐Apartheid Johannesburg

Bénit-Gbaffou

Katsaura

2014

Int J Urban Regional Res

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Apart from local monographs and normative texts on community participation, research on community leadership constitutes a blind spot in urban leadership, urban politics, social movements and urban studies. This article, based on case studies in post-apartheid Johannesburg, contributes to theorizing community leadership, or informal local political leadership, by exploring Bourdieu's concepts of 'political capital' and 'double dealings'. Considering community leaders as brokers between local residents and various institutions (in South Africa, the state and the party), we examine how leaders construct their political legitimacy, both towards 'the bottom' (building and maintaining their constituencies), and towards 'the top' (seeking and sustaining recognition from fractions of the party and the state). These legitimation processes are often in tension, pulling community leaders in contradictory directions, usefullyunderstood under Bourdieu's concept of 'double dealings'. Community leaders are required, more than formally elected political leaders, to constantly reassert their legitimacy in multiple local public arenas due to the informal nature of their mandate and the high level of political competition between them -with destructive consequences for local polity but also the potential for increased accountability to their followers. We finally reflect on the relevance of this theoretical framework, inspired by Bourdieu, beyond South African urban politics.

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“…Given its social diversity, Yeoville presents a potentially interesting case for understanding the ethnopolitics of community safety governance in the city of Johannesburg. In a context of Yeoville's co-habitation by a largely fragmented African immigrant and South African population (Katsaura 2012;Palomares and Quiminal 2012), one can question the efficacy of an invocation of "community" in safety governance policy and practice. Yet the South African government has officially turned to community as a panacea to crime and violence confronting South African societies (Pillay 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

Ethnopolitics, Fear and Safety in a Johannesburg Neighbourhood

Katsaura¹

2014

Community-Based Urban Violence Prevention

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Fearfulness appears to have become a way of life in modern society. Many of us-or so we are told-are afraid to go out on the streets of our towns, at night certainly, but even during daylight hours as well. Yet staying at home carries its own threats: a whole industry manufacturing alarms, locks and surveillance mechanisms has been founded on our conviction that our homes are wide open to dangerous intruders. We view strangers with suspicion and the future with trepidation (Tudor 2003: 238-239). This chapter, focusing on a cosmopolitan urban context of a Johannesburg neighbourhood, examines otherising and counter otherising dynamics in the field of community safety governance. The study examines the extent to which fear of crime and violence in Johannesburg is also cast as a fear of supposed strangers, especially in contexts of existence in superdiverse contexts. Fear of real or imagined violence and crime (and other urban disorders) has a huge impact on the spatial and social organisation of contemporary cities (Sandercock 2003; Tudor 2003). Spatial impacts include the creation of gated neighbourhoods, road closures and adoption of military technologies by residents seeking to protect their spaces (Davis 1998; Landman 2004a; Landman 2004b; Landman 2008; Murray 2011). Social impacts include the formation of safety governing community organisations, neighbourhood associations, mob justice and other preventive, adaptive or reactive individual or social group practices (strategies and tactics) (

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Community Governance in Urban South Africa: Spaces of Political Contestation and Coalition

Cited by 16 publications

References 27 publications

Mediated multinational urbanism: a Johannesburg exemplar

Mediated multinational urbanism: a Johannesburg exemplar

Community Leadership and the Construction of Political Legitimacy: Unpacking Bourdieu's ‘Political Capital’ in Post‐Apartheid Johannesburg

Ethnopolitics, Fear and Safety in a Johannesburg Neighbourhood

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