Constructing an “infrastructure of care” – understanding the institutional remnants and socio-technical practices that constitute South Africa’s Covid-19 response

Odendaal, Nancy

doi:10.1080/02723638.2020.1807166

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The algorithmic friend is also visible in the sociotechnical relations that underpin infrastructures of care in post-Apartheid South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic, that Nancy Odendaal observes. The communication platform, WhatsApp, was central to community action networks facilitating assistance at the neighbourhood level through the collective mobilising of care, a bottom-up response that is a legacy of the relations between the State and local that are a result of South Africa’s colonial past (Odendaal 2021: 394–395).…”

Section: Algorithms That Care?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithmic epistemologies and methodologies: Algorithmic harm, algorithmic care and situated algorithmic knowledges

Maalsen

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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Algorithms have been the focus of important geographical critique, particularly in relation to their harmful and discriminatory effects. However, less attention has been paid to engaging more deeply with the epistemological effects of algorithms, the result being that geographers continue to overlook more generative algorithmic potentials, practices, epistemes and methodologies. This paper progresses our engagements with algorithms by first considering practices of care as a means to reframe our relationship with algorithms. Second, the paper identifies an epistemological rupture that allows us to reconceptualise algorithms as co-researchers, enabling us to encounter new spaces and understand these spaces in new ways.

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Section: Algorithms That Care?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithmic epistemologies and methodologies: Algorithmic harm, algorithmic care and situated algorithmic knowledges

Maalsen

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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“…For example, in response to the pandemic, several social groups in South Africa have developed cooperation networks to allow community assistance at the neighborhood level. Using WhatsApp and Facebook groups and pages, they organize activities such as food distribution and caring for the elderly and other vulnerable groups [73]. Similarly, in the UK, apps such as "Phone Pal" have been used to facilitate social connections between people and prevent psychological issues and physical health problems caused by social isolation [74].…”

Section: Facilitating Transparent Communication and Preventing The Spread Of Fake Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of Smart City Solutions and Technologies to Resilience against the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Literature Review

2021

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Since its emergence in late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has swept through many cities around the world, claiming millions of lives and causing major socio-economic impacts. The pandemic occurred at an important historical juncture when smart solutions and technologies have become ubiquitous in many cities. Against this background, in this review, we examine how smart city solutions and technologies have contributed to resilience by enhancing planning, absorption, recovery, and adaptation abilities. For this purpose, we reviewed 147 studies that have discussed issues related to the use of smart solutions and technologies during the pandemic. The results were synthesized under four themes, namely, planning and preparation, absorption, recovery, and adaptation. This review shows that investment in smart city initiatives can enhance the planning and preparation ability. In addition, the adoption of smart solutions and technologies can, among other things, enhance the capacity of cities to predict pandemic patterns, facilitate an integrated and timely response, minimize or postpone transmission of the virus, provide support to overstretched sectors, minimize supply chain disruption, ensure continuity of basic services, and offer solutions for optimizing city operations. These are promising results that demonstrate the utility of smart solutions for enhancing resilience. However, it should be noted that realizing this potential hinges on careful attention to important issues and challenges related to privacy and security, access to open-source data, technological affordance, legal barriers, technological feasibility, and citizen engagement. Despite this, this review shows that further development of smart city initiatives can provide unprecedented opportunities for enhancing resilience to the pandemic and similar future events.

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“…Solidarity and care, in conjunction with commitment to co-learning to fight epistemic injustices in urban development (Anand et al, 2021), continued to define the partnership between activists and communities in Indore and academics in Bengaluru. Holding these shared principles has given pedagogues the sensibilities to continuously reflect on and re-evaluate the knowledges and infrastructures of care (see Odendaal, 2021) required in the co-learning process. In other words, these underlying principles created certain room for manoeuvre (Safier, 2002), which was utilised and expanded as it coincided with a set of competencies of pedagogues and learners.…”

Section: Going Forward: How Do We Learn Now?mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do We Learn Now? Pluralising Urban Pedagogies in the COVID-19 Pandemic

et al. 2022

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Since 2020, pedagogues and learners in the field of urban planning and practice have rapidly responded to new demands and realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. These have included shifting the modes and sites of learning from classrooms to screens, developing new programmes to build urgently required local capacities, fostering partnerships and platforms that sustain remote ways of learning together, and facilitating multi-sensorial and inclusive learning practices. This plurality of pedagogic adaptation and innovation suggests complex and nuanced relations with urban (in)equality, going beyond the dominant narrative of the digital divide and distributive inequalities in higher education. This article reflects on three experiences of critical pedagogies undertaken by researchers and activists, social movements and organised civil society from India, Brazil and Argentina. As the impacts of the pandemic on the nexus between urban practice and pedagogy unfold, we argue that these reflexions-in-action on decisions made, along with their underlying principles, are important stimuli for pluralising questions of what, where, with whom and how we learn to respond to urban inequalities. Moreover, they open nuanced discussions to strategically reimagine future hybrid learning trajectories to support pathways to urban equality.

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Constructing an “infrastructure of care” – understanding the institutional remnants and socio-technical practices that constitute South Africa’s Covid-19 response

Cited by 12 publications

References 11 publications

Algorithmic epistemologies and methodologies: Algorithmic harm, algorithmic care and situated algorithmic knowledges

Algorithmic epistemologies and methodologies: Algorithmic harm, algorithmic care and situated algorithmic knowledges

Contributions of Smart City Solutions and Technologies to Resilience against the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Literature Review

How Do We Learn Now? Pluralising Urban Pedagogies in the COVID-19 Pandemic

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