Using Giddens's theory of ‘structuration’ and Freirean philosophy to understand participation in the Alexandra Renewal Project

Sinwell, Luke

doi:10.1080/03768350802211776

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…There is a flourishing literature on South Africa's social movements, a developing debate about participatory planning and a growing body of work on xenophobic violence; for recent examples see Dawson (2008), Duponchel (2009) and Sinwell (2009). By contrast, academic writing on local political protests is scanty.…”

Section: Existing Analyses and Mbeki-era Protestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rebellion of the poor: South Africa's service delivery protests – a preliminary analysis

Alexander

2010

Review of African Political Economy

448

223

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Since 2004, South Africa has experienced a movement of local protests amounting to a rebellion of the poor. This has been widespread and intense, reaching insurrectionary proportions in some cases. On the surface, the protests have been about service delivery and against uncaring, self-serving, and corrupt leaders of municipalities. A key feature has been mass participation by a new generation of fighters, especially unemployed youth but also school students. Many issues that underpinned the ascendency of Jacob Zuma also fuel the present action, including a sense of injustice arising from the realities of persistent inequality. While the inter-connections between the local protests, and between the local protests and militant action involving other elements of civil society, are limited, it is suggested that this is likely to change. The analysis presented here draws on rapid-response research conducted by the author and his colleagues in five of the so-called ‘hot spots’.

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Section: Existing Analyses and Mbeki-era Protestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rebellion of the poor: South Africa's service delivery protests – a preliminary analysis

Alexander

2010

Review of African Political Economy

448

223

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“…There have been many successes reported in such participatory development projects (Dreyer, 2000); however, there have also been critiques of development practitioners adopting the language of participation without its commitment to empowerment and self-representation--an attempt to implement top-down projects that are framed as "bottom up" (Evans et al, 2004;Few, Brown, & Tompkins, 2007;Parfitt, 2004;Sinwell, 2008). Though Pimbert and Pretty (1996) note that participation can legitimately range from being informed of decisions or being allowed to comment to taking part in joint analysis and decision making, Cooke and Kothari (2001) argue that participation can easily become a form of tyranny where external facilitators maintain control, powerful members of a community dominate, and efforts focus on using specific tools recommended for participatory processes rather than ensuring that those tools actually facilitate a participatory and inclusive process.…”

Section: Literature Review: Power and Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pairing a Q Study with Participatory Decision-making around Farmworker Safety: A Case in Washington's Tree Fruit Industry

Lehrer

Donovan

Gullen

2019

J. Agric. Food Syst. Community Dev.

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Tenets of participatory decision-making speak to the importance of meaningful participation from diverse stakeholders for improving both process and outcomes. But what participation actually looks like can vary substantially, and constructing a group where all actors can truly speak is often elusive. In addressing controversies over pesticide safety in tree fruit orchards in Washington State, we used a Q study to identify divergent viewpoints and convened a group to bring these views together. The resulting stakeholder working group was then challenged to both acknowledge their often-opposing viewpoints and to construct a mutually beneficial idea for improving pesticide safety in the tree fruit industry. This paper explores the dynamics of this stakeholder working group, analyzing not only its successes but also its

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“…The question of who is considered a legitimate member of this 'we' has been a key contentious issue in township politics across the decades. The following five modes of narrating this 'we' and narrating Alex-1 Research on Alexandra covers local political struggle history (Bozzoli 2010, Lucas 1995), housing (Charlton 2010, Huchzermeyer 2003, participatory democracy and the Alexandra Renewal Project (Khoza 2008, Sinwell 2008 and xenophobia (Tafira 2009, for xenophobia in general see Nyamnjoh 2006).…”

Section: Alexandra Collectively Imagined: Narratives and Historiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cities of Entanglements

Heer¹

2019

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Finally, many thanks go to my family, my husband Martin and my friends who supported and accompanied me in many ways during these fascinating years of doing fieldwork and writing an ethnography.1 The fact that many texts about contemporary South Africa still use racial terminology often puzzles readers not familiar with the South African context. Yet South African society was and continues to be stratified along the troubling category of 'race'. Race is a social construct with meanings and assumptions that have changed over time and differ across context. In this book, when I write about race and use categories like 'black' or 'white', it is not because I believe in the biological relevance of these terms, but because, as social constructs and political categories, they shaped and continue to shape urban life in Johannesburg and to a lesser degree in Maputo as well. Whenever I refer in this book to the racial categories as introduced by the apartheid government or the Portuguese colonialists (as they were used in official discourses, official documents, laws or censuses), I capitalise them (White, Black, Native). When I use the terms uncapitalised (black, white), I refer to the racial and ethnic categories used in everyday life by the informants this book is based on. I use them as descriptive terms, just as the urban dwellers do. Because of capitalisation rules, 'Indian' is always capitalised. 10 'White', 'Coloured' and 'Native' were the initial categories used. 'Indian' (Asian) was added later (Seekings 2008: 2), 'Native' became replaced by 'Bantu' (1960) and 'Black' (1980). After 1970, the category 'Black' was again subdivided into ethno-linguistic groups such as Zulu and Xhosa (Christopher 2002, Seekings 2008: 2). In the post-apartheid phase, 'black' was replaced by 'African' in the census (Christopher 2002: 404-5). 'Black', as in the post-apartheid Black Economic Empowerment policies, refers to black, coloured and Indian today. Racial terminology was hence not consistent over time (ibid: 403).Strangely the everyday rhythms of domestic life have rarely counted as part of the 'urban', as though the city stopped at the doorstep of the home. But domestic life is now woven routinely into the urban public realm ... The rhythms of the home are as much part of city life as, say, the movements of traffic, office life, or interaction in the open spaces of the city. Its rhythms, too, need incorporating into the everyday sociology of the city (Amin and Thrift 2002: 18).workers, for example, have intimate knowledge about the everyday routines of the family they work for (familiarity), yet they do not share the same routine (normality). 20 African cities are marked by an increasing inequality and differentiation of lifestyles, but there is a lack of empirical and conceptual work on social differentiation which goes beyond uni-dimensional perspectives. Research often focused on socio-cultural differentiation with 'ethnicity' as a key concept or it focused on socioeconomic differentiation (key concepts 'poverty' and 'liveli...

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Using Giddens's theory of ‘structuration’ and Freirean philosophy to understand participation in the Alexandra Renewal Project

Cited by 7 publications

References 6 publications

Rebellion of the poor: South Africa's service delivery protests – a preliminary analysis

Rebellion of the poor: South Africa's service delivery protests – a preliminary analysis

Pairing a Q Study with Participatory Decision-making around Farmworker Safety: A Case in Washington's Tree Fruit Industry

Cities of Entanglements

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