Suchergebnisse

Why are even progressive local authorities with the 'will to improve' seldom able to change cities? Why does it seem almost impossible to redress spatial inequalities, deliver and maintain basic services, elevate impoverished areas and protect the marginalised communities? Why do municipalities in the Global South refuse to work with prevailing social informalities, and resort instead to interventions that are known to displace and aggravate the very issues they aim to address?

Local Officials and the Struggle to Transform Cities analyses these challenges in South African cities, where the brief post-apartheid moment opened a window for progressive city government and made research into state practices both possible and necessary. In debate with other 'progressive moments' in large cities in Brazil, the USA and India, the book interrogates City officials' practices. It considers the instruments they invent and negotiate to implement urban policies, the agency they develop and the constraints they navigate in governing unequal cities. This focus on actual officials' practices is captured through first-hand experience, state ethnographies and engaged research. These reveal day-to-day practice that question generalised explanations of state failure in complex urban societies as essential malevolence, contextual weakness, corruption and inefficiency. It is hoped that opening the black box of the workings of state opens paths for the construction of progressive policies in contemporary cities.

"Community meetings seldom lead to significant change in urban policies, and have been accused of being sterile, sedative, or manipulative. This book starts from a simple question: why do people then continue to participate in these meetings, sometimes massively, and on a regular basis? Authors from a variety of disciplines explore the multiple roles of these 'invited' spaces of participation. From consolidation of individual social status and networks, to the construction and framing of the local 'community' ; from the display of political or group loyalties and maintenance of clientelist exchange to access to information (even rumours or gossip) but also forms of education on who and what is the state, invited spaces of participation are also, crucially, places of emergence of collective awareness, through shared expressions of frustration, that can lead to political mobilisation and other, less institutionalised forms of participation." -- Back cover

International audience ; This is a robust introduction to a special section of the Journal of Development Studies interrogating, theorising and illustrating "informal practices of the state" in the governance of cities of the South - here southern african cities in particular.The collection of papers originates in a reading group organised around the visit of Ananya Roy in the School of Architecture and Planning, at Wits University, in May 2013. Focused around the politics of informality and city-making, participants reflected on the echoes of Roy's work with their ownresearch. All authors were interested in interrogating state power, its modalities and its effects in building Southern African cities.Papers in this collection have approached this shared interrogation in two different ways that can aptly be described as the governability of cities on the one hand, and the uses of governmentality in cities on the other. 'Governability' is a fuzzy but useful concept that refers both to the capacity of the state to steer society, and to the capacity or inclination of societies to comply or to resist being governed. Although the two are linked, we focus here on the first meaning (state's ability to steer society), as we are attempting to direct an analytical gaze towards the state and its practices. 'Governmentality' on the other hand is a more classic, Foucauldian concept that we understand here as the ways in which governable subjects areproduced through the internalisation of urban policies' dominant visions and norms. This introduction to the special issue of the journal, developed in conversations with Ananya Roy and her work, frames the papers' engagements with these two concepts, and contributes to emerging debates on informal practices of the state.

International audience ; L'article part de l'observation des réunions de co-gestion, entre municipalité et comités d'usagers, d'une réserve naturelle à Johannesburg. Non seulement ces réunions sont inutiles et incapables de répondre à des problèmes simples et quotidiens se posant aux gestionnaires (publics ou usagers) du parc: mais elles semblent susciter de nouveaux problèmes - des machines à créer du conflit. L'article s'interroge sur les raisons de ces dysfonctionnements, et plus largement sur la coproduction de services urbains, dans la ville de Johannesburg post-apartheid - autour de la gestion de ses espaces verts, à partir d'une plongée dans les pratiques des fonctionnaires municipaux et leurs instruments pour mettre en place une telle co-production.

International audience ; The paper interrogates how street trading is governed in contemporary cities of the South, based on the example of Johannesburg. It excavates policy choices made by municipal officials and politicians, understood through the set of policy instruments (policy documents, institutions and tools, but also non tools) that they have framed and used for almost two decades, beyond public rhetoric that is arguably misleading. The paper not only provides a critical analysis of policy instruments for governing street trading, scantly absent from existing literature; it also brings back into the urban studies debate issues of municipal officials' agency, political objectives and policy choices.

International audience ; Contemporary cities are said to have become 'ungovernable', especially in the Global South. They are certainly more difficult to govern due to the complexification of states' apparatus (under the double dynamics of neoliberalisation and decentralisation), cities' larger size, massive poverty, and informality. Yet, the ungovernability thesis arguably stems from a theoretical shift, from local government to urban governance, that hasrendered the questions of steering, political choices, and accountability almost impossible to conceptualise. Unpacking the policy instruments used to govern street trading in Johannesburg, the paper shows that its socalled 'ungovernability' was largely manufactured by municipal choices.

International audience ; This is a robust introduction to a special section of the Journal of Development Studies interrogating, theorising and illustrating "informal practices of the state" in the governance of cities of the South - here southern african cities in particular.The collection of papers originates in a reading group organised around the visit of Ananya Roy in the School of Architecture and Planning, at Wits University, in May 2013. Focused around the politics of informality and city-making, participants reflected on the echoes of Roy's work with their ownresearch. All authors were interested in interrogating state power, its modalities and its effects in building Southern African cities.Papers in this collection have approached this shared interrogation in two different ways that can aptly be described as the governability of cities on the one hand, and the uses of governmentality in cities on the other. 'Governability' is a fuzzy but useful concept that refers both to the capacity of the state to steer society, and to the capacity or inclination of societies to comply or to resist being governed. Although the two are linked, we focus here on the first meaning (state's ability to steer society), as we are attempting to direct an analytical gaze towards the state and its practices. 'Governmentality' on the other hand is a more classic, Foucauldian concept that we understand here as the ways in which governable subjects areproduced through the internalisation of urban policies' dominant visions and norms. This introduction to the special issue of the journal, developed in conversations with Ananya Roy and her work, frames the papers' engagements with these two concepts, and contributes to emerging debates on informal practices of the state.

International audience The paper interrogates how street trading is governed in contemporary cities of the South, based on the example of Johannesburg. It excavates policy choices made by municipal officials and politicians, understood through the set of policy instruments (policy documents, institutions and tools, but also non tools) that they have framed and used for almost two decades, beyond public rhetoric that is arguably misleading. The paper not only provides a critical analysis of policy instruments for governing street trading, scantly absent from existing literature; it also brings back into the urban studies debate issues of municipal officials' agency, political objectives and policy choices.

La figure tutélaire de Frantz Fanon est régulièrement brandie par les mouvements étudiants sud-africains en révolte contre l'institution universitaire et contre le gouvernement. Dans cet entretien, Achille Mbembe, qui, au-delà de son propre travail sur l'œuvre de Fanon, s'est personnellement engagé et exposé dans le débat sur la décolonisation de l'université et des savoirs en Afrique du Sud, revient sur les diverses mobilisations dont Fanon, « figure totémique » et « affect » plutôt que « concept » dans les discours des mouvements étudiants, a fait l'objet. Contre un recours simpliste à l'auteur des Damnés de la terre qui ne viserait qu'à légitimer le recours à la violence et contre une lecture réductrice de la décolonisation des savoirs qui ne serait que repli identitaire, il jette un regard lucide et engagé sur les transformations en cours dans la société sud-africaine.