Delivery as Dispossession land occupation and eviction in the postapartheid city /
This book explains why nearly thirty years after the transition to democracy, the South African government continues to evict squatters from urban land. It argues that housing officials view occupiers as threats to the government's housing delivery program, which, they insist, requires order an...
| Main Author: | Levenson, Zachary, |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | Oxford Scholarship Online. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
2022.
|
| Physical Description: |
293 pages: illustrations(black and white). |
| Series: |
Oxford Academic.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
This book explains why nearly thirty years after the transition to democracy, the South African government continues to evict squatters from urban land. It argues that housing officials view occupiers as threats to the government's housing delivery program, which, they insist, requires order and state control. New occupations are therefore stigmatized as "disorderly" threats, and government actors represent their removal as a precondition for access to housing. Drawing on a decade of sustained ethnographic fieldwork in two such occupations in Cape Town, this study explains why one was evicted, whereas the other was ultimately tolerated, answering a central question in urban studies: how do governments decide when to evict, and conversely, when to tolerate? These decisions are not made in a vacuum but instead require an analysis that expands what we typically call "the state." This book argues that the state does not simply "see" occupations, as if they were a feature of the natural landscape. Rather, occupiers collectively project themselves to government actors, affecting how they are seen. But residents are not only seen; they also see, which shapes how they organize themselves. When residents see the state as an antagonist, they tend to unify under a single leadership; but when they see it as a potential ally, they often remain atomized as if they were individual customers. The unity in the former case projects an orderly population, less likely to be evicted; but the fragmentation in the latter case projects a disorderly mass, serving to legitimate eviction rulings. |
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| Item Description: |
Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: List of Figures - Preface - Acknowledgments - Abbreviations - 1. Two Occupations, One Eviction - 2. Dynamics of Delivery and Dispossession - 3. Civil Society I: Kapteinsklip and the Politics of Seriality - 4. Civil Society II: Siqalo and the Politics of Fusion - 5. Political Society I: Kapteinsklip and the Politics of Factionalism - 6. Political Society II: Siqalo and the Politics of Committees - 7. Four Theses on the Integral State - Appendix: Notes on Data and Method - Notes - Bibliography - Index. This book explains why nearly thirty years after the transition to democracy, the South African government continues to evict squatters from urban land. It argues that housing officials view occupiers as threats to the government's housing delivery program, which, they insist, requires order and state control. New occupations are therefore stigmatized as "disorderly" threats, and government actors represent their removal as a precondition for access to housing. Drawing on a decade of sustained ethnographic fieldwork in two such occupations in Cape Town, this study explains why one was evicted, whereas the other was ultimately tolerated, answering a central question in urban studies: how do governments decide when to evict, and conversely, when to tolerate? These decisions are not made in a vacuum but instead require an analysis that expands what we typically call "the state." This book argues that the state does not simply "see" occupations, as if they were a feature of the natural landscape. Rather, occupiers collectively project themselves to government actors, affecting how they are seen. But residents are not only seen; they also see, which shapes how they organize themselves. When residents see the state as an antagonist, they tend to unify under a single leadership; but when they see it as a potential ally, they often remain atomized as if they were individual customers. The unity in the former case projects an orderly population, less likely to be evicted; but the fragmentation in the latter case projects a disorderly mass, serving to legitimate eviction rulings. |
| Physical Description: |
293 pages: illustrations(black and white). |
| ISBN: |
9780197629284 |