Beyond Suburban Bliss: The Moral Economy of Low-Cost Housing after Democracy in South Africa.

STATUS: Current
PROJECT LEADER:Bank, LJ (Prof. Leslie)
OTHER TEAM MEMBERS: Van der Bergh, GM (Mr Gray), Jansen, HT (Mr Herman), Marks, MM (Ms Monique)
DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBLE: Equitable Education and Economies (IED)

Abstract

The project offers a critical perspective and engagement with the post-apartheid history of public housing delivery and urban transformation in South Africa, conceived here as a lens of moral economy and the social economy of exchange. The work explores the juggernaut of low-cost housing delivery as process of promise, as a form of gifting assets that are internalised, delivered and dispersed, before being incorporated and reconstructed in the personal lives and moral communities created in its path. The work will build on the scoping work and analysis developed during 2018 in the access to the city project, extending the findings of that work and broadening the outputs and insights of that project. It will do this by updating fieldwork, reading, and research as well as convening events and reflection in the period between September 2022 and the celebration of 30 years of democracy in April 2024.

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