Popular politics in South African cities: unpacking community participation
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2015
TITLE EDITOR(S): C.Benit-Ghaffou
KEYWORDS: COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION, POLITICS, TOWNS
Web link: https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/popular-politics-in-sa-cities
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 9275
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/9865
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/9865
TITLE EDITOR(S): C.Benit-Ghaffou
KEYWORDS: COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION, POLITICS, TOWNS
Web link: https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/popular-politics-in-sa-cities
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 9275
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/9865
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/9865
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
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, the display of political or group loyalties and maintenance of clientelist exchange, access to information, rumors 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. This book, unpacking community politics and rethinking the complex articulations between invited and invented spaces of participation, is of relevance for international and national audiences interested in urban governance and local democracy.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Public opinion on national priority issues
- Prologue: the settler colonial city
- Party disintegrations & re-alignments in post-apartheid South Africa
- The contested state of democracy in South Africa
- Exploring community participation in tourism
- Book review: Goetz, A.M., Hassim, S. (eds.) (2003). No shortcuts to power: African women in politics and policy making. Cape Town: Zed Books. 246 p. ISBN 1842771477
- Indigenous knowledge systems and academic institutions in South Africa
- The centre-periphery in knowledge production in the twenty-first century
- Behind the mask: getting to grips with crime and violence in South Africa
- Community responses to crime
- Lesotho 2000: public perceptions and perspectives
- Politics, voting and elections
- Adolescents perceptions of the future of South Africa: a 40 year perspective
- Teledemocracy in South Africa
- Beyond community participation?: alternative routes to civil engagement and development in South Africa
- Book review: Giliomee, H. & Simkins, C. (eds.) (1999) The akward embrace: one-party domination and democracy. Cape Town: Tafelberg. 368 pp
- The African union: the same old animal in new clothing?
- Africa in the contemporary world
- Public participation in the integrated development planning processes of local government in Pretoria
- The individual in the group in the social, political, and economic context: implications for South Africa