Research Articles (Political Studies)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10566/153

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Animated intersectionality: deepening perspectives on elite research
(SAGE Publications Ltd, 2026) Cooper-Knock, S. J.; Culwick Fatti, Christina; Khanyile, Samkelisiwe; Middelmann, Temba John Dawson; Murahwa, Brian; Rubin, Margot Wendy
Scholars emphasise the importance of taking positionality seriously when researching people with high socio-economic status, yet relatively few studies fully recognise the intersecting identities of both researchers and these ‘elites’. In this paper, we introduce the term ‘animated intersectionality’, which allows us to recognise the significance of identities and structural inequalities, while acknowledging individual agency and the diversity among people who share similar structural positions. This paper draws from our experience as a diverse research team exploring off-grid infrastructure transitions among elites in South Africa. We emphasise that while team members secured interviews through persistence, this work takes a toll on researchers. Expanding Sennett and Cobb’s concept of ‘hidden injury’, we explore the psychological and emotional costs of working in a hostile environment. Animated intersectionality offers a nuanced approach to understanding power, preserving the importance of identities and structural inequalities. It provides a framework to examine how power dynamics unfold in personal, contextual ways, especially in interactions between researchers and elites.
The securitization of African immigrants in South Africa
(Frontiers Media SA, 2026) Sibanda, Sehlule; Nyere, Chidochashe
Securitization of immigrants is the framing of immigrants as security threats that need to be curbed, thwarted and eliminated. Yet immigration is only but a small segment of migration, which is necessary for economic growth. Migration is an organic phenomenon that is as old as humanity itself. It happens within national borders, often referred to as internal migration, or even internal displacement at times. When migration happens in the international realm, immigration processes and laws become necessary, and should be adhered to, observed, and enforced. However, when immigrants become securitized, it often puts them at risk of being targeted, victimized and objectified, by not only the authorities of the host state, but communities where immigrants live in. This paper sets out to interrogate the claims that influence and inform movements such as Operation Dudula and other political parties in South Africa, that African immigrants particularly pose a security risk in South Africa. The research question that the paper seeks to answer is: Are African immigrants a national security risk for South Africa? The paper uses a qualitative research methodology to conduct textual analysis of primary and secondary sources, policy documents as well as government documents. A genealogical approach informs this research as it is interested in situating the current tensions in context.
Love, lies, and larceny: one hundred convicted case files of cybercriminals with eighty involving online romance fraud
(Routledge, 2025) Soares, Adebayo Benedict; Lazarus, Suleman; Button, Mark
This article examines 100 convicted case files of cybercriminals, 80 of which concern online romance fraud. While all were prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria, many involve multiple offenses, including crypto investment fraud and hacking. The study provides critical insights into offender profiles and the criminal justice system’s approach to cybercrime enforcement. Drawing on the Space Transition Theory (STT), the study highlights the transient and intermittent nature of criminal activities in cyberspace. The findings reveal that most offenders are young males aged 18–28, predominantly university undergraduates or graduates. Notably, 96% of offenders hail from southern Nigeria, and 80% of crimes involve romance fraud. While perceptions of leniency in cybercrime punishments persist, 96% of offenders acted as primary perpetrators, with 2% serving as mules or accomplices and another 2% adopting dual roles. By relying on actual case files of online offenders rather than online profiles, which are often fake, this study offers unique insights that can inform future research and support evidence-based strategies to address cybercrime in Nigeria and beyond.
'Design justice’ and transformative pedagogy: experiments in globally connected learning with the global classroom for democracy innovation
(Routledge, 2025) Wingfield, Matthew; Carson, Jesi; Mujulizi, Mukisa; Adamovic, Marco; Piper, Laurence; von Lieres, Bettina; Westin Lundqvist, Wilma
The Global Classroom for Democracy Innovation (GCDI) explores the impact that critical design frameworks like ‘design justice’ can have on student experiences and capacity building. Positioning students and civil society partners as co-creators and co-designers, while designing spaces that invite lived experience and facilitate collaborative work, can offer new pathways to reanimate the higher education learning environment. These experiences, particularly when engaging with “wicked problems”, can also be transformative. However, higher education systems, along with any intervening design frameworks, must be folded into an iterative praxis to ably support justice-oriented work. This paper is based on our experiences managing an internationally collaborative learning project spanning four continents and offers practical insights for educators interested in reimaging the function and form of higher education.
Advancing sociological understanding of felt and enacted stigma through the experience of mothers raising children with disabilities in Nigeria
(SAGE Publications Ltd, 2026) Platt, Lucinda; Lazarus, Suleman; Edward-Dibiana, Duma; Dibiana, Edward Tochukwu
A longstanding sociological tradition of stigma research has highlighted its salience and consequences, both for children with disabilities and their parents. Yet, while it is recognised that forms of stigma are embedded in structural conditions and social context, understanding of how disability-related stigma plays out is overwhelmingly restricted to high-income countries. This is despite the fact that the prevalence of child disability is higher, and the associated economic and social challenges more severe in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This article advances sociological understanding of disability-related stigma and its consequences through thematic analysis of interviews with 22 mothers of children with disabilities in Nigeria. We analyse how their experience is embedded in the structural features of their society, an LMIC marked by high inequality, constrained state schooling, and an absence of disability support. We show how these conditions help perpetuate forms of felt stigma rooted in dominant cultural understandings of disability that serve to isolate mothers, and forms of enacted stigma typified by children’s educational and social exclusion. We further explore how mothers negotiate these attitudes and behaviours. Our findings show both concordance with and difference from existing sociological studies of disability-related stigma, demonstrating the relevance of attending to salient but under-researched settings.
Climate justice or climate apartheid? The justice trade-offs of private solar investments for South Africa's just transition
(Elsevier Ltd, 2026) Lemanski, Charlotte; Fatti, Christina Culwick; Anciano, Fiona
Climate Apartheid? Assessing Uneven Impacts of Private Renewable Energy in South Africa Context Climate change impacts are uneven, & poor most affected. Mitigation & adaptation also frequently deliver unjust outcomes. ‘Climate apartheid’: protects privileged from climate change but deepens inequality. Methods & Findings South Africa’s private renewable energy uptake has been rapid. Using interviews & surveys, we analyse wealthier household solar PV investments. State subsidises renewable energy, benefitting the wealthy. Grid secessions cost municipal revenue, undermining state-subsidised energy for the poor. Complex dynamic with justice trade-offs South Africa’s private & state-subsidised renewable energy arguably exemplifies climate apartheid. But it also contributes to global environmental justice. ‘Climate apartheid’ label vilifies wealthy & overlooks their role in advancing more just transition.
Beyond the grid: navigating water supply and sanitation service ecosystems in informal settlements
(Public Library of Science, 2026) Anciano, Fiona; Dube, Mmeli; Casas, Ana
Hundreds of millions of people living in urban informal settlements rely on irregular and unsafe water supply and sanitation services. To meet their needs, they must navigate fragmented service delivery environments and use multiple different water and sanitation facilities. Using high-frequency longitudinal survey data from three informal settlements in Kenya, Peru and South Africa, we document the variability in water supply and sanitation service access. Across the year-long study period, 62–73% of respondents across all contexts changed their primary toilet, with 10–27% reporting five or more different primary facilities, with similar variability in water access. High levels of disruption were reported, with issues related to crowding/queuing, breakdowns, and physical barriers disrupting accessibility all contributing to the churn of services. To explain the results, we develop the concept of a “service ecosystem” to describe how people living in urban informal settlements rely on multiple water supply and sanitation services simultaneously and how these patterns of access shift over time. Using James C Scott’s theory of legibility, we argue that this irregularity means these service ecosystems are largely illegible within formal monitoring frameworks, that typically categorise households by a primary service. This leads to an information deficit for policymakers and practitioners who have a mandate to improve services in these environments. We further develop the implications of service ecosystems by calling for policymakers and service providers to recognise and support a diversity of service systems which have sufficient redundancy between them to meet the needs of populations, at least until broader structural reforms can address the underlying challenges in these settings.
South Africa’s non-alignment posture under the GNU: stillseeking multipolarity amid great power rivalry?
(Routledge, 2025) Nagar, Marcel; Otto, Lisa
South Africa is often criticised regarding its foreign policy of non-alignment, with some assessing that its behaviour does notreflect a genuinely non-aligned position – especially with regardto its relationship with Russia, which has caused tensions with theUnited States. However, South African policymakers argue thatPretoria wishes to see the establishment of a more equitable andmultipolar world order, saying this explains its openness toengage with powers that some consider ‘bad actors’. This takesplace against the backdrop of the great power contestation thatis currently (re)shaping the international system. This articleinvestigates non-alignment and universality at a conceptual andhistorical level, examining South Africa’s practical application ofthese concepts and principles in the context of great powerpolitics, considering also how the internal dynamics of the post-2024 Government of National Unity in Pretoria and its politicalparties’ respective foreign policy positioning impacts thecountry’s non-aligned position.
Place-pedagogies of water stress
(Policy Press, 2025) Abrams, Amber; Carden, Kirsty; Piper, Laurence
This article explores the pedagogical affect of water in a place of water stress and illustrates its entanglement with dynamics of power and control. The current climate crisis is rendering already drought-prone regions ever drier, and it is often the already socially and economically disadvantaged who experience the most immediate impacts. In this article, we describe the experiences of residents in one township in South Africa’s Cape Flats to explore how water literacies have developed and been reinforced by a prolonged period of water scarcity. By analysing assemblages of images and accompanying texts produced through a PhotoVoice process undertaken by co-researchers in this settlement, we show how water’s presence as an always imminent absence has profound pedagogical impact. We also explore how water manages to escape and flow outside of attempts to control and constrain it. Finally, we speculate on the implications for place-based water literacies and the pedagogies at work in other places of water stress.
Assessing the role of servicing in enhancing sanitation-related quality of life among container-based sanitation users
(Springer Nature, 2025) Anciano, Fiona; Dube, Mmeli; Exton, Benjamin
Here we evaluate the servicing of container-based sanitation (CBS)—which includes the collection, replacement and cleaning of cartridges—and its influence on sanitation-related quality of life (using the SanQoL-5 index) in informal settlements across Kenya, Peru and South Africa. We (1) compared the incidence and severity of problems associated with CBS toilets against other sanitation types, (2) assessed the quality of CBS servicing across different regions and implementations and (3) evaluated the relationship between servicing issues and sanitation-related quality of life, utilizing high-frequency longitudinal smartphone survey data collected at various intervals over 1 year. Results revealed significantly fewer and less severe issues were recorded for CBS toilets than other toilet types, such as pit latrines, sewers and open drains. CBS servicing was consistently well regarded in all countries. Participants in Kenya highlighted particular satisfaction with the frequency of container replacement, whereas, in Peru, the cleanliness of replacement containers was highly regarded. SanQoL-5 scores decreased when CBS servicing issues were recorded, particularly in Kenya. This study underscores the potential of CBS as a sustainable sanitation solution in urban informal settlements, provided that high-quality servicing is maintained.
Realities of using self-administered smartphone surveys to solve sustainability challenges
(Springer Nature, 2025) Anciano, Fiona; Dube, Mmeli; Lewis, Amy
To fill data gaps in human-environment systems, especially in difficult-to-access locations, novel tools are needed to collect (near) real-time data from diverse populations across the globe. Here we discuss the practicalities, constraints, and lessons learnt from six field studies using high spatial and temporal smartphone surveys in six different countries. We suggest that high spatiotemporal, self-administered smartphone surveys will produce novel insights into human behaviour, attitudes, and socio-economic characteristics that, when matched with high spatiotemporal resolution environmental data (e.g., from remote sensing), can be used to address sustainability challenges for global communities. Furthermore, we highlight the need for continuous refinement and improvement in future developments to enhance the efficacy of this methodology. By sharing the practical implications and constraints associated with smartphone surveys, this article contributes to the evolving landscape of data collection methods.
Seven quality choicepoints for ARJ: Ambition is welcome!
(Sage, 2025) Bradbury, Hilary; Wheeler, Joanna; Divecha, Simon
Action Research has developed and published actionable knowledge since 2003. Our intention is to support learning for transformations among people, organizations, communities and societies at multiple levels, inner and outer: personal, organizational, methodological, conceptual/discursive. In seeking also to support a community among international scholar-practitioners, we share authors’ blogs and host journal symposia. Action Research is not a method, but an orientation to inquiry, with diverse schools, labels, theories and practices. We honor the original working definition from the founding of the journal: Action research is “a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities,” Today, in the face of our eco-social crisis, Action Research highlights what is transforming and how lives - of all beings – are being improved. The journal’s seven quality choicepoints articulate our understanding of action research. We use these for assessing and developing articles. In sharing them we make the review process more transparent.
Imagined homes, concrete houses, and bureaucratic subjects: Citizen-state encounters in Eastridge, Cape Town
(Sage, 2025) Clacherty, James
Eastridge is a low-cost housing development in Cape Town constructed and managed by the Cape Town Community Housing Company, a state-owned but privately managed company. The residents of Eastridge, most of whom have been living in their houses for 23 years, were recently declared ‘unlawful occupants’ in houses they expected to be the legal owners of years ago. Through a protracted struggle to receive permanent legal title over their homes the residents of Eastridge encounter the state in ways that are destabilising and violent at the same time as being intimate and mundane. Using ethnographic and oral history data gathered from three households in Eastridge I explore the ways in which families encounter and navigate the complex network of institutions, sites, agents, and artefacts that make up the imagined ‘state’ (Wafer and Oldfield, 2015). I argue that these everyday encounters with the state produce both the specific identity of the imagined state as well as particular forms of citizen subjectivity. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the landscape of political possibility through which citizens navigate by investigating the everyday encounters between citizens and the state. This is done through an analysis of everyday practices of homemaking, family relations, and getting by from day-to-day in a context of uncertainty.
Substituting for the state: the sovereignty impacts of diverse citizens’ off‐grid infrastructure strategies in South Africa
(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2025) Anciano, Fiona; Culwick, Fatti Christina; Lemanski, Charlotte
In South Africa, citizens in both low‐ and high‐income areas are increasingly providing their own services to mitigate the unreliability, unaffordability and inaccessibility of state services. This article examines diverse case studies across socio‐economic and residential typologies to explore shifts in service provision responsibilities from the state to the citizen. Applying an interdisciplinary approach, this article considers the political impacts of these strategies, arguing that the ways in which citizens supplement and substitute for the state contests and (re)negotiates spaces of sovereignty. While urban studies overwhelmingly analyse these actions through the lens of informality, we argue that sovereignty (the supreme authority of a state to govern itself without external interference) offers a less binary analytical lens. State substitution is increasingly a daily act for many, not only in low‐income settlements but also among elites. The article further examines state responses to citizen‐led actions in supplementing or substituting services, demonstrating how they range from inaction to permissive negotiation and, rarely, repression. Thus, the political impact of service substitution requires deeper reflection, raising questions regarding the nature of the state and the social contract.
The false optimism of electrification: why universal electricity access has not delivered urban energy transformation in South Africa
(Elsevier Ltd, 2025) Lemanski, Charlotte; de Groot, Jiska; Haque, Anika Nasra
Universal access to energy is a global priority, increasingly delivered through grid-tied and off-grid infrastructure. However, energy policies frequently conflate universal access with extending and subsidising networked electricity, resulting in technology-dominated approaches. Rapid urbanisation in the global south has outstripped infrastructure capacity, where urban dwellers' access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable forms of energy are precarious. This failure to reflect human needs and societal expectations alongside technical considerations is threatening the sustainability of urban energy transitions. This paper draws from qualitative data with low-income urban dwellers and municipal policymakers to critically examine South Africa's energy access policies. We demonstrate how prioritising ‘electricity for all’ via grid connections fails to deliver universal access to affordable energy. First, the state's emphasis on extending and subsidising networked electricity prioritises proximity to grid connections rather than access to energy services, and permanently excludes households living in un-serviceable structures/settlements. Second, limited community participation produces a policy that ignores low-income households' urban practices and creates perverse incentives to distort energy consumption. We argue that delivering an urban energy transition that is economically feasible, locally appropriate and socially desirable requires policy expansion beyond physical delivery, working with targeted communities on policy development, knowledge exchange, and capacity building.
International collaboration and connections through design thinking: a case study of the global classroom for democracy innovation (GCDI)
(2024) Matthew Wingfield; Laurence Piper; Mukisa Mujulizi
This paper is based on the collaborative development of the global classroom for democracy innovation (GCDI), and its month-long virtual pilot workshop, the 'climate change design jam’. The GCDI is an integrated learning partnership between three international universities located in Canada, South Africa, and Sweden, and civil society partners the vancouver design nerds (VDN). Each partner brought unique skills to the GCDI, as new processes and methods for virtual, global student engagement and dialogue were co-designed. The GCDI hosted the climate change design Jam over four consecutive weeks in March 2022. By employing a design thinking methodology, it facilitated online student project development around the interconnected and broad topics of climate change and democracy. Students and student facilitators were guided through the process of design thinking to develop grounded projects that address climate change issues locally and internationally. This paper argues that fundamental principles of fostering genuine connections (both 'online' and 'offline') between students can act as a useful foundation from which project development can be based. Further, this paper illustrates that when faced with 'wicked problems’ such as climate change and challenges to democracy worldwide design thinking methods and collaborative approaches can act as a catalyst for action (Manzini, 2015). Exploring political theory, democracy, and civic agency through dialogue and co-design provides students with innovative approaches to research, critical thinking, and activism. This pilot series provides insight into student engagement across international contexts, and thus the development of cross-cultural and collective intelligence which can be formative for similar projects in the future (Behari-Leak, 2020).
Staying the course: lessons from South Africa for irreversibility of nuclear disarmament
(Routledge, 2024) Pretorius, Joelien
To conceptualise irreversibility of nuclear disarmament, it is better to think about nuclear disarmament as a historical process than a historical moment. I apply a path-dependency lens to do so in the case of South Africa. During the formative phase of its nuclear disarmament, narratives of intent were employed to take advantage of windows of opportunity brought about by historical contingencies and conjectures. It allowed South African decision-makers to set the disarmament course and take the first steps down this path. Timing and sequencing of decisions, actions and announcements played an important role in locking in the behaviour of actors that could have reversed the process in this crucial stage. The choice to stay the disarmament course has since been informed by cost-benefit and normative drivers to reach an equilibrium point. This point reflects a circumscribed understanding of irreversibility of nuclear disarmament for South African policymakers, namely demilitarising fissile material and putting it under international safeguards. This is the status of South Africa’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) today. For South Africa to move towards a broader understanding of irreversibility that includes relinquishing HEU and giving up the right to uranium enrichment will require “coordination” of similar efforts in a broader move to nuclear disarmament by nuclear-armed states.
Complexity, depoliticisation, and African nuclear ordering agency: a meso-level exploration
(Routledge, 2024) Pretorius, Joelien; Vaughan, Tom
The regional nuclear ordering terrain in Africa is increasingly complex, with proliferating and deepening institutional relationships to the institutions of the global nuclear order. Applying a ‘complexity lens’ to this regional institutional apparatus may therefore seem like an intuitive way to understand its role in global nuclear ordering at large, and Africa’s place within it. However, one important concern when thinking about complex multinational regimes is depoliticisation. This has been examined in contexts of global development as well as nuclear order and we show this as a key feature of meso nuclear ordering in Africa. A complexity lens is useful to analyse the characteristics of the African regional institutional terrain. However, a complexity lens can perpetuate this depoliticisation if it does not acknowledge the political thrusts which underlie conceptions of ‘order’ and ‘disorder’.
Exploring barriers and facilitators to knowledge transfer and learning processes through a cross-departmental collaborative project in a municipal organization
(Emerald, 2023) Sunnemark, Fredrik; Westin, Wilma Lundqvist; Assmo, Per
This study aims to explore barriers and facilitators for knowledge transfer and learning processes by examining a cross-departmental collaborative project in the municipal organization. It is based on a R&D collaboration between University West and a Swedish municipality. Design/methodology/approach: To explore the barriers and facilitators, the data collection was made through observation of the project implementation process, as well as 20 interviews with public servants and external actors. To conduct a systematic qualitative-oriented content analysis, the article constructs and applies a theoretical analytical framework consisting of different factors influencing knowledge transfer and learning processes within a municipal organizational setting.
Whites and democracy in South Africa
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) Piper, Laurence
In this wide-ranging book, Professor Roger Southall interrogates the attitudes ofwhite South Africans in respect of politics, democracy, and race relations in thecountry. The book is organised into three sections: thefirst is historical, focusingon South Africa as a white-dominated settler society that transitioned to a formalnon-racial democracy, and the attitudes of white South Africans in regard to thishistory. The second section deals with white attitudes towards democracy after1994, unpacked in relation to policy, party, and identity concerns. The thirdfocuses on the future of white people in South African politics.There are ample interesting and rich insights in this text, many of which couldhave been further developed in relation to the volume of supporting contextualand theoretical content. Of these, however, two arguments stand out. Thefirst isthat, despite benefitting from a racist settler society historically, ordinary whiteSouth Africans have largely embraced democracy today.

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