Party politics, the poor and the city: Reflections from the South African case
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Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Local democracy and ‘spaces’ of citizenship and participation
are at the core of much contemporary research focusing on cities
(Barnett and Low, 2004). This is the case both for researchers interested
in issues of urban governance and social and spatial justice,
around for instance the notion of ‘right to the city’, and also for
those focusing on urban social dynamics and local identities. This
is because local citizenship can be an important dimension of such
identities and group formation, and local identities can profoundly
impact the lived experiences of citizenship. Local democracy
indeed, while not necessarily equivalent to deeper democracy or
greater justice at the more general level (Purcell, 2006), at least
opens avenues for the engagement of urban residents in debates
about their immediate environment, including on issues dealing
with the distribution or design of urban goods (housing, services,
access to space). Notably absent from the literature focusing on
local democracies on cities, and maybe more especially in African
contexts, is the importance of party politics in the construction
of local debates and urban citizenship. This is the gap that this
themed issue begins to address.
Description
Keywords
Party politics, South African, Urban governance, The poor and the city
Citation
Piper, La. (2012). Party politics, the poor and the city: Reflections from the South African case. Geoforum 43 (2) ,173–177