Overview

South African cities are marked by the legacies of past practices, inscribed in fixed spatial patterns. They therefore play a pivotal role in shaping the possibilities and limits of changing imperatives of transition, transformation, development and sustainability. From the late 1970s, the ‘urban’ has been presented as both a key scene for visions of the reform of apartheid and as a site for the potentially revolutionary transformation of South African society. Knowing the City departs from this prominence of urban issues, which explains why South African urban scholarship has been a key reference point nationally and in urban studies elsewhere. The book draws together 65 urban scholars of South African cities of different generations, from various regions and from diverse universities. The 76 essays of the volume are products of a series of workshops and interviews; each piece emerges from different modes of dialogue and writing work developed through these interactions. The aim of the collection is not to offer an authoritative historical survey of the field but to (re-)open and facilitate genuine dialogues about the theories and practices of both social inquiry and urban transformation as deeply lived commitments of multiple generations of scholars in South Africa and beyond. There are two guiding premises of Knowing the City. First, in South African and global southern urban scholarship, more conventional registers of scholarly expertise and critique are deeply interwoven with practices of engaging beyond academia in the form of, for instance, activism, consultancy and co-production. Second, knowledge about South Africa has not been and is still not produced only in South Africa but across more stretched-out geographies. Just as importantly, knowledge about and conceptualisations drawn from South Africa have been and continue to be ascribed more general (that is, more-than-local) significance. What the project’s dialogical research process revealed is that, aside from being located geographically, socially and politically, urbanists’ field of practice is embodied, personal and relational. The book reassesses the geographies and commitments of South African urban studies and, paying attention to scholars’ distinctive forms of engagement and the problem spaces that have shaped it, tells a novel story about the generation of ideas and (knowledge) practices in urban studies, and in social sciences more broadly.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sophie Oldfield
Publisher:   University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Imprint:   University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Weight:   0.920kg
ISBN:  

9781869145538

ISBN 10:   1869145534
Pages:   520
Publication Date:   08 August 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Abbreviations and acronyms List of Authors Acknowledgements Preface Introduction Locating South African Urban Scholarship: Geographies, Commitments and Problem Spaces A Provincial Life PART I: NAVIGATING IN Introduction ‘Come, Sit for a While’ An Expired ID Library Card A Register of Detainees Situated Theorising A Stone from Loon Road A Playing Card in the World Piecing Together the Big Picture Bridging Choppy Waters ‘Let Them Use the Supermarket’ The ‘Room in the Elephant’? Journeys, Layers Formative Joburg Threads The Art of the Possible From the City’s Supposed ‘Edge’ Guides, Old and New The Gauteng A–Z Re-piecing the Map Public Bench A Particular Past A Place of Discomfort Through My Hands PART II: ENGAGING WITH Introduction Normative and Analytical Planning Imperatives Trials and Errors Claire Practices of Care Narrating the Self Critical Urban Work, Retreat or Revival? Research-Policy Collaborations In the City and Its Shadows Propositional Instincts Storytelling Researching in the Midst A Global Circuit of Knowing The Black Box of Planning Letters of Love A Clipboard in Hand Evading Conclusion Touring the City From Law to the Local State Born of Political Necessity Working in the Non-State Making Writing at Sea A Practice, an Object Transforming Teaching and Curricula Theory, Knowing Friend PART III: THINKING FROM Introduction A Sense of Correspondence The Origins of ‘Urban Value Commitments’ Reactivating Histories (of Places) Crafting a Tale of Writing ‘Theorising From’ Body, Home and Land Double-Rooted Defying All Odd A Personal Journey Tenacity, Courage and Faith Politics in Writing An Unminted Urbanist Non-Metropolitan Marxisms The Quest for Southern Urban Theory Learning from Below From Blank to Desire Lines Something to Compare Entering the Global Urban Being in the South Through the Unfamiliar Journeying with Theory Writing Collaboration A Change of Form Living Through These Feelings SF and Other Worldly Learnings being otherwise: thinking future-fully Incompleteness at the Crossroads Conclusion References

Reviews

“This is a remarkable book. It is staggering in its breadth and intensity. It will immediately become an important contribution not simply to South African urban studies or African urban studies but to global urban studies.” - Garth Myers, Center for Urban and Global Studies, Trinity College

Author Information

Sophie Oldfield is Chair and Professor of the Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University, and a Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town. Her most recent book is High Stakes, High Hopes: Urban Theorizing in Partnership (University of Georgia Press, 2023).

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