Community self-surveys: appropriating a technology of rule
Date
2010
Authors
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AESOP
Abstract
The rapid growth of urban populations in cities of the global South, gives rise to major conflicts between those attempting to gain a foothold in urban areas and those attempting to govern these places. This can be conceptualising as a ‘conflict of rationalities’ between techno-managerial and marketized systems of government administration, service provision and planning, and increasingly marginalized urban populations surviving largely under conditions of informality. The ‘interface’ between these conflicting rationalities is frequently a site of struggle the outcomes of which can take various forms and can warp technologies of rule and strategies of ‘improvement’ in various ways. The community self-survey ‘movement’ provides one such example of struggle over a technology of rule which can potentially yield important learning outcomes. The paper explores examples of self-enumeration in shack-dwelling populations in Cape Town (South Africa) where this has been used to engage with the local state.
Description
Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, 2010 Space is Luxury, Aalto, July 7-10th
Keywords
conflicting rationalities, global south, informal settlements, self-enumeration
License
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