OVERVIEW
For this assignment, you will research a case of socio-spatial segregation in a particular city and prepare a case study report.
INSTRUCTIONS
· Chosen city: Johannesburg, South Africa
· Research your chosen city to look for answers to the questions below. You should find at least 4-5 sources relevant to your chosen city in addition to course materials provided.
· These may include peer reviewed articles, books, policy papers, reports, government documents, blog posts, and/or news articles.
· However, not all sources are equally reliable, accurate, or rigorously reviewed. Treat each source accordingly.
What is the general state of socio-spatial segregation in your chosen city? (keep this section briefest)
Along which lines of social difference are residents divided?
How segregated is the city? (You can look for measures such as evenness, clustering, and dissimilarity).
How has segregation changed over time?
What are the origins and drivers of segregation?
When did segregation start? What prompted segregation?
What has contributed to maintaining segregation?
What have been the social/economic/environmental impacts of segregation on residents?
How do educational, health or environmental outcomes differ across communities?
What has the city government done to address segregation? With what impact?
NOTE: You do not have to specifically answer the questions in italics. These are there to guide you.
Requirements & Formatting (please read carefully)
Approx. two single-spaced pages/1,000 words in length excluding references or graphs/tables etc.
Your analysis should include references to material from lessons 1.5 and 1.6 and at least two course readings.
Sub-headings are not required but recommended.
You may wish to include graphs, maps, and other visuals. Make sure to label these and cite your sources.
Your independently researched sources should include at least two peer-reviewed articles.
Course Materials
Harvey, D. (2012) Chapter 1 The Right to the City (pp. 3 – 26) and Chapter 3 The Creation of the Urban Commons (pp. 67-88) In Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London, Brooklyn: Verso.
Bayat, A. (2000). From 'Dangerous Classes' to 'Quiet Rebels' Politics of the Urban Subaltern in the Global South. International sociology, 15(3), 533-557.
1. This chapter is the introduction to the book Cities of Difference. The chapters in the book collectively explore how “axes of social difference” – including, but not limited to: religious identity, citizenship, race, gender, and sexuality – shape our lived experiences of urban space.
Late twentieth century scholarship on identity was marked by a transition from thinking about identity as something pre-given or fixed (a view reflected in the work of the Chicago School), to instead conceptualizing identity as fluid and socially produced.
You can skim read this article for the basic arguments, but read closely enough to understand: What the authors mean by a “located politics of difference”; and
How social studies scholars have come to theorize the relationship between place/space and identity.
Jacobs, J. M. and R. Fincher (1998) “Introduction.” In Cities of Difference. (pp. 1-22).
2. Teresa Caldeira is an urban planner and professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley. Caldeira is particularly well known for her book City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo, published in 2000, which analyzes urban segregation in São Paulo, drawing comparisons to Los Angeles. This article was published in 1996, and based on the work for her book.
After reading, you should be able to define fortified enclaves and describe their particular characteristics, explain the process of enclaving using specific examples from the text, and recall Caldeira's critiques of this particular form of urban residence.
Caldeira, T. P. (1996). " Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation." Public Culture. 8: 303-328.
3. Yaffa Truelove is a political ecologist whose research focuses primarily on women's experiences of accessing water and sanitation in Delhi, India. In this article, Truelove examines how low-income women risk physical and sexual violence in their everyday lives. As you read, pay attention to how Truelove shows the intersection of class and gender, and how this doubly burdens women.
What kinds of interventions or policies might help to address and minimize the risks women face in accessing sanitation?
Truelove, Y. (2011). (Re-) Conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework. Geoforum, 42(2), 143-152
4. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is a scholar and writer on civil rights, critical race theory, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law.
Crenshaw’s groundbreaking work on intersectionality was influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the South African Constitution. She authored the background paper on race and gender discrimination for the United Nations’ World Conference on Racism in 2001, served as the rapporteur for the conference’s expert group on gender and race discrimination, and coordinated NGO efforts to ensure the inclusion of gender in the WCAR Conference Declaration.
Crenshaw first introduced the term in an 1989 essay published in the University of Chicago Legal Forum titled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Policies.”
The article you will read, which was published two years later and has since been cited some 35,000 times, comprehensively describes the concept and differentiates between different kinds of intersectionality. It is a lengthly piece and you do not need to read it in its entirely BUT you should read enough that you understand the basic concept of intersectionality.
5. Crenshaw, K. (1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6): 1241-1299.
Born in Culcutta, India (where she conducted research for her Ph.D.) and trained in the US, Ananya Roy (UCLA) is an urban planner and one of the leading voices in critical urban studies of the global South today.
As you read this article, consider: What different representations of slums does Roy discuss? Why does she critique these representations? Look for definitions and explanations of the following concepts: subaltern urbanism; urban informality, zones of exception, and gray spaces.
OPTIONAL
For further insight into Roy's thinking on slums and informality, watch her short video "Are Slums the Global Urban Future?"
