1,720,961 research outputs found
Caught in between policies: the intertwined challenges of access to land and housing in Gaborone, Botswana
Get PDFA thorough examination of policies and guidelines tailored towards enabling access to land and housing in Gaborone suggests incongruences' inherent in these strategies. Besides, planners and policymakers' continuous oversight to recognise the complexities of the urban everyday survival strategies and the lived experiences of the populace needs to be investigated. Numerous interventions have been introduced to facilitate land and housing access for low-income households in Gaborone. Even so, restricted access to these assets remains an enormous task, proven complex and problematic to resolve. The empirical evidence specifies the predominant situation articulated by a clash of rationalities between policies and everyday socio-economic practices of access to land and housing by low income households in Gaborone. The investigation of these tensions between policies promoting access to land and housing and the advocacy of the Self-Help Housing Agency as the primary rationale for home building and ownership by low-income households in Gaborone was articulated through policy assessment and analysis. Furthermore, in-depth interviews to appreciate the affected populace's lived experiences in response to the practicality of these policies was conducted. In terms of findings, this research has established that urban environments are persistently transformed with new configurations relating to access to land and housing frequently surfacing. Moreover, urban land and housing management policies fail to get in touch with the complexities of grassroots experience with access to land and housing in Gaborone. There is also the entrenchment of low-income households in a vicious circle of poverty and living precariously at the urban fringes with no security of tenure and affordable housing opportunities. All these experiences and practices resonate with the current endeavours to evaluate the realities of accessing land and housing resources in cities, as well as their correlation with promoting livelihood strategies for low-income households
Hustle Revolution: Participation of young graduates in the informal economy of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
Get PDFThe main purpose of the study was to investigate the experiences of young graduates who participate in the informal economy of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. This study aimed to answer the question of whether formal education gives young graduates competing in the informal economy a competitive advantage or disadvantage. This was done through in-depth interviews, hanging out (observations) and casual conversations with young graduates who participate in the informal economy in Bulawayo and organisations that work with youth in the city. Twelve participants were selected using snowball and purposive sampling techniques. The study was grounded in the concept of 'waithood' and Bourdieu's theory of practice, with a specific focus on the component of cultural capital. The study's findings demonstrate that to address the challenge of unemployment after graduation, young graduates participate in the informal economy. Results indicated that young graduates participate in the informal economy to enhance their livelihoods, pursue their passion, gain employment, cope with waithood and delayed adulthood and for multiple streams of income. Benefits such as financial independence, the ability to support families and getting employment were also noted in this study. This study found that formal education gives young graduates a competitive advantage that manifests itself as better business strategies as they operate in the informal economy of Bulawayo. However, young graduates highlighted challenges such as less hustle mentality, competition, and capital, just to mention a few. Prospects of future work by almost all the young graduates highlighted that they preferred to participate in both the formal and informal economy. The experiences of young graduates in the informal economy were positive and negative. This study recommends a policy that prioritises young graduates, structural changes in tertiary education and the economy, and support for small businesses in the informal economy. It also raises awareness of the mismatch between tertiary education and the changing needs of the labour market in Zimbabw
The role of professionals in partnership-based urban upgrading interventions
Get PDFIn South Africa, current urban planning models and traditional state-led urban interventions seem to have noticeably failed to sustainably address the integrated problems that are evident in informal settlements throughout the country. In the case of many current urban interventions, professionals give technocratic solutions to problems in informal communities with little to no consultation or engagement with the affected community. The result is often that community's needs are not sufficiently met and the community is not capacitated to take full ownership of the solution. More often than not the intervention (technocratic solution) becomes mismanaged, underutilised and inevitably the solution is proven to be unsustainable. This phenomenon has highlighted the need for a new approach to addressing the needs of informal settlement dwellers. In recognition of the need for a new approach, this case study of a partnership-based urban upgrading intervention is conducted in order to make realistic recommendations regarding the value of professionals in partnership-based urban upgrading interventions as opposed to top-down interventions. The primary research question of this case study is thus: what lessons can be learnt about the role of the professional in partnership-based urban upgrading interventions by gaining insight on a successful partnership-based intervention? The Genius of SPACE (GOS) partnership, based in the informal settlement of Langrug in the Stellenbosch Municipality is used as the topic of the case study to answer the research question. The GOS partnership was initially formed to address greywater management and stormwater drainage challenges in the settlement. A capability analysis approach is utilised as a theoretical tool to investigate all of the different assets which might be available to the professional to contribute to addressing the social as well as the technical challenges that the GOS partnership aims to address. This tool ultimately contributes to the development of clear guiding principles for technical professionals working in urban upgrading partnerships. Some key guidelines for technical professionals in partnerships emerge from the case study and clearly show that a developmentally aligned partnership should ultimately be able to utilise not only technical abilities and skills but also social expertise to facilitate community mobilisation strategies that allow for highly responsive upgrading processes to ensure long-lasting structural as well as social change
Skills and quality production in the South African wine industry
Get PDFThesis (DPhil (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--Stellenbosch University, 2007.There is a general consensus amongst industry experts that in order for the South African wine
industry to sustain the success it has enjoyed thus far in export markets like the United Kingdom,
the Netherlands and Sweden and to become even more internationally competitive, its has to
improve the quality of its wine and move into higher price categories of the wine market. Skills’
training has been highlighted as a significant component of a strategy to improve the quality of
South African wine and its competitiveness in world markets. The aim of this study was to find
out how the South African wine industry is adapting to new vineyard practices necessary for
quality production at farm level, especially as far as training of vineyard workers is concerned.
Four theoretical perspectives are discussed in relation to the restructuring of the world agro-food
industry, the question of quality and the issue of training as it relates the production of quality
wine. These theoretical perspectives are regulation theory, global commodity chain analysis,
actor-network theory and the ergonomics perspective on the skills needed for the production of
quality wine. The focus of the study was on different kinds of producers, i.e. co-operative
cellars, private cellars and estates. The research covered two of the main wine-producing areas,
namely Paarl and the Robertson area. At each farm, interviews were conducted with the farm
owner, farm manager or viticulturist as well as a number of workers. Interviews were also
conducted with prominent wine makers, skills trainers and facilitators and other industry experts.
This was done to gain a better understanding of the South African wine industry as well as the
major issues and debates as far as quality production and skills training are concerned. The study
found that although there has been a general upgrading of skills in relation to new vineyard
practices for quality production, workers at the co-operatives and estates studied do not yet
receive the kind of in-depth knowledge which the theory argues is necessary for the production
of quality wine. The private cellars invest much more time and resources in the training of their
workforce. As far as the private cellars and estates are concerned there is a correlation between
the quality of wine and training. The private cellars sell more than 50% of their wine in the
premium, super-premium, ultra-premium and icon categories of the international wine market.
The estates sell 70% and more of their wine in the basic category. The co-operatives on the other
hand do not confirm the theory. In the absence of formal training, they manage to produce wine
that competes well on an inter and intra-regional level. The evidence suggests that in a country
like South Africa, in the context of a legacy of low education and literacy levels amongst
workers, repeated demonstration and strict supervision can compensate to a certain degree for a
lack of in-depth knowledge and discretion amongst workers.Doctora
Grounding smart technologies in informal urbanism: Mobile applications, urban infrastructures and service delivery in Cape Town’s informal settlements
No full textInternational audienc
Grounding smart technologies in informal urbanism: Mobile applications, urban infrastructures and service delivery in Cape Town’s informal settlements
No full textInternational audienc
Informal settlement upgrading and safety: Experiences from Cape Town, South Africa
No full textInformal settlement dwellers are disproportionately affected by ill health, violence and many other socio-economic challenges. These are largely connected to the unhealthy and unsafe physical conditions within which they live. Interventions in the built form through the provision of physical infrastructure have been proposed as a strategy to improve economic, social and health outcomes for informal settlement dwellers and are also suggested as tools to address violence and insecurity, which have reached unprecedented levels in many cities of the South
\u27Do you own your freedom?\u27 Reflecting on Cape Town youths\u27 aspirations to be free
Get PDFYoung people make up half of the world’s population and constitute the majority of the population across the Global South (Cooper et al. 2019). In South Africa, the youth constitute one-third of the country’s population, many of whom belong to the so-called ‘born free’ generation. The ‘born free’ generation typically refers to those who were born after the end of Apartheid, or those who were coming of age after 1994. The youth, particularly in cities of the South, represent an excluded majority in terms of access to meaningful employment and quality living environments.
This article reflects on a research project which used narrative photovoice as a method to engage a group of 13 young people from Mitchell’s Plain, Philippi and Gugulethu; poor marginalised areas in Cape Town. Narrative photovoice combines photography with writing to give participants an opportunity to convey particular stories or issues through their photography. Through a process of co-production and collaboration between academic researchers, a community-based organisation (CBO) called ‘Youth for Change’ and a creative enterprise called ‘noDREAD’productions, the youth were engaged in a creative process using photographs to tell stories about themselves, their communities and the broader city context in which they live.
This article draws on Appadurai’s notion of the ‘capacity to aspire’ to make sense of the aspirations and dreams the participants talk about through their photographs; how they navigate structural, psychological and other factors which impede their aspirations and their freedom, and how they make sense of their everyday realities. The article advances two interlinked arguments: firstly, it makes visible the ‘navigational capacity’ of youth from marginalised neighbourhoods and their capacity to aspire amidst multiple constraints. It does so by illustrating how the youth grapple with the idea and experience of freedom in their everyday life. Secondly, it makes a case for the use of photovoice as a method that is well positioned to (a) capture the visual dimension of youth aspirations and (b) allow for co-production between the different stakeholders
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
- …
