4 research outputs found
A bibliography: The urban question in Namibia
No full textDr Elsemi Olwage
Institute for Land, Livelihoods and Housing• Research on urbanisation, urban development and urban socio-spatial dynamics remains limited and underfunded.
• A strong need to foster an urban research agenda
• First step: A bibliography of existing literature on urban development in Namibi
"Growing together": the politics of knowing and creating an urban commons in Cape Town, South Africa
No full textThis dissertation is based on research conducted at a small state-managed conservancy called the Edith Stephens Nature Reserve (ESNR) situated in the low-lying flatlands of the Cape Town metropolis. By tracing some of the complex and varied ways in which different ways of knowing and valuing urban “natures” and practices of conservation co-constitute
each other, this dissertation critically engages with the social power relations at work in the continual making and unmaking of Cape Town’s “natural” heritages. In doing so, I
argue for recognizing the ways in which Cape Town’s urban “natures” remain entangled with the epistemological, ecological and spatial legacies of colonialism and apartheid. Moreover, by focusing on the ESNR, I explore the current material and discursive practices by the state in relation to urban “nature” conservation. In recent years, the discursive framework of biodiversity conservation was mapped onto ESNR through the state apparatus. At the same time, ESNR was identified as pilot site for an experimental
partnership project that was called Cape Flats Nature (CFN), a project that ran from 2002 till 2010 which explored what biodiversity conservation would mean within marginalized,
poverty-stricken and highly unequal urban landscapes. By engaging with ESNR’s historically constituted material-discursivity, this dissertation argues that, during this time, a particular relational knowledge emerged which, in turn, co-crafted and configured the emerging poetics, politics and practices at ESNR. In doing so, I foreground my main argument – that urban “nature” conservation, far from only being about conserving and caring for nonhuman lifeworlds, is rather simultaneously about conserving a particular relation to the world, to others and to oneself
Under the Leadwood Tree: Disputing land, mobility and belonging in post-colonial southern Kaoko.
No full textThis thesis is based on a grazing and land dispute which took place in the semi-arid Kaoko, north-western Namibia, between 2014 to 2016. I draw on a situational analysis approach and engage with the dispute both as a diagnostic and emergent event. The dispute involved the in-migration of several Himba households and their livestock from northern into southern Kaoko where many in turn enact their belonging to a larger pan-Herero society. These in-migrations were coupled with an increase in drought-related mobilities since 2012. In focusing on the dispute this thesis asks how culturally-informed and historically-constituted colonial and post-colonial institutions of land governance were being locally refashioned and struggled over. Secondly, this thesis explores how persons navigated this legally pluralistic context and how this was shaping and being shaped by social practices of pastoral mobility. And lastly, this thesis critically explores the politics of belonging generated by the dispute. In doing so, I show how the post-independent legal power vested in ‘customary’ authorities and law in the governing of ‘communal’ lands was based on an assumed ethnographic fact of exclusive territories. Given the existence of plural authorities and overlapping territories in Kaoko, this generated a renewed competition for territorial reach, further fueled by the embeddedness of these struggles in long-standing factional and national party politics. These struggles opened up new avenues for mobility as competing authorities tried to amass followers and strengthen their claims. However, many of these pastoral mobilities were politically and socially contested. This thesis then details how residents, land-use communities and particular networked political groups navigated between ‘customary’ and ‘state’ law and authority in co-producing and contesting ‘communal’ tenure from the ground-up, and in a context where overlapping colonial and post-colonial rule and tenure had generated an institutional vacuum. Moreover, I illustrate the often-strong disjuncture which exists between official discourses of belonging and the everyday micro-politics of belonging and critically examine how group boundaries were becoming more rigidly defined, including between ‘Herero’ residents and ‘Himba’ newcomers
Growing together: exploring the politics of knowing and conserving (bio) diversity in a small conservancy in Cape Town
No full textThis dissertation is based on research conducted at a small state-managed conservancy called the Edith Stephens Nature Reserve (ESNR) situated in the low-lying flatlands of the Cape Town metropolis. By tracing some of the complex and varied ways in which different ways of knowing and valuing urban "natures" and practices of conservation co-constitute each other, this dissertation critically engages with the social power relations at work in the continual making and unmaking of Cape Town's "natural" heritages. In doing so, I argue for recognizing the ways in which Cape Town's urban "natures" remain entangled with the epistemological, ecological and spatial legacies of colonialism and apartheid. Moreover, by focusing on the ESNR, I explore the current material and discursive practices by the state in relation to urban "nature" conservation. In recent years, the discursive framework of biodiversity conservation was mapped onto ESNR through the state apparatus. At the same time, ESNR was identified as pilot site for an experimental partnership project that was called Cape Flats Nature (CFN), a project that ran from 2002 till 2010 which explored what biodiversity conservation would mean within marginalized, poverty-stricken and highly unequal urban landscapes. By engaging with ESNR's historically constituted material- discursivity, this dissertation argues that, during this time, a particular relational knowledge emerged which, in turn, co-crafted and configured the emerging poetics, politics and practices at ESNR. In doing so, I foreground my main argument - that urban "nature"conservation, far from only being about conserving and caring for nonhuman life worlds, is rather simultaneously about conserving a particular relation to the world, to others and to oneself
