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ID:
069835
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ID:
081714
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Publication |
2008.
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Summary/Abstract |
This article, written in response to recent arguments about whether or not shack dwellers can exercise historical agency, outlines the history of shack dwellers' struggles in the South African city of Durban. The sections looking at struggles under colonialism and apartheid and the nature of the post-apartheid deal with regard to housing draw on the extensive literature on these questions. The final section, which gives an outline of the emergence, nature and experience of the shack dwellers' movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, is written from a first-hand engagement. The article concludes that in contemporary Durban organized shack dwellers are constituting a major challenge to technocratic conceptions of democracy
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3 |
ID:
117768
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Publication |
2012.
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Summary/Abstract |
This paper begins by noting that some forms of leftism reinforce rather than oppose the exclusion of the urban poor from the agora. It shows that neither the capacity for intellectual nor for ethical seriousness can be read off a sociological location and suggests that a humanism made, in Cesaire's terms, 'to the measure of the world', a commitment to a universal ethic, is necessary if the humanity, and therefore the prospect of political agency, on the part of all people is to be recognized. It concludes by arguing that recent debates about a return to a communist Idea need to be mindful of a history in which communism has been a form of imperialism rather than a genuinely universal ideal.
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