This is just a short post. A kind of opening of space and a place holder at the same time. But, I am really thinking about conceptions of space and how they are totally being challenged and reworked by the realm of the internet and social networking. What space means and why it still holds so much importance.
Why do people who work in the same industry drawn to the same geographic space when their careers involve sitting infront of computers that are linked up to the internet and could just as easily work from anywhere. What is it about these spaces that draw people to them?
How is this going to rework the realm of cities and countries? Are you going to see more and more rich, educated and wired individuals moving to small and developing countries for the benefits of cheaper and interesting spaces?
Anyway, I think that there is plenty of juice in here.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Interests/Region/Question
Interests: Political Economics and Development Theory, Global Finance, Theoretical Conceptualizations of Development, Space, Place and Time. The role of history and geography. Concepts of globalization
Region: Africa and specifically South Africa.
Question: How do we understand opportunities for development in Africa and how are these opportunities limited by theoretical conceptualizations of both development and Africa as a space? How can we disable limiting and constraining theoretical conceptualizations and rework them with the goal of creating enabling and empowering theoretical conceptualizations? What inhibits this change? What role does race, sex, history, geography play in enabling/disabling theoretical frameworks for change?
Region: Africa and specifically South Africa.
Question: How do we understand opportunities for development in Africa and how are these opportunities limited by theoretical conceptualizations of both development and Africa as a space? How can we disable limiting and constraining theoretical conceptualizations and rework them with the goal of creating enabling and empowering theoretical conceptualizations? What inhibits this change? What role does race, sex, history, geography play in enabling/disabling theoretical frameworks for change?
List
Politics, Economics, Development, Political Economics, Space, Place, Time, Theory, Change, Social Movements, Environment, Policy, Opportunity, Policy, South Africa, Africa, Developing World, Global Finance, Theoretical Understandings, Limits, Constraints, Possibilities, Room to Maneuver.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Constraints of Change
What has happened since the end of Apartheid? How has it reconfigured the local relationships of communities? How are white & non-white communities dealing with the new engagement with the global community? What is enabling or constraining one community to grow and prosper? What does the land question mean in Cape Town? How are communities dealing with the arrival of large informal settlements? Why have some communities become antagonized by this arrival while others have avoided it completely? Why have squatters chosen one location over another? What role does local politics and history play in the arrival of large informal settlements? And, how has the local community reacted? How has the engagement with the global economy reworked local economies? What has enabled some communities to deal with this new engagement on a much more successful level then other communities? What role does history play in this? Race? Class?
Understanding how a much broader political and economic opening has affected relationships and communities on the ground leads to understandings of negotiating political and economic change? Is there any way to make broader generalizations? How do we understand the process of change and its relationship to history and geography?
Many questions....not clear on how to even explore potential answers.
Understanding how a much broader political and economic opening has affected relationships and communities on the ground leads to understandings of negotiating political and economic change? Is there any way to make broader generalizations? How do we understand the process of change and its relationship to history and geography?
Many questions....not clear on how to even explore potential answers.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Hout Bay
Okay I think I have another idea for a comparison site to my Kalk Bay idea - Hout Bay. This is another Cape Town community that is located about 20 minutes from the city center. It is on the Atlantic coast line but also has a long and varied history. It includes an old fishing community that has struggled to survive and has a deep history in the Apartheid state and post-apartheid state.
I don't know much about the history of Hout Bay or its local white and non-white communities. Hout Bay like Kalk Bay has seen a massive increase in property prices and a consequently a massive population growth. It is important to note that Hout Bay is far larger community than Kalk Bay and is nestled in a valley and bay that leads to limited interaction with surrounding communities. In fact at one point in the late 80's Hout Bay's residents tried to create the Republic of Hout Bay - which many in the surrounding communities found to be a laughable idea.
In recent years Hout Bay has seen the growth of a very large squatter camp that has also been linked with large increases in crime. Many of the wealthy residents who have large homes and estates have complained and demanded the destruction and removal of this squatter camp. It has lead into national and local political debates and has become another clear example of the land issue in South Africa and the need for those to earn a living in their local communities. It has become a central playground for all types of political opportunists etc.
What I think is interesting is that this fishing community has historically had a much more contentious and tension ridden relationship with its local white community then that of the fishing community of Kalk Bay.
Many of the residents of this squatter community have stated that there just wasn't enough housing or land for the local fishing communities families in their allocated areas that they were pushed out into the surrounding areas. This has of course lead to an increase in other people's looking for a place to live.
What is interesting is that this site of chosen squatter community does not sit on any public transport lines, and is in fact in a location that is fairly hard to get in and out of. In many sense setting up a squatter community in a place like Kalk Bay would make far better sense as you have excelent access to the public transport system which leads in all directions - to the city center as well as the surrounding industrial/commercial suburbs on the outside of the city center. It is also closer to the the Cape Flats where many of the non-white community was forcibly moved. It is important to note that Kalk Bay is about 15 minutes from the Cape Flats - it is in walking distance. Yet, there has never been an effort at squatting in Kalk Bay nor any truly contentious land issues. What has created this different relationship - does the role of the local community create this. Are the local fishermen in Kalk Bay far more protective of this relationship. What role does the communities efforts at creating homeless shelters, what role has the "tourism effect" had on this.
I am not certain what it is but there seems to me a set of comparisons that could be made between Hout and Kalk Bay. These spaces in many senses have communities that have lived next to each other but that the spatial configurations are very different. The white community in Kalk Bay living literally side-by-side with the non-white fishing community. While in Hout Bay the communities have been historically apart. I do not know if there ever was an effort to remove the non-white community from Hout Bay, and if there was, what role the local white community played. Nor do I know the local politics and history of this politics. But, it appears that there are two very different sets of relationships in these different Bay's.
Hout Bay is a far more contentious relationship and the Kalk Bay relationship is far more harmonious.
What role has economics played in this. In part you have fishing communities facing increased competition - but, while Kalk Bay fishermen have managed to build an economic relationship with the local community (selling their fish to local residents, restaurants and tourists) while Hout Bay has struggled much more to create this same type of relationship.
I think that there is a lot to be explored here and I think that the local histories and politics, the new connections with the global capital and the role of changing land ownership and real estate prices are all things that have played into this relationship and changing relationships.
This is something that I think needs far more investigation and I foresee me doing more of this when I return to SA in the new year for several months.
Once again I want to understand how these histories, geographies, politics and economics play into creating a set of opportunities and conjunctions that lead to political debates in a much broader spectrum and how crossing racial and historical cleavages can create new relationships.
How do we understand these differences, how do we work with them, and how do we create understandings and thinkings that enable a type of standard of living that is both decent and sustainable.
I will continue to think about these issues and this relationship and see where it leads me.
I don't know much about the history of Hout Bay or its local white and non-white communities. Hout Bay like Kalk Bay has seen a massive increase in property prices and a consequently a massive population growth. It is important to note that Hout Bay is far larger community than Kalk Bay and is nestled in a valley and bay that leads to limited interaction with surrounding communities. In fact at one point in the late 80's Hout Bay's residents tried to create the Republic of Hout Bay - which many in the surrounding communities found to be a laughable idea.
In recent years Hout Bay has seen the growth of a very large squatter camp that has also been linked with large increases in crime. Many of the wealthy residents who have large homes and estates have complained and demanded the destruction and removal of this squatter camp. It has lead into national and local political debates and has become another clear example of the land issue in South Africa and the need for those to earn a living in their local communities. It has become a central playground for all types of political opportunists etc.
What I think is interesting is that this fishing community has historically had a much more contentious and tension ridden relationship with its local white community then that of the fishing community of Kalk Bay.
Many of the residents of this squatter community have stated that there just wasn't enough housing or land for the local fishing communities families in their allocated areas that they were pushed out into the surrounding areas. This has of course lead to an increase in other people's looking for a place to live.
What is interesting is that this site of chosen squatter community does not sit on any public transport lines, and is in fact in a location that is fairly hard to get in and out of. In many sense setting up a squatter community in a place like Kalk Bay would make far better sense as you have excelent access to the public transport system which leads in all directions - to the city center as well as the surrounding industrial/commercial suburbs on the outside of the city center. It is also closer to the the Cape Flats where many of the non-white community was forcibly moved. It is important to note that Kalk Bay is about 15 minutes from the Cape Flats - it is in walking distance. Yet, there has never been an effort at squatting in Kalk Bay nor any truly contentious land issues. What has created this different relationship - does the role of the local community create this. Are the local fishermen in Kalk Bay far more protective of this relationship. What role does the communities efforts at creating homeless shelters, what role has the "tourism effect" had on this.
I am not certain what it is but there seems to me a set of comparisons that could be made between Hout and Kalk Bay. These spaces in many senses have communities that have lived next to each other but that the spatial configurations are very different. The white community in Kalk Bay living literally side-by-side with the non-white fishing community. While in Hout Bay the communities have been historically apart. I do not know if there ever was an effort to remove the non-white community from Hout Bay, and if there was, what role the local white community played. Nor do I know the local politics and history of this politics. But, it appears that there are two very different sets of relationships in these different Bay's.
Hout Bay is a far more contentious relationship and the Kalk Bay relationship is far more harmonious.
What role has economics played in this. In part you have fishing communities facing increased competition - but, while Kalk Bay fishermen have managed to build an economic relationship with the local community (selling their fish to local residents, restaurants and tourists) while Hout Bay has struggled much more to create this same type of relationship.
I think that there is a lot to be explored here and I think that the local histories and politics, the new connections with the global capital and the role of changing land ownership and real estate prices are all things that have played into this relationship and changing relationships.
This is something that I think needs far more investigation and I foresee me doing more of this when I return to SA in the new year for several months.
Once again I want to understand how these histories, geographies, politics and economics play into creating a set of opportunities and conjunctions that lead to political debates in a much broader spectrum and how crossing racial and historical cleavages can create new relationships.
How do we understand these differences, how do we work with them, and how do we create understandings and thinkings that enable a type of standard of living that is both decent and sustainable.
I will continue to think about these issues and this relationship and see where it leads me.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Kalk Bay
Okay so I have been playing with these very big ideas that are way overwhelming and therefore have been struggling to find a way to ground them in a way that I can actually start seeing these relationships. To see if my thinking and ideas (for which I owe much credit to Gillian Hart at UC Berkeley, and the theories of people like Doreen Massey and many others) have some validity in the grounded reality of our world. If you want a little more insight into some of the ideas that I am grappling with read some of my earlier posts - though it may just confuse matters futher ;-)
So I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this little town (or more like a suburb/hamlet of the broader city of Cape Town). This town is called Kalk Bay. It is incredibly beautiful and about 20 minutes south of the city. It is wedged between the Table Mountain Nature Reserve and the Indian Ocean. The town can't have a population much bigger the 2000 people. It has a long and interesting history. It has a population of white and non-white South Africans who have lived side-by-side for many many generations. The local non-white population was able to withstand attempts at forced desegregation. I believe (and this needs to be verified) that the local white population was involved in assisting this resistance to forced desegregation which was imposed on many of the non-white communities up and down the Cape Peninsula and entire South African country. The town itself is bordered to the north and the south by two other hamlets/towns with very different histories and geographies - namely Fish Hoek and Muizenberg.
Hence these populations lived in close proximity together. Thought, there were always two elementary schools - one for whites and one for the non-whites. The non-white population made there living of fishing and remain one of the few small fishing communities in South Africa to this day. The town was rather poor and dilapidated though in an earlier colonial era (pre institutionalized apartheid) was one of the playgrounds for the royalty and wealthy Jews of South Africa and beyond.
This town is now going through a massive transformation in great part lead by the huge property boom of South Africa. Housing prices have shot skywards limiting access to many local families (white and non-white). Kalk Bay has increasingly become a tourist destination pulling in large crowds to its predominantly white owned restaurants and antique stores. The local non-white population has in many ways benefited from this as it has a new market to sell its fish too. All the local restaurants serve fresh fish that is obtained directly from the local fishermen. These same fishermen have had to seriously negotiate the opening up of South Africa to the global economy, fighting for their rights to catch a certain amount of fish from the waters that they have fished for generations; now coming into competition with the global fishing companies. This is a side note and I don't know much about this political and economic process but it is certainly something that could do with further exploration.
What is interesting in all this is how the local population of Kalk Bay is negotiating this new opening and the new political elements that have come with the post-apartheid government.
The local children all attend the same public elementary school - though there is a local private catholic school as well. That the local community has made strident efforts at creating homeless shelters and dealing with some of the elements of poverty that pervade South African society.
Kalk Bay has also been able to avoid many of the criminal elements that have dominated much of South African urban life in the past 10 years. However these elements seem to increase as the population increases and the amount of homes built increases.
The reconfiguration of the local municipalities has also impacted Kalk Bay bringing it into relationship with the neighboring towns and the broader city of Cape Town. Prior to these reconfigurations the need to rely on central Cape Town or its neighbors was greatly limited and defined in very different ways. Once again I know little on this subject and would have to dig into it further.
I am not sure if this is a good starting point or not to ground my much bigger theoretical thinkings but is certainly is a space that has many elements that come together in very historically and geographically specific relationships. The history of local interactions, the geography of the land, the environment, the entering of the global capital, the gentrification and the continued efforts and creating a society of equality and prosperity to name but a few.
So I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this little town (or more like a suburb/hamlet of the broader city of Cape Town). This town is called Kalk Bay. It is incredibly beautiful and about 20 minutes south of the city. It is wedged between the Table Mountain Nature Reserve and the Indian Ocean. The town can't have a population much bigger the 2000 people. It has a long and interesting history. It has a population of white and non-white South Africans who have lived side-by-side for many many generations. The local non-white population was able to withstand attempts at forced desegregation. I believe (and this needs to be verified) that the local white population was involved in assisting this resistance to forced desegregation which was imposed on many of the non-white communities up and down the Cape Peninsula and entire South African country. The town itself is bordered to the north and the south by two other hamlets/towns with very different histories and geographies - namely Fish Hoek and Muizenberg.
Hence these populations lived in close proximity together. Thought, there were always two elementary schools - one for whites and one for the non-whites. The non-white population made there living of fishing and remain one of the few small fishing communities in South Africa to this day. The town was rather poor and dilapidated though in an earlier colonial era (pre institutionalized apartheid) was one of the playgrounds for the royalty and wealthy Jews of South Africa and beyond.
This town is now going through a massive transformation in great part lead by the huge property boom of South Africa. Housing prices have shot skywards limiting access to many local families (white and non-white). Kalk Bay has increasingly become a tourist destination pulling in large crowds to its predominantly white owned restaurants and antique stores. The local non-white population has in many ways benefited from this as it has a new market to sell its fish too. All the local restaurants serve fresh fish that is obtained directly from the local fishermen. These same fishermen have had to seriously negotiate the opening up of South Africa to the global economy, fighting for their rights to catch a certain amount of fish from the waters that they have fished for generations; now coming into competition with the global fishing companies. This is a side note and I don't know much about this political and economic process but it is certainly something that could do with further exploration.
What is interesting in all this is how the local population of Kalk Bay is negotiating this new opening and the new political elements that have come with the post-apartheid government.
The local children all attend the same public elementary school - though there is a local private catholic school as well. That the local community has made strident efforts at creating homeless shelters and dealing with some of the elements of poverty that pervade South African society.
Kalk Bay has also been able to avoid many of the criminal elements that have dominated much of South African urban life in the past 10 years. However these elements seem to increase as the population increases and the amount of homes built increases.
The reconfiguration of the local municipalities has also impacted Kalk Bay bringing it into relationship with the neighboring towns and the broader city of Cape Town. Prior to these reconfigurations the need to rely on central Cape Town or its neighbors was greatly limited and defined in very different ways. Once again I know little on this subject and would have to dig into it further.
I am not sure if this is a good starting point or not to ground my much bigger theoretical thinkings but is certainly is a space that has many elements that come together in very historically and geographically specific relationships. The history of local interactions, the geography of the land, the environment, the entering of the global capital, the gentrification and the continued efforts and creating a society of equality and prosperity to name but a few.
Constraints and Possibilities
Yes I grapple with understanding possibilities for change. How is change constrained and enabled? What empowers and disempowers? How does theory and understandings lead to options of change? What actors, histories, geographies and relationships enable a place of change? For me change is the most interesting thing about life. How we are given moments and opportunites - perhaps given is not the right word - lets rather say "use". How do we use moments and opportunities to create new relationships?
We have multiple levels of relationships that we constantly need to negotiate. These relationships do not go one way - they are two way and that is what makes it so incredibly interesting. It is not about the extremes on this continuum but rather the gray areas.
How a society creates the economic opportunities for itself and its people and what limits this and what enables this?
I understand that there are always a set of specific relationships both grounded in historically and geographically specific understandings that lead to a set of possibilities and opportunities and constraints. Understanding that we are neither passive recipients of such forces as global capital or more broadly globalization and are neither completely free to define as we see fit these relationships. But, that rather we are in a constant relationship - perhaps dialectical, though I am not convinced - with these elements and that they are in no way monolithic.
It is this that is empowering understanding that our histories and geographies are truly relevant to the construction and relationship to these elements. It is this that actually enables new understandings and possibilities.
We have multiple levels of relationships that we constantly need to negotiate. These relationships do not go one way - they are two way and that is what makes it so incredibly interesting. It is not about the extremes on this continuum but rather the gray areas.
How a society creates the economic opportunities for itself and its people and what limits this and what enables this?
I understand that there are always a set of specific relationships both grounded in historically and geographically specific understandings that lead to a set of possibilities and opportunities and constraints. Understanding that we are neither passive recipients of such forces as global capital or more broadly globalization and are neither completely free to define as we see fit these relationships. But, that rather we are in a constant relationship - perhaps dialectical, though I am not convinced - with these elements and that they are in no way monolithic.
It is this that is empowering understanding that our histories and geographies are truly relevant to the construction and relationship to these elements. It is this that actually enables new understandings and possibilities.
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