Browsing by Author "Higgins, Benedict Francis"

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    Global discourse and local politics : the political economy of urban regeneration in Woodstock, Cape Town
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Higgins, Benedict Francis; Khan, Firoz; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. School of Public Leadership.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : It is averred that the postcolonial experience unfurls beyond the unitary structures and teleological frameworks of the Global North. Here, reality is entirely distinct; peculiar in function, particular in form. This ‘democratisation of theory’ has generated substantial insights on the urban experience as ephemeral, informal, and transient. It has redirected attention towards the networks and negotiations of the ‘everyday’, clarifying the much-needed common practices and mundane processes constituting the contemporary city. But this postcolonial epistemological turn, claim others, could potentially be ‘premature’ as cities continue to be profoundly shaped by a wider institutional context interwoven within and mediated through economic configurations of spatial development and geopolitical power. These critics insist on a substantive connectivity and relational geography embedded in political economy. Resultantly, there are calls to stem the tide of increasing disarticulation and fragmentation in critical urban theory and discover ways to move beyond dualistic interpretations of the city. This study explores the political economy of urban regeneration in Woodstock, Cape Town. The study is grounded in a reflexive epistemology that deflects the ontologicaldualism proliferating throughout contemporary urban theory. Here, the city is studied in a specificity yet, simultaneously, in a spatial and temporal relationality. Drawing on Foucault and Gramsci, the study excavates and analyses the archaeology of local discursivities and a genealogy of methods whereby, based on the descriptions of these local discursivities, contemporary urban regeneration in Woodstock has come to fruition. Revealed are hitherto overlooked contingencies related to the formation of a discourse to ‘save’ the city from urban decline. Whilst this discursive formation was temporally relevant and valuable, ANC-led Mayoral interventions steered the private sector towards culture. In Woodstock, this was combined with a second generation of self-identified ‘changemakers’ who became a vehicle for infusing the discourse with ideological commitments to the ‘global city’. An exceptional local institutional context soon created a disproportionally powerful and particularly potent discourse. Over time, antagonisms and contradictions of this discourse were ‘smoothed over’ through image construction. These images took the form of intellectual and moralising narratives that manufactured consent, deploying discursive constructs such as ‘caring’ and ‘inclusive’. These constructs normalised the discourse and its inequitable outcomes as inevitable or ‘common sense’. Thus, the discourse appeared to be hegemonic in its workings. However, hegemonies are not always homogenous, and contestations both within and without afford space for alternatives. In eschewing a pessimism that characterises much critical theory, this study proposes discursive points of entry to affect sociospatial integration.