Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa
Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa

Author: Marius Pieterse

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1351671979

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Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa considers the overlap between legal and everyday struggles for social and spatial justice in the particular context of Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing from literature across disciplines of law, urban geography and urban planning, as well as from reported case-law concerning the invocation of constitutional rights in Johannesburg and other South African cities, the book critically examines whether, and to what extent, the invocation of legal rights before South African courts have contributed to the advancement of social justice in the city. It considers the impact of the legal assertion of different constituent aspects of the so-called "right to the city" on the many people simultaneously performing the right, the governance structures responsible for enabling and facilitating its enjoyment and, thirdly, the physical place in which it is performed. Drawing broad conclusions on the utility of rights-based litigation for the achievement of social change and spatial justice, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Africa, constitutional law, human rights law, regulatory law, sociology of rights, studies of law and society, urban studies, urban geography, governance studies, and development studies.

Litigating Climate Change in the Global South
Litigating Climate Change in the Global South

Author: Jolene Lin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-06-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0192657674

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While climate change litigation in developed countries of the 'Global North' is a well-studied phenomenon (from its distinctive characteristics and the contribution it is making, to the implementation of international climate laws like the Paris Agreement), relatively few studies focus on climate case law emerging elsewhere. Litigating Climate Change in the Global South sheds light on emerging and accelerating climate litigation in developing countries across the three regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia and the Pacific. It is the first monograph-length work to provide a comprehensive assessment of this jurisprudence. Amid growing scholarly and policy interest in climate change litigation and its impact on international climate governance, the book examines which Global South countries are seeing climate cases, what is driving these trends, the coalitions of actors involved, and the early impacts this litigation is having on global goals of climate mitigation and adaptation.

Urban Politics of Human Rights
Urban Politics of Human Rights

Author: Janne Nijman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-11-14

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1000774724

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Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, and underline common aspirations, or to protect vested (private) interests. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book. An international line-up of contributors with long-term engagement in this field shed light on these politics in cities on four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theoreticalisation perspectives. They analyse the ‘city society’, the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today’s globalised and often deeply unequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the ‘right to the city’. Most importantly, the chapters highlight the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or – in times of COVID – health care. Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, and at times also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban. Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Law and the New Urban Agenda
Law and the New Urban Agenda

Author: Nestor M. Davidson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-23

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 042958282X

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The New Urban Agenda (NUA), adopted in 2016 at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador, represents a globally shared understanding of the vital link between urbanization and a sustainable future. At the heart of this new vision stand a myriad of legal challenges – and opportunities – that must be confronted for the world to make good on the NUA’s promise. In response, this book, which complements and expands on the editors’ previous volumes on urban law in this series, offers a constructive and critical evaluation of the legal dimensions of the NUA. As the volume’s authors make clear, from natural disasters and resulting urban migration in Honshu and Tacloban, to innovative collaborative governance in Barcelona and Turin, to accessibility of public space for informal workers in New Delhi and Accra, and power scales among Brazil’s metropolitan regions, there is a deep urgency for thoughtful research to understand how law can be harnessed to advance the NUA’s global mission of sustainable urbanism. It thus creates a provocative and academic dialogue about the legal effects of the NUA, which will be of interest to academics and researchers with an interest in urban studies.

Participatory Theatre and the Urban Everyday in South Africa
Participatory Theatre and the Urban Everyday in South Africa

Author: Alexandra Halligey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1000769739

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This book explores theatre and performance as participatory research practices for exploring the everyday of the city. Taking an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa as its central case study, the book considers how theatre and performance might be both useful practical tools in considering the everyday city, as well as conceptual lenses for understanding it. The author establishes an understanding of space as ever evolving and formed through the ongoing relationship between things, human and non-human, and considers how theatre and performance offer useful paradigms for learning about and working with city spaces. As ephemeral, embodied, material artistic practices, theatre and performance mirror the nature of everyday life. The book discusses theatre and performance games and placemaking processes as offering valuable ways of discovering daily acts of place-making and providing insights that more conventional research methods may not allow. Yet the book also considers how seeing daily city life as a kind of performance, a kind of theatre in its own right, helps to further understandings of city spaces as ever evolving through complex webs of relationships. This book will be of interest to academics, academic practitioners and post-graduate students in the fields of theatre and performance studies, urban studies and cultural geography.

Social Media and Everyday Life in South Africa
Social Media and Everyday Life in South Africa

Author: Tanja E Bosch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-22

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1000225690

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This book explores how social media is used in South Africa, through a range of case studies exploring various social networking sites and applications. This volume explores how, over the past decade, social media platforms have deeply penetrated the fabric of everyday life. The author considers South Africans’ use of wearable tech and use of online health and sports tracking systems via mobile phones within the broader context of the digital data economy. The author also focuses on the dating app Tinder, to show how people negotiate and redefine intimacy through the practice of online dating via strategic performances in pursuit of love, sex and intimacy. The book concludes with the use of Facebook and Twitter for social activism (e.g. Fees Must Fall), as well as networked community building as in the case of the #imstaying movement. This book will be of interest to social media academics and students, as well as anyone interested in social media, politics and cultural life in South Africa.

Social Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Social Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Author: Ndangwa Noyoo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-01

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1000731480

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This book critically examines the current social policy in post-apartheid South Africa and proposes an alternative social policy agenda to create a new development pathway for the country. Taking social policy as a vehicle that will facilitate the creation of a new society altogether, namely the "Good Society," the author argues for the adoption of policy that will socially re-engineer South Africa. The author shows how the policy tools and development interventions which were undertaken by the post-apartheid state in driving South Africa’s transformation agenda failed to emancipate many individuals, families, and communities from the cycle of intergenerational poverty and underdevelopment. He contends that social policy interventions that foster the social re-engineering of South African society must take place to untangle the inherited colonial-apartheid social order. This book includes comparative analyses on the Global South and Global North to present the ways in which countries such as post-Second World War Great Britain and Sweden, and post-independence Zambia of the 1960s and 1970s, were able to use social policy to create new societies altogether or places similar to the "Good Society." The conceptual and methodological issues that form the basis for this book reside in public policy-making and the public good and will be of interest to scholars of social policy, social development, and South African society.

Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education
Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education

Author: Grace Ese-osa Idahosa

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0429665288

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This book explores the process of transformation, discussing how individuals are capable of acting to enable transformation of structures and cultures through the lens of South African higher education. Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education examines the role of agency in effecting change amidst the rigid conditions within South African universities. Arguing for a focus on transformation from below, it explores transformation and agency from the perspective of academic staff. Through discussing moments at which faculty members embedded in rigid structures and cultures perceive themselves as having had the agency to interrupt and transform them, despite their rigidity, this book describes the nuances of social action and agency within the South African higher education institutional context and the ways in which contextual histories may provide enabling/limiting conditions to individuals within them. This book makes an important contribution to the field of agency and social transformation theoretically, methodologically and geographically as it details the motivations for transformation, how individuals become agents of change and the practical experiences of these individuals from a localised perspective. Agency and Social Transformation in South African Higher Education will be of interest to scholars and students of African higher education, transformation studies and postcolonial studies.

Radio, Public Life and Citizen Deliberation in South Africa
Radio, Public Life and Citizen Deliberation in South Africa

Author: Sarah Chiumbu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-24

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1000384454

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This book critically analyses the important role of radio in public life in post-apartheid South Africa. As the most widespread and popular form of communication in the country, radio occupies an essential space in the deliberation and the construction of public opinion in South Africa. From just a few state-controlled stations during the apartheid era, there are now more than 100 radio stations, reaching vast swathes of the population and providing an important space for citizens to air their views and take part in significant socio-economic and political issues of the country. The various contributors to this book demonstrate that whilst print and television media often serve elite interests and audiences, the low cost and flexibility of radio has helped it to create a ‘common’ space for national dialogue and deliberation. The book also investigates the ways in which digital technologies have enhanced the consumption of radio and produced a sense of imagined community for citizens, including those in marginalised communities and rural areas. This book will be of interest to researchers with an interest in media, politics and culture in South Africa specifically, as well as those with an interest in broadcast media more generally.

City, State
City, State

Author: Ran Hirschl

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-06-12

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0190922788

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More than half of the world's population lives in cities; by 2050, it will be more than three quarters. Projections suggest that megacities of 50 million or even 100 million inhabitants will emerge by the end of the century, mostly in the Global South. This shift marks a major and unprecedented transformation of the organization of society, both spatially and geopolitically. Our constitutional institutions and imagination, however, have failed to keep pace with this new reality. Cities have remained virtually absent from constitutional law and constitutional thought, not to mention from comparative constitutional studies more generally. As the world is urbanizing at an extraordinary rate, this book argues, new thinking about constitutionalism and urbanization is desperately needed. In six chapters, the book considers the reasons for the "constitutional blind spot" concerning the metropolis, probes the constitutional relationship between states and (mega)cities worldwide, examines patterns of constitutional change and stalemate in city status, and aims to carve a new place for the city in constitutional thought, constitutional law and constitutional practice.