OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Oldfield, Sophie"

Browsing by Author "Oldfield, Sophie"

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Open Access
A place to live: incremental building and its logics in informal settlements of Cape Town and Delhi
(2019) Anand, Geetika; Oldfield, Sophie
Many, if not most, houses in southern cities are self-built. Whether formal or informal, these houses are both built, and often, expanded incrementally. Through an in-depth exploratory method of ‘homestead biographies’, in this research I explored the multi-dimensional and relational nature of incremental building in the informal settlements of Kosovo in Cape Town and Gayatri Colony in Delhi. The juxtaposition of Gayatri Colony and Kosovo shows rich parallel stories of people’s housing struggles and aspirations, on one hand, and highlights the varied ways in which residents have built over the years, on the other. Starting from finding one’s own place, incremental building is a multi-dimensional process, which revolves around securing space, sourcing building materials, building household assets, and linking to infrastructure. I argue not only incremental building is a story of agency and how ordinary people build their houses, neighbourhood and city, it is equally a story of a critical set of relationalities that play out at multiple scales. Places to live, for instance, are built incrementally through social connections; they are built in response to crises; and lastly, they are built in relation to the state. These relationalities drive the practices of incremental building in informal settlements: ‘in the meanwhile’ in Kosovo, Cape Town and ‘as a gamble’ in Gayatri Colony, Delhi.
Open Access
An African city and the modern plague: transformations in governance at the moment of Mbabane's HIV & AIDS crisis
(2025) Marrengane, C. Ntombini; Oldfield, Sophie
This study examines the governance of Mbabane, Eswatini, a Southern African city, at the height of the global HIV epidemic (1995–2005), which cut through the continent like an unstoppable plague. Located at the epidemic's epicentre, the Kingdom of Eswatini held the unfortunate distinction of having the highest infection rate in the world, with one in every three adults testing positive at the end of the 20th century. Such devastating numbers required a response at every level of government. This study looks at the intersection between governance and the crises unleashed by a modern plague at an urban scale. In response to the devastating effects of the epidemic on city residents, Municipal Council of Mbabane (MCM) officials adopted innovative strategies to mitigate the epidemic's impact, extending beyond the city's legal mandate. Through a deliberate process, the council reoriented its focus away from its core mandate of command and control of urban space to engaging and experimenting with city residents, civil society organisations and, most importantly, traditional authorities who directly influenced the expansion of the city and yet remain excluded in meaningful ways from urban management. By adopting this novel approach, the MCM found ways to align its service delivery mandate with the unprecedented needs emerging at the household level because of the unfolding HIV epidemic. This study uses qualitative methods, to explore the extraordinary efforts of city officials to govern the city during crisis through ‘incremental bricolage' – a term used to define the governance processes that emerged in a complex urban setting amid a crisis. This term describes the provisional, collaborative, and collective decision-making across institutional structures in an environment of bifurcated governance. Incremental bricolage provided a pathway for the council's engagement with traditional authorities, an influential but long ignored urban stakeholder. Incremental bricolage also offered new opportunities for the council to develop partnerships to meet the changing needs of urban residents because of the deadly plague. By repurposing relationships and capacities within the council and across organisations outside the municipality, the governing body led a process of rationalising and equitability extending the reach of HIV support and care services across the city. Disrupting the notion of dysfunctional governance systems in African cities, this case draws attention to the conditions under which urban local authorities operate. This case also highlights the flexibility and innovation demonstrated by MCM officials and other key governance stakeholders to meet the iv needs of city residents in a bifurcated urban context at a moment of crisis triggered by a global epidemic.
Open Access
Between the (in)formal and the (il)legal : the 'permanent temporariness' of waiting for a house
(2012) Greyling, Saskia; Oldfield, Sophie
In Cape Town, 400 000 households are waiting for housing from the state. This thesis explores the everyday lived realities that waiting for housing entails: what waiting means to housing applicants, what living in temporary accommodation solutions for the long-term entails, and how these effects of waiting shape citizens' perceptions and encounters with the state. This research, conducted through open-ended, qualitative interviews provides a detailed and in-depth understanding of not only the everyday material and social experiences of waiting for housing and life in temporary accommodation, but also the types of encounters that citizens have with the state in relation to housing given the circumstances in which they wait. These narratives of waiting provide a detailed and nuanced understanding of the 'permanent temporariness' (Yiftachel, 2009a; 2009b) that waiting entails given the often difficult circumstances in which people live while waiting for housing, in overcrowded council houses, backyard shacks and informal settlements. Situated in the 'gray spaces' (Yiftachel, 2009a; 2009b) that exist between legal and illegal and formal and informal, housing applicants live in a state of 'betweenness' (Perramond, 2001) materially, socially, emotionally and politically. This 'betweenness', the core of the relationship between citizens and the state, produces a particular encounter with the state in relation to housing. This 'gray' encounter encompasses the varied ways housing applicants choose to interact with, and against, the state to access housing.
Open Access
Business unusual or disabling ambiguity? : the mainstreaming of disabled people in the Working for Water programme
(2011) Gorgens, Tristan Johann Denzler; Oldfield, Sophie
The mainstreaming of disability in development programmes is an attractive but elusive goal for the South African state. This research investigates the ‘life of policy’ that creates the conditions for the targeting of disabled people as participants in Working for Water - a flagship public works programme.
Open Access
Collaboration at the crossroads: The enabling of large-scale cross-sector collaborative developments
(2014) Adlard, Gerald; Oldfield, Sophie
This thesis identifies a key to achieving success in large-scale cross-sector collaborations. Surveys of such collaborations, involving multiple and opposing stakeholders in achieving shared objectives, indicate that they invariable fail. I examine a successful case, and demonstrate that the gap between failure and success is created by underestimating both incessant turbulence and stakeholder incapacity; and the gap is filled by a few diverse, dedicated activists - Enablers - and the mandates which help to empower them. The literature review engages with four fields of study. 'Community participation' theory promotes the exercise of popular agency in development, arguing for less state control and the right of civil society groups to get involved in what affects them. 'Collaborative governance' argues for government to actively involve other stakeholders in matters of common interest. The 'participative sphere' endeavours to demystify behaviour and power within different degrees of collaboration. The ultimate challenge is 'cross-sector collaboration', in which shared power between multiple parties in separate sectors is attempted, but seldom yields success. A false assumption that collaborations curb turbulence and can be managed by their stakeholders is, however, apparent. In this thesis I examine an ambitious housing project, the 'iSLP', during South Africa's tortuous transition. It began as an attempt to develop land from which sixty thousand people had been violently displaced to thirty locations. Stakeholders comprised those communities, warlords, apartheid government agencies, recently unbanned political parties and civic movements, municipalities and local industrialists. From conception the collaboration was undermined by private developers luring a succession of stakeholders into potentially profitable alliances. However the collaboration survived four years of transitional governmental paralysis and was rewarded with an enhanced mandate and guaranteed finance â€“ only to come under attack again from different quarters. Ultimately the iSLP met its objective of housing over 32 000 families in fully-equipped suburbs. Through an intensive analysis of project archival materials, particularly of actual participation in collaborative processes, the critical role of a few people emerged. Extensive interviews with them and reflection on my own participation in the project confirmed their unique and un-theorised role, contributing critically to improving planning and coordination of cross-sector collaborations.
Open Access
Connections Matter: Implicit infrastructures and Electricity Access in Witsand, Cape Town
(2022) Dipura, Romeo; Oldfield, Sophie; Selmeczi, Anna
For most residents living in Wits and, on Cape Town's north-western urban periphery, electricity access involves piecing together electricity wires and connecting them to Eskom transmission lines or tampering with Eskom prepaid meters and recharging with cheaper black market electricity vouchers. These practices require residents to circumvent Eskom's vouchers and prepaid meters in order to adapt Eskom electricity to their lived realities. In a context where Eskom electricity provision is sometimes absent, often unreliable, and largely unaffordable, residents engage diverse strategies to take charge of their own electricity inclusion. This research draws on over twenty months of fine-grained ethnographic work in Wits and, where I reside, which included journaling, transect walks, to map typologies of connections, participant observations, and semi structured interviews. Building on Storeys' (2021) notion of ‘implicit' infrastructures, in this thesis I substantiate how resident-made electricity connections prove a critical, although implicit, part of the wider electricity infrastructure system. While these connections are essential for residents' access, they are also dangerous and unsanctioned by Eskom. Resident-made electricity connections involve enduring bodily, material, legal and relational risks. These risks range from resident electrocutions and house-fires to Eskom penalties and disconnections. Drawing on a sociotechnical approach to infrastructure, I use the notion of ‘precarious power' to explore the mix of agency and precariousness that are entangled in the everyday practices of ordinary people making electricity connections. I argue that in improvising electricity access, residents in Wits and exercised their agency to circumvent, adapt and appropriate Eskom electricity. Yet in doing this they simultaneously endured the precariousness of the daily labors, bodily risks and contestations associated with their practices. In making this argument, I contribute to an understanding of urban residents' everyday infrastructural experiences through an analytical frame that is neither dismissive of their agency nor celebratory of their struggles.
Open Access
Data driven urbanism: challenges in implementing open data policy and digital transparency in the City of Cape Town
(2019) Dlamini, Majaha; Oldfield, Sophie; Odendaal, Nancy
As part of its quest to become the first digital African city, in 2014 the City of Cape Town adopted an open data policy, which was later coupled with an open data portal to make government data available for public access. This was touted as a novelty initiative as the City of Cape Town was the first African city to implement a policy of this nature. This open data initiative aimed at enhancing transparency and accountability as well as promoting inclusive economic participation for its citizens. Open data project managers from the city and external industry experts working on open data initiatives were interviewed to understand the current the state of open data within the city and how it worked with other stakeholders. The study draws on these interviews to present the current challenges experienced by the city from the city’s official point of view as well as from open data experts working closely with the city. To understand the practical experiences of how the city publishes data in its platforms, the study also extensively explored the city’s open data portal, as well as examining and commenting on the documented open data policy guidelines contrasted and compared to current practical experiences. To guide the objectives and analysis of the study, four key themes were adopted from literature; context, use, data and impact. Context focused on the overall context or environment at which open data in the city is provided as a public service, while use focused challenges on the uses of open data as well as it is users, data focused on the types of datasets published on the portal as well as the technical challenges in publishing them. Lastly impact looked at the expected benefits and goals of the city’s open data policy. The study through the themes highlighted the ongoing challenges at various levels that the city experience as they implement and develop the open data policy. Overall it was noted that open data was not a goal but continuous challenges were arising daily while implementing and developing the policy- while it was noted that various stakeholders within and outside government had to collaborate to effectively meet the required open data standards.
Open Access
Demystifying the database: the state's crafting of Cape Town's housing allocation tool and its technologies
(2022) Greyling, Saskia; Oldfield, Sophie
The City of Cape Town's integrated housing database is used to manage the allocation of state housing across the city. It is a technical intervention in a contested and politicised context. On the surface, it appears to be an effective state tool that determines eligibility for housing assistance, and subsequently, the implementation of fair housing allocation practices. This veneer of technicality, however, conceals the complex state work involved in the production, maintenance, and use of the database. In the context of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democratic modes of governance, this research examines the database to engage with the state's work in producing tools for legitimate decision-making. As a state tool, the database and its functioning has been largely rendered invisible, either dismissed because of the opacity of its functioning, or positioned as a political myth, a smokescreen that conceals the state's inability to deliver on its housing promises. However, a technopolitical lens challenges researchers to pay attention to the form, function and development of state tools; nuances that are too often overlooked. In this research I therefore examine the housing database as a legitimate state tool for fair housing allocations. Using archival material, I explore the making of the database. Based predominantly on interview material with key informants, I investigate the production of the data held within the database. I consider, through policy and document analysis, the use of the database and its data in the actual practice of housing allocation decision-making. In sum, the research tracks the ideological, political, bureaucratic, and technological shifts that have shaped the database over three decades of housing allocation reform. Through this analysis of the development, form, and function of the database, I substantiate the ways in which the database works as a mode of governance, crafted by the state, that builds and sustains housing allocation decision-making. Demystifying the database as a state tool highlights its gradations, textures and contradictions. Its analysis makes visible the state craft that is key to its development, form, and function – what shapes the state's housing allocation decision-making. This analysis opens up the South African housing crisis beyond the impasse where citizen need exceeds the state's capacity to supply houses, and shifts the narrative away from an ambivalent, unwilling or uncaring state, to one that makes visible and describes the state's craft on housing allocation decision-making.
Open Access
Do solar water heaters improve access to hot water and reduce electricity costs? : the complexities of implementing energy poverty interventions in South African Townships : a case study of Nyanga Township
(2011) Maboda, Sivuyile; Oldfield, Sophie; Prasad, Gisela
Solar energy is abundantly available in South Africa, but it is a highly under-utilised resource. One way of efficiently using the resource is solar water heating (swh), a natural process whereby hot water for domestic and/or industrial use is heated by the sun. In 2009, a national swh strategy was drafted by the Department of Energy, which specifies a target to install 1 million heaters in households by 2015. Provincial and local governments have also developed their own swh strategies and the roll out of swhs has started in some municipalities (i.e. the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and the City of Cape Town).
Open Access
Efficiency and equity : implementation of the free basic water provision in the Drakenstein and Stellenbosch municipalities
(2004) Kelly, Kori Aisha; Oldfield, Sophie
Includes bibliographical references.
Open Access
Energy policy, informal sector and urban household livelihoods : a case study of meat traders in the Western Cape
(2000) Qase, Nomawethu; Oldfield, Sophie
This dissertation highlights the links between energy, informal sector and urban household livelihoods. The critical argument is that energy is a key input in some of the informal sector activities such as street food vending which is dominant in urban environments. The energy needs of the street food vendors are easily visible to the eye, because street food vendors are found everywhere on the street comers, taxi ranks, and other places where there is a proven flow of people. Despite this, the energy needs for informal sector activities are not well integrated into policies and strategies aimed at supporting the development of the informal sector. To address this situation, it is recommended that energy policy makers need to revise the current conceptualisation of the household sub-sector in order to incorporate energy planning for income generation.
Open Access
Enterprising Somali refugees in Cape Town: beyond informality, beyond the spaza shop
(2019) Hassan, Abdullahi Ali; Oldfield, Sophie; Gastrow, Vanya
Since the dawn of democracy, South Africa has received high numbers of refugees from around the African continent in particular. One of the largest groups of refugees, Somalis, have established numerous enterprises in South African cities, concentrated in micro and small business sectors, particularly in the grocery and textile industries. The presence of Somali entrepreneurs and their role in the South African economy is contested, framed in relation to township informal economies and debates on xenophobia. Research to-date, however, focuses almost exclusively on Somali informal micro-enterprises in the spaza shop sector. To address this gap in the research and debate, this thesis examines Somali entrepreneurs, their development of varied formal enterprises, and their business strategies. I demonstrate in that these small formal businesses operate beyond the micro township-based informal spaza sector, building networks between township and city formal economies, and linking multiple economic sectors. In doing so, they act as a medium between producers of goods and general city consumers. The research demonstrates that Somali immigrant entrepreneurs can be considered what Bonacich (1973) describes as “middleman minorities.” This argument builds on qualitative research in Cape Town with Somali refugees who own formal small businesses that employ between five and a hundred employees. I draw on their histories, examine the evolution of their businesses, to substantiate how as newcomers - refugees, with limited knowledge about South African business dynamics, and little access to resources of the country - they managed to find their feet in business in varied ways. I show how Bellville as Cape Town’s Little Mogadishu, acts as a business hub and melting pot, a place to meet, to work together and connect their businesses to the rest of the city. From these histories, experiences, and networks, I analyse the business strategies that Somali entrepreneurs draw on, which include partnerships, shareholding, the building of trust, and their own mobility. I also investigate what enabled them to get a foot in the door when they first arrived, find new business opportunities, and access new markets in the city, region, and in some cases beyond. I argue that Somali immigrant entrepreneurs have created a diverse set of complex formal businesses, ranging from the sale of textiles, the processing of animal products, to consumer household goods. Through these businesses, these entrepreneurs have created jobs, new economic networks, new products, and extended markets, as well as physical retail and wholesale spaces. In making this argument, this research offers a better understanding of entrepreneurial work and its logics in the Cape Town Somali immigrant community. Their own experiences as entrepreneurs, as well as their business strategies, exceed by far narratives of informality, the spaza shop sector, and experiences of violence and xenophobia. This research broadens understandings of immigrant entrepreneurial activity in South African cities, and shift existing negative perceptions that depict refugees and immigrants as burdens on host communities and cities. I hope the research might also help inform the formulation of relevant policies for transitioning informal micro-enterprises in the country into small formal enterprises, one strategy that might address the critical issue of high unemployment in South African cities and society.
Open Access
'Free Basic Water' and cost recovery : impact on low-income households in Grabouw
(2005) Peters, Karen; Oldfield, Sophie
On democratisation, the South African government faced the enormous challenge of providing services to those disadvantaged by apartheid. In the area of water provision, the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry implemented a policy of cost recovery to enable local government to become financially sustainable. However, as this policy allowed municipalities to cut off the water supply of consumers who defaulted in their municipal payments, government's stance on non-payment - that it was a residual culture of the rates' boycotts of the apartheid era - drew fire, with critics arguing that the real issue was about the affordability of services, particular in terms of such a basic service as water provision. This dissertation examines the reasons for non-payment for municipal services and the implications of the policy of cost recovery for impoverished households in the small town of Grabouw in the Western Cape. A detailed household analysis demonstrates that non-payment for services is related to unemployment and the consequent inability to afford services.
Open Access
The Lagunya Lacuna : contestations of legitimacy and agency in housing allocation in a Black Local Authority, 1983-1994
(2005) Zweig, Patricia; Oldfield, Sophie
In this thesis I draw on experiences in a particular neighbourhood within the Lagunya townships, New Crossroads, in order to examine the realities of local government housing administration at the local scale. The New Crossroads housing allocation process illustrates the insider/outsider polemic and the ways in which complex interrelationships developed between the local authorities and the community leadership structures, between the New Crossroads community and the residents of townships surrounding them, and among the residents of the New Crossroads community themselves. Such interactions speak to the ways in which both state and community actors adopted multiple and sometimes-dissimilar identities in order to access resources such as housing and to navigate the highly politicised terrain of the townships during the BLA era.
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Making Sense of Multiple Conversations: Research, Teaching, and Activism in and with Communities in South African Cities
(2007) Oldfield, Sophie
In the South African context, our research is produced in multiple conversations that include conventional academic disciplinary communities, but extends beyond the university, engaging with a range of social and political institutions and actors. As a result, the relationship between research, theory and politics frames our research in explicit and implicit ways. I draw here on my own practice as a researcher, teacher, and activist to examine the ways in which my engagement with community organizations articulates into conventional university activities of research and teaching; but, as importantly, the ways in which it is shaped by community-based agenda that not only inform the research but sustain the relationships critical to my research. I conclude that the overlapping nature of research, teaching and activism is more than a political and contextual imperative, potentially it is a theoretical strength that adds depth, reflexivity, and, in the relationships built, the construction of robust urban knowledge.
Open Access
More than an apartheid loss : recovering and remembering Fairview, a 'lost' Group Areas history
(2014) Salo, Inge; Oldfield, Sophie
Against the background of the Group Areas Act (1950) and the consequent forced removals this thesis recovers the history of Fairview, Port Elizabeth. I examine how this neighbourhood is remembered through oral histories, family photographs and memory maps, alongside archival, media and literary representations of the area at the time. I demonstrate that despite the forced removals of its residents and the physical destruction of a neighbourhood, Fairview continues to be actively re-imagined, in the present, in varied unpredictable ways. I draw upon earlier research about Apartheid forced removals and how the places affected are remembered by people who lived the trauma of forced eviction on racial grounds. I also draw upon my own qualitative research conducted in 2012 and 2013 to explore, the representation of place in both personal memories and archival material. Through this mix I present Fairview’s history of dispossession as a result of the Group Areas Act, and highlight the violence exercised through Apartheid-era legislation. However, I also present rich family and community histories comprised of meaningful relationships that were nurtured around enduring institutions which provide insight into the ‘everyday’ makings of a neighbourhood and its residents. By allowing these interconnected narratives to shape the memory of Fairview I demonstrate that recovering this history is about more than remembering an Apartheid loss. This work contributes to a broader project of refiguring and expanding the archive in post-Apartheid South Africa, a body of materials, that recognise its character as being plagued by colonial and later Apartheid biases (Hamilton, Harris and Reid, 2002: 9). I focus on broadening memories of places in which Apartheidera Group Areas removals and its destruction were imposed. To explore the multiple dimensions of these types of spaces I understand them as embodied social contexts which provide structure to inhabitants through multiple layers of community (Till, 2012: 9, 10, 2008: 108). This approach assists me to explore responses to acts of trauma like forced removals and demolitions, highlighting the various place-making activities through which people attempt to reconnect with their former neighbourhoods and lives, expressed in recollections, images and rituals which are central to how places of memory are remembered and reimagined (Till, 2003: 297). In the context of Fairview the mix of public and state archives with family repositories was central to recuperating and recovering a fuller history of Group Areas Removals and highlighting its meaningfulness in the present.
Open Access
A 'paradox of the Commons'? : The planning and everyday management of Green Point Park
(2016) De Vries, Leani; Oldfield, Sophie
Cape Town's Green Point Park is a legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, built on the then dilapidated, former Common. Initially heavily contested, it is now a beautiful, popular, and well-used public space that attracts diverse people from all over the city. The thesis narrates its paradoxical story by drawing on historical and archival data, park observations, a transect walk, as well as qualitative interviews with city planners, park management, service providers, and the formerly sceptical local public. First, the thesis reflects on the conflictual planning process that led to this new urban park and a changed vision and function for the Common. Second, it explores the park's everyday operation, the management and maintenance that are central to its present acceptance and safe, clean and pristine condition. I argue that the City's planning 'by exception' of the park, and the public-private management vehicle is central to its success and differentiates it from how others operate in the city. I suggest that this neoliberally planned and managed public park produces a paradox: it has restored this space once again as a usable and accessible public 'common'. This argument challenges a literature that assumes neoliberal forms of planning and regulation to limit, at best, or destroy urban spaces, resulting in a similar 'tragedy of the commons' (Hardin, 1968) or 'end of public space' (Sorkin, 1992; Mitchell, 1995). In contrast, the thesis builds on Jerram's (2015) critique in that the traditional commons too often become 'historical fantasy,' a theorised ideal and almost impossible reality, in the contemporary neoliberal era. This more nuanced assessment of the contemporary commons is important in the South African urban context, where there is great concern that neoliberal, market-led, world city agendas perpetuate exclusion and historical legacies of segregation (Marais, 2013). In a 'paradox of the commons', this publicly regulated, privately maintained free-to-the-public park has restored what was previously a Commons, albeit an unsafe and largely unused space. The Green Point Urban Park suggests a need to 'rethink' parks and their planning and management in contemporary and neoliberal post-apartheid South Africa. They do not necessarily result in a certain 'tragedy of the commons' or 'end of public space'.
Open Access
The performativity of sustainability: Assessing the continuity of artisanal fishing livelihoods in Galápagos' precarious waters
(2016) Burke, Adam; Fuh, Divine; Oldfield, Sophie
This work is about how people develop strategies to make sense of and to deal with the challenges of situating themselves within the global push for 'sustainability.' Sustainability is a concept that I understand to be imagined, socially constructed, remade and ritualized as global actors tote the 'sustainable development' discourse globally and impose it upon local actors' practices. Such foisting typically promises to resolve socio-ecological problems by providing communities with certainties and stabilities such as redeeming issues linked to threatened eco-systems and local actors' precarious livelihoods therein. However, I argue that 'sustainability' indeed fails to fulfil its ideological aspirations. In this light, I take the stance that sustainability is performative, and therefore, enacted through sets of relationships which require critical interrogation. I use the example of artisanal fishermen in the Galápagos Islands to demonstrate how: (i) they deal with local managing authorities and the enterprise of sustainability that disturb their daily lives on land and at sea; (ii) they situate themselves within co-management processes; and (iii) their performativities allow them to make sense of and to deal with their precarious livelihoods by remaking, challenging, and subverting 'sustainability' in effort to remain relevant in Galápagos' evolving eco-political landscape. This occurs, I argue, as fishermen enact performativities that are situated in their material practices, collective, and authoritative. Notions of performativity thus contribute to conceptual understandings of how global actors' ambitions to remake local actors' practices 'sustainably' produces and distributes precarity – and therefore exposes how the latter deal with the precarity resulting from their attempts to remain relevant in Galápagos' eco-political landscape over time.
Open Access
Platform work in Bengaluru: worker articulations and platform design in India's informal economy
(2025) Surie, Aditi; Oldfield, Sophie
The global North has a discursive hold telling us how digital labour platforms impact workers. The fear inherent in this discourse comes from the fact that many global North workers are faced with only ‘casualized' platform work rather than job opportunities that come with career progression, steady increments to their incomes, and welfare entitlements. These stories travel placelessly like theories of technology do, hiding how workers especially in the global South experience risk, vulnerability, social structures, and state-citizen relations. This study seeks to undo such erasure, bringing to the front what happens when a universalist rhetoric is rooted in place: in the Global South. Workers in the global South work without contracts, with little career progression and do not receive the bulk of state welfare from their work identity. What is the experience of platform work for these workers? This study situates this question in India, specifically Bengaluru, a metropolitan city in southern India. Indian workers operate in markets that are deeply moulded by regional economic histories, social conventions like caste and filial kinship. Labour platforms too encounter informality in the process of creating platform services that stand apart from informal services and jobs. The design and governance choices on workers can reveal if there is a change – reinstituonalization or alteration – of informality by platforms. I use a dual focus on worker and firm to understand platform work from India. I ask the worker how they perceive elements of platform work from their inherent ability to compare informal work and platform work. Then I ask the firm how they design work for workers – as they design and govern interfaces, protocols, systems all from scratch. Bengaluru – know both for a vibrant informal economy for its workers and migrant workers from surrounding regions – and for being a startup capital for India – is the site for this study. I use ethnographic methods with workers and firms. For workers: in-depth and life history interviews and worker's survey offer data to understand how platform workers navigate Bengaluru's labour market and the platform. I speak to drivers and tradespeople namely electricians, plumbers, and carpenters, on mobility and home services platforms respectively to situate questions of the future of work in Bengaluru, India and as a signpost of the majority world in the global South. Platform work as defined by workers from the global South or majority world is contradictory because it holds opportunities for educated workers for whom education has not created social mobility, access to good quality jobs, or a sense of fulfillment from using their skills. As a category of work, it exposes the volatility that workers are forced to manage because of dynamic incomes and changes to the rules of work despite the promise of continuous work from the platform, the investments they make, and constantly learning the changing algorithmic structure of gamified work. Platform work holds a fundamental tension in the majority world described through the three characteristic contradictions presented in this study. This study uses these characteristic contraindications to offer future research a way to better situate questions of the future of work in the Global South.
Open Access
Present and Active: Unpacking The Negotiated Logics of Container Street Traders in the Governance of a Ghanaian city
(2022) Amoah, Samuel Twumasi; Oldfield, Sophie
This research addresses a gap in contemporary scholarship on street trading and its governance in Ghanaian cities which predominantly focuses on the exclusionary policies that limit and, in some instances, aim to eliminate street trading. Container street traders play critical roles in the everyday governance of city streetscapes in Wa, a city in the Upper West Region of Ghana. In negotiating access to space by either renting, perching, buying, or constructing container stalls and setting up their trade, they shape the street and its built environment. Providing access to goods and services, container traders contribute to the street economy. Traders encounter and engage with a range of city actors in their everyday trading lives. They negotiate access to space, comply with regulations that govern the building of trading space and trade itself. In this thesis I examine the roles traders play in city governance, the logics which shapes the ways traders are legitimate actors, present and active in the city's streetscape. By examining street traders' negotiated logics (NL), the vital and diverse roles they play in city governance, I reposition the dominant conceptualisations of street traders, by portraying the varied ways container traders shape the city's streetscape and the regulations governing their trade. I draw on in-depth interviews and participant observations with traders and various city actors including land and container owners, city officials, and their representatives, I analyze the varied micro-practices that sustain trade, shape traders varied negotiated logics, and their roles in the city governance. Some traders enter street trading to make do, to survive. Others do so to move up, build a business, and become entrepreneurs. Some traders in their quests to reorganise their lives use street trading as a way of building an anchor and refuge in the city. These varied negotiated logics shape the ways in which traders engage with city officials and regulations, specifically how they navigate paying tolls, fees, and rents. Some traders participate and comply with regulations to maintain the rights to trade and not to worry. Some traders work to renegotiate to postpone and delay compliance, while some dodge regulations by being strategically absent. In making this argument, I contribute to calls in current scholarship to acknowledge the heterogeneity of street trade and its varied roles in city governance. Rather than victims, street traders are critical actors whose varied and negotiated trading logics shape city governance, its built environment, and the street economy.

Browsing by Author "Oldfield, Sophie"

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