R3_Miraftab 2005
INSURGENCY AND SPACES OF ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP
Overall argument:
Insurgent citizenship challenges the hypocrisy of neoliberalism: which promises formal and equal grounds, rights and access, but denies it through privatization to those who cannot consume it.
"market-led principles that place cost recovery at the center of local governments’ policies and that prioritize the interests of the banks and private developers over the shelter needs of the poor have resulted in the failure of the housing policy to rectify the injustices of the past or to secure the new constitutional right to basic shelter.”
Failure of formal channels of recourse has forced the excluded citizens to adopt means to assert their right on the city/state.
Generally, defiant collective action (enabled by the AEC) and tactics vary and evolve to suit the situation.
Criminalization of poverty and “dehumanization of the poor”
"A planning practice that relies not merely on the high commands of the state but on situated practices of citizens entails an epistemological shift (how we know what we know) with important implications for planning education, moving away from the notion of an expert and scientific knowledge to an ethnographic one.”
The role of planning to be about facilitation rathe than problem-solving
Case Study and research methods:
Anti-eviction Campaign (AEC) in Cape Town, South Africa
Interviews conducted to better understand how/why/by whom these communities are created, and how to assert their rights.
Citizens vs. State (evictions at Mitchell’s Plain) and Citizens vs. Private Banks (Mandela Park)
Conclusion:
Insurgencies emerge in the struggle to achieve the right to have a daily life with dignity mainly in self-built areas
Insurgencies propose new order of active citizenship - catalyze urban conflicts that arise from the demands of dignity and equity in the construction of the city