Edgar Pieterse
Biographic Data
| ID | 220282 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Edgar Pieterse |
| GIVEN NAMES | Edgar |
| FAMILY NAME | Pieterse |
| SIGNATURE | PIETERSE E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9992-3267 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 267 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The Creative Politics of Legibility
This conversation among a trio of interdisciplinary practitioners moves nimbly between a palace, a shed, and a kitchen-with a trickster spider as totem. Reflections on a new opera based in African folklore produced as a multimodal collaboration in Europe extends to the DIY-DIT principles of independent art spaces and the backyard appeal of a tiny space for big ideas, and concludes with a thought experiment for a new kind of urban incubator that m…
Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities
Case studies of metropolitan cities in nine African countries from Egypt in the north to three in West and Central Africa, two in East Africa and three in Southern Africa make up the empirical foundation of this publication. The interrelated themes addressed in these chapters the national influence on urban development, the popular dynamics that shape urban development and the global currents on urban development make up its framework. All author…
Cities and Social Progress
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
African dreams: Locating urban infrastructure in the 2030 sustainable developmental agenda
This paper examines African urban infrastructure and service delivery as an entry point for connecting African aspirations with the harsh developmental imperatives of urban management, creating a dialogue between scholarly knowledge and sustainable development policy aspirations. We note a shift to multi-nodal urban governance and highlight the significance of the synthesis of social, economic and ecological values in a normative vision of what a…
New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times
Urban governance and spatial transformation ambitions in Johannesburg
Urban governance has been thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. A number of the 17 goals assume strong urban governments with the requisite powers and financial capacities to restructure the functioning of regional economies so as to establish transition pathways toward more sustainable societies. South Africa, and Johannesburg’s metropolitan government in parti…
Translational Global Praxis: Rethinking Methods and Modes of African Urban Research
Advancing global urbanism depends upon making Africa's cities a more dominant part of the global urban narrative. Constructing a more legitimate research agenda for African cities, however, necessitates a repositioning of conventional modes of research. To achieve intellectual and political traction in what are typical African research conditions-where human needs are great, information is poor, conditions of governance are complex and the realit…
Africa’s Urban Revolution
Democratic Renovations and Affective Political Imaginaries
Both the state and radical civil actors tend to perceive and define ordinary citizens in circumscribed ways; as rational actors who need to be persuaded through rational argument about why their participation is necessary for the democratic functioning of society. The assumption is that once people have been exposed to compelling arguments and incentives, they will activate their engagement with politics. Despite South Africa's embracing of parti…
Introduction: Rogue Urbanisms
Grasping the unknowable: Coming to grips with African urbanisms
The purpose of this essay is to make a case for why a much more differentiated and complex theoretical approach to contemporary African urbanism is required. It builds on an important body of work that has emerged over the course of the past two decades that seeks to explicate and theorise the specificity of everyday practices of ordinary Africans as they endeavour to stitch together livelihoods, aspirations, socialities, aesthetics and space ami…
Cityness and African Urban Development
The 'Right to the City: Institutional Imperatives of a Developmental State
Under conditions of globalization large cities present unique challenges for poverty reduction and the realization of rights. The urbanization of poverty also underscores the imperative of downscaling the emerging debate about the developmental state to the city scale. The arguments in this article start from the proposition that a universal rights agenda can and should be fulfilled as an alternative to neoliberal aspirations, and that to achieve…
Hip-hop cultures and political agency in Brazil and South Africa
It is assumed in the article that the contemporary urban condition is marked by an increased pluralistic intensity in cities. Coupled to this shift in the nature of the urban context, one can also observe a proliferation of sites of political engagement and agency, some of which are formally tied to the various institutional forums of the state, and many that are defined by their insistence to stand apart from the state, asserting autonomy and cl…
African Reverberations of the Mumbai Attacks
In the wake of Mumbai terror attacks one is forced to reflect on the nature and representation of urban violence across the global South. It is clear that only certain kinds of violence and upheaval warrant attention in the public domain as reflected in the world's globalized media. This observation immediately forces one to consider the deafening silence about the pervasive execution and symbolic order of terror in much of Africa. Indeed, 88 per…
City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development
Cities are the future. In the past two decades, a global urban revolution has taken place, mainly in the South. The 'mega-cities' of the developing world are home to over 10 million people each and even smaller cities are experiencing unprecedented population surges. The problems surrounding this influx of people slums, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance have been well-documented. This book is a powerful indictment of the current consen…
Culturas da juventude e a mediação da exclusão/inclusão racial e urbana no Brasil e na África do Sul
Neste artigo assume-se que a condição urbana contemporânea está fortemente marcada por uma crescente pluralidade. Associada a esta mudança na natureza do contexto urbano, pode-se também observar a proliferação de lugares (sites) de engajamento político e de ação, sendo alguns deles formalmente ligados a fóruns institucionais do Estado, mas muitos outros podem ser caracterizados pela sua insistência em permanecer fora do Estado, uma forma de afirm…
Writing the Lines of Connection: Unveiling the Strange Language of Urbanization
Across urban studies there is an increasing preoccupation with the forms of articulation that link a multiplicity of cities across a region often known as the 'Global South'. How do cities such as Jakarta, São Paolo, Dakar, Lagos, Mumbai, Hanoi, Beirut, Dubai, Karachi, for example, take note of each other and engage in various transactions with each other in ways that are only weakly mediated by the currently predominant notions of urbanism? What…
Tracing the ‘integration’ thread in the South African urban development policy tapestry
Blurring boundaries: Fragments of an urban research agenda
Building with Ruins and Dreams: Some Thoughts on Realising Integrated Urban Development in South Africa through Crisis
It is often lamented that South African cities are beset by interminable crises: segregation, inequality, fragmentation, violence, the Aids epidemic and so on. This lament is premised on the assumption that somehow urban challenges must be stabilised, brought under control through analytical or policy tools and then the ideals of urban integration and holism can come to pass. This paper challenges this conception of urban development policy and p…
Untangling ‘integration’ in urban development policy debates
From divided to integrated city: Critical overview of the emerging metropolitan governance system in Cape Town
Urban social movements in South Africa in a ‘globalising’ era
South African NGOs and the trials of transition
The post-election period in South Africa has been marked by trials for the NGO sector, in spite of its pivotal role in the anti-apartheid struggle. The article explores certain developments within the NGO sector, and between the NGOs and the government, to present tentative interpretations of these processes. A schematic background to the NGO sector firstly contextualises the problems now confronting these organisations. The second part provides …
New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times
The 'Right to the City: Institutional Imperatives of a Developmental State
Under conditions of globalization large cities present unique challenges for poverty reduction and the realization of rights. The urbanization of poverty also underscores the imperative of downscaling the emerging debate about the developmental state to the city scale. The arguments in this article start from the proposition that a universal rights agenda can and should be fulfilled as an alternative to neoliberal aspirations, and that to achieve…
Grasping the unknowable: Coming to grips with African urbanisms
The purpose of this essay is to make a case for why a much more differentiated and complex theoretical approach to contemporary African urbanism is required. It builds on an important body of work that has emerged over the course of the past two decades that seeks to explicate and theorise the specificity of everyday practices of ordinary Africans as they endeavour to stitch together livelihoods, aspirations, socialities, aesthetics and space ami…
Translational Global Praxis: Rethinking Methods and Modes of African Urban Research
Advancing global urbanism depends upon making Africa's cities a more dominant part of the global urban narrative. Constructing a more legitimate research agenda for African cities, however, necessitates a repositioning of conventional modes of research. To achieve intellectual and political traction in what are typical African research conditions-where human needs are great, information is poor, conditions of governance are complex and the realit…
Building with Ruins and Dreams: Some Thoughts on Realising Integrated Urban Development in South Africa through Crisis
It is often lamented that South African cities are beset by interminable crises: segregation, inequality, fragmentation, violence, the Aids epidemic and so on. This lament is premised on the assumption that somehow urban challenges must be stabilised, brought under control through analytical or policy tools and then the ideals of urban integration and holism can come to pass. This paper challenges this conception of urban development policy and p…
Urban governance and spatial transformation ambitions in Johannesburg
Urban governance has been thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. A number of the 17 goals assume strong urban governments with the requisite powers and financial capacities to restructure the functioning of regional economies so as to establish transition pathways toward more sustainable societies. South Africa, and Johannesburg’s metropolitan government in parti…
African dreams: Locating urban infrastructure in the 2030 sustainable developmental agenda
This paper examines African urban infrastructure and service delivery as an entry point for connecting African aspirations with the harsh developmental imperatives of urban management, creating a dialogue between scholarly knowledge and sustainable development policy aspirations. We note a shift to multi-nodal urban governance and highlight the significance of the synthesis of social, economic and ecological values in a normative vision of what a…
Introduction: Rogue Urbanisms
Hip-hop cultures and political agency in Brazil and South Africa
It is assumed in the article that the contemporary urban condition is marked by an increased pluralistic intensity in cities. Coupled to this shift in the nature of the urban context, one can also observe a proliferation of sites of political engagement and agency, some of which are formally tied to the various institutional forums of the state, and many that are defined by their insistence to stand apart from the state, asserting autonomy and cl…
Democratic Renovations and Affective Political Imaginaries
Both the state and radical civil actors tend to perceive and define ordinary citizens in circumscribed ways; as rational actors who need to be persuaded through rational argument about why their participation is necessary for the democratic functioning of society. The assumption is that once people have been exposed to compelling arguments and incentives, they will activate their engagement with politics. Despite South Africa's embracing of parti…
Writing the Lines of Connection: Unveiling the Strange Language of Urbanization
Across urban studies there is an increasing preoccupation with the forms of articulation that link a multiplicity of cities across a region often known as the 'Global South'. How do cities such as Jakarta, São Paolo, Dakar, Lagos, Mumbai, Hanoi, Beirut, Dubai, Karachi, for example, take note of each other and engage in various transactions with each other in ways that are only weakly mediated by the currently predominant notions of urbanism? What…
Civil societies in an internationalized Africa
African Reverberations of the Mumbai Attacks
In the wake of Mumbai terror attacks one is forced to reflect on the nature and representation of urban violence across the global South. It is clear that only certain kinds of violence and upheaval warrant attention in the public domain as reflected in the world's globalized media. This observation immediately forces one to consider the deafening silence about the pervasive execution and symbolic order of terror in much of Africa. Indeed, 88 per…
Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities
Case studies of metropolitan cities in nine African countries from Egypt in the north to three in West and Central Africa, two in East Africa and three in Southern Africa make up the empirical foundation of this publication. The interrelated themes addressed in these chapters the national influence on urban development, the popular dynamics that shape urban development and the global currents on urban development make up its framework. All author…
South African NGOs and the trials of transition
The post-election period in South Africa has been marked by trials for the NGO sector, in spite of its pivotal role in the anti-apartheid struggle. The article explores certain developments within the NGO sector, and between the NGOs and the government, to present tentative interpretations of these processes. A schematic background to the NGO sector firstly contextualises the problems now confronting these organisations. The second part provides …
The Creative Politics of Legibility
This conversation among a trio of interdisciplinary practitioners moves nimbly between a palace, a shed, and a kitchen-with a trickster spider as totem. Reflections on a new opera based in African folklore produced as a multimodal collaboration in Europe extends to the DIY-DIT principles of independent art spaces and the backyard appeal of a tiny space for big ideas, and concludes with a thought experiment for a new kind of urban incubator that m…
Civil societies in an internationalized Africa
Urban social movements in South Africa in a ‘globalising’ era
South African NGOs and the trials of transition
The post-election period in South Africa has been marked by trials for the NGO sector, in spite of its pivotal role in the anti-apartheid struggle. The article explores certain developments within the NGO sector, and between the NGOs and the government, to present tentative interpretations of these processes. A schematic background to the NGO sector firstly contextualises the problems now confronting these organisations. The second part provides …
From divided to integrated city: Critical overview of the emerging metropolitan governance system in Cape Town
Untangling ‘integration’ in urban development policy debates
Blurring boundaries: Fragments of an urban research agenda
Building with Ruins and Dreams: Some Thoughts on Realising Integrated Urban Development in South Africa through Crisis
It is often lamented that South African cities are beset by interminable crises: segregation, inequality, fragmentation, violence, the Aids epidemic and so on. This lament is premised on the assumption that somehow urban challenges must be stabilised, brought under control through analytical or policy tools and then the ideals of urban integration and holism can come to pass. This paper challenges this conception of urban development policy and p…
Tracing the ‘integration’ thread in the South African urban development policy tapestry
City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development
Cities are the future. In the past two decades, a global urban revolution has taken place, mainly in the South. The 'mega-cities' of the developing world are home to over 10 million people each and even smaller cities are experiencing unprecedented population surges. The problems surrounding this influx of people slums, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance have been well-documented. This book is a powerful indictment of the current consen…
Culturas da juventude e a mediação da exclusão/inclusão racial e urbana no Brasil e na África do Sul
Neste artigo assume-se que a condição urbana contemporânea está fortemente marcada por uma crescente pluralidade. Associada a esta mudança na natureza do contexto urbano, pode-se também observar a proliferação de lugares (sites) de engajamento político e de ação, sendo alguns deles formalmente ligados a fóruns institucionais do Estado, mas muitos outros podem ser caracterizados pela sua insistência em permanecer fora do Estado, uma forma de afirm…
Writing the Lines of Connection: Unveiling the Strange Language of Urbanization
Across urban studies there is an increasing preoccupation with the forms of articulation that link a multiplicity of cities across a region often known as the 'Global South'. How do cities such as Jakarta, São Paolo, Dakar, Lagos, Mumbai, Hanoi, Beirut, Dubai, Karachi, for example, take note of each other and engage in various transactions with each other in ways that are only weakly mediated by the currently predominant notions of urbanism? What…
African Reverberations of the Mumbai Attacks
In the wake of Mumbai terror attacks one is forced to reflect on the nature and representation of urban violence across the global South. It is clear that only certain kinds of violence and upheaval warrant attention in the public domain as reflected in the world's globalized media. This observation immediately forces one to consider the deafening silence about the pervasive execution and symbolic order of terror in much of Africa. Indeed, 88 per…
Cityness and African Urban Development
The 'Right to the City: Institutional Imperatives of a Developmental State
Under conditions of globalization large cities present unique challenges for poverty reduction and the realization of rights. The urbanization of poverty also underscores the imperative of downscaling the emerging debate about the developmental state to the city scale. The arguments in this article start from the proposition that a universal rights agenda can and should be fulfilled as an alternative to neoliberal aspirations, and that to achieve…
Hip-hop cultures and political agency in Brazil and South Africa
It is assumed in the article that the contemporary urban condition is marked by an increased pluralistic intensity in cities. Coupled to this shift in the nature of the urban context, one can also observe a proliferation of sites of political engagement and agency, some of which are formally tied to the various institutional forums of the state, and many that are defined by their insistence to stand apart from the state, asserting autonomy and cl…
Introduction: Rogue Urbanisms
Grasping the unknowable: Coming to grips with African urbanisms
The purpose of this essay is to make a case for why a much more differentiated and complex theoretical approach to contemporary African urbanism is required. It builds on an important body of work that has emerged over the course of the past two decades that seeks to explicate and theorise the specificity of everyday practices of ordinary Africans as they endeavour to stitch together livelihoods, aspirations, socialities, aesthetics and space ami…
Democratic Renovations and Affective Political Imaginaries
Both the state and radical civil actors tend to perceive and define ordinary citizens in circumscribed ways; as rational actors who need to be persuaded through rational argument about why their participation is necessary for the democratic functioning of society. The assumption is that once people have been exposed to compelling arguments and incentives, they will activate their engagement with politics. Despite South Africa's embracing of parti…
Africa’s Urban Revolution
Translational Global Praxis: Rethinking Methods and Modes of African Urban Research
Advancing global urbanism depends upon making Africa's cities a more dominant part of the global urban narrative. Constructing a more legitimate research agenda for African cities, however, necessitates a repositioning of conventional modes of research. To achieve intellectual and political traction in what are typical African research conditions-where human needs are great, information is poor, conditions of governance are complex and the realit…
New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times
Urban governance and spatial transformation ambitions in Johannesburg
Urban governance has been thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. A number of the 17 goals assume strong urban governments with the requisite powers and financial capacities to restructure the functioning of regional economies so as to establish transition pathways toward more sustainable societies. South Africa, and Johannesburg’s metropolitan government in parti…
Cities and Social Progress
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
African dreams: Locating urban infrastructure in the 2030 sustainable developmental agenda
This paper examines African urban infrastructure and service delivery as an entry point for connecting African aspirations with the harsh developmental imperatives of urban management, creating a dialogue between scholarly knowledge and sustainable development policy aspirations. We note a shift to multi-nodal urban governance and highlight the significance of the synthesis of social, economic and ecological values in a normative vision of what a…
Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities
Case studies of metropolitan cities in nine African countries from Egypt in the north to three in West and Central Africa, two in East Africa and three in Southern Africa make up the empirical foundation of this publication. The interrelated themes addressed in these chapters the national influence on urban development, the popular dynamics that shape urban development and the global currents on urban development make up its framework. All author…
Political science (23 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (11 works) · Geography (10 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Law (6 works)