Deborah Potts
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 81167 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Deborah Potts |
| NOMBRES | Deborah |
| APELLIDO | Potts |
| FIRMA | POTTS D |
| AFILIACIONES | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0221-4497 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 39 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 530 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1985 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2023 |
| ÍNDICE H | 15 |
Historicising the informal/formal dialectic
The relationship between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors has long been a topic of academic inquiry. Brandon Finn's paper which focuses on a case study of Zambia argues for a deeper historicisation of the formal/informal inquiry. In my reflections on Finn's paper I suggest that Zambia's lack of a pre-colonial urban tradition may create some limitations on the historicisation of ‘informality’ and the discussion might usefully be pushed beyond t…
Urban data and definitions in sub-Saharan Africa
Differing definitions of ‘urban’ settlements can make comparative analysis of trends in urbanisation difficult. Definitions used by many African countries include small settlements which may not exhibit the degree of labour specialisation away from agriculture that economic theories about urbanisation presume. This may mean there is a mismatch if urban data are presumed by decision-makers to be proxies for structural economic transformation. Afte…
Conflict and Collisions in Sub-Saharan African Urban Definitions
Analysing African urban data
Situating the BRICS Phenomenon within the Histories and Cultures of Southern Africa
Urban Experiences 'Beyond the West
This article, which is based on a keynote speech for an urban panel at the Journal of Southern African Studies’ conference, ‘Southern Africa beyond the West’, compares urban experiences in the region of southern Africa with those in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Urban processes are complex and wide ranging, and comparative analysis necessarily must focus on specific aspects. The focus here is on cities as places where peop…
Debates aboutAfrican urbanisation, migration and economic growth
There has been much debate about whether patterns of urbanisation in sub-SaharanAfrica defy the usually accepted links between migration flows and economic geographies. In the 1980s and 1990sAfrican urban economies were weak and increasingly informalised. The livelihoods of the majority of urban households became intensely vulnerable. However, the most widely accepted narrative was that rural-urban migration remained strong and rates of urban gro…
Urbanization in Africa
Viewpoint
For decades most analyses of urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa have started from the premise that towns and cities there are growing rapidly, both in absolute numbers and relative to the rural population. Levels of urbanisation – the proportion of a country’s population living in urban settlements – are thus asserted to be rising rapidly also. For many analyses, a central theme is the swift approach of the time when more than half of Africa’s po…
Challenging the Myths of Urban Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa
We Have A Tiger By The Tail
The development of urban settlements in Zimbabwe from the 1890s was obviously an essential element of the economic landscape as its territory was gradually transformed by the reach of metropolitan and white settler capital. Towns and cities are nodes of power, production and innovation which both structure and serve national space. In white settler states in sub-Saharan Africa their development was fraught with the tensions inherent in a politica…
Shanties, slums, breeze blocks and bricks
In 2005, the Zimbabwean government demolished huge swathes of low-income housing throughout the country's urban centres. This was one of the most radical reshapings of any country's urban housing patterns in the world's recent history. Yet any attempt to understand this event in relation to the current central concerns about the housing of the urban poor of agencies like UN Habitat, or the world's Millennium Development Goals, would only be parti…
Making a Livelihood in (And Beyond) the African City
The formal labour markets and economies of many cities in sub-Saharan Africa have been very weak for decades and this has led to significant adaptations in the nature of the livelihoods of most urban households. The lack of formal and reasonably paid jobs has also had a strong impact on population growth in cities, although this is often not recognized. This article reviews some of these trends and illustrates them with case study material from H…
The slowing of sub-Saharan Africa's urbanization
According to data from the most recent inter-census period, some sub-Saharan African countries are now urbanizing very slowly. Actual decreases in the level of urbanization are rare, but have been recorded for Zambia (where counter-urbanization began in the 1980s) and Côte d'Ivoire and Mali (where there is evidence of counter-urbanization during the 1990s). Countries where urbanization levels are stagnating or increasing very slowly, especially w…
Market institutions and urban food supply in West and Southern Africa
As the urban share of Africa's population increases, the importance of understanding how food supply is shaped by market institutions has grown. However, this topic has received little attention from policy makers and researchers despite the implications of market institutions and regulatory systems for livelihoods and poverty. This paper reviews the existing literature on market intermediaries, access to selling spaces, finance for traders and s…
Rural mobility as a response to land shortages
Malawi is the most densely populated country in southern Africa, and its economy and the livelihoods of the vast majority of its people are dependent on agriculture. Rural land is, therefore, a critical resource. Malawi is divided into three Regions and during the colonial period, such economic development as did occur tended to be concentrated in the Southern Region. The Northern Region was often characterised, by contrast, as the ‘dead North’. …
All my hopes and dreams are shattered’
Restoring Order'? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is experiencing a profound economic crisis, which has devastated the livelihoods of most of its urban population and created conditions of extreme poverty in its towns. Since independence, the state has generally adhered to housing policies that have made it both difficult and expensive for low-income urban residents to comply with legal housing requirements. However, in comparison to most other sub-Saharan African countries, in Zimbabwe…
Counter-urbanisation on the Zambian Copperbelt? Interpretations and Implications
For the past 20 years, the population of Zambia has been gradually ruralising, or de-urbanising. For a country which was once seen as emblematic of the process of African urbanisation, and was very often cited (erroneously) as being among the first in sub-Saharan Africa to have reached the stage where over half the population was urban, this is a dramatic shift. This paper has both an empirical and theoretical element. Empirically, it seeks to de…
African Urban Economies
Are Africa's most populous and economically dominant cities a force to reckon with in the twenty-first century? This book analyzes the economies of East and Southern Africa's 'apex' cities, probing ho
Socio-Economic Stress, Health and Child Nutritional Status in Zimbabwe at a Time of Economic Structural Adjustment
Leon A. Bijlmakers, Mary T. Bassett and David M. Sanders, Socio-economic Stress, Health and Child Nutritional Status in Zimbabwe at a Time of Economic Structural Adjustment: a three-year longitudinal study. Research report 105. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998, 127 pp., £6.95 (US 18.95), ISBN 91 7106 435 4. - Volume 71 Issue 3
Fertility in Southern Africa
Over the past twenty to thirty years, a silent revolution has occurred, and is still occurring, in human fertility across the region of southern Africa. In a number of countries - most notably, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho - there is hard evidence of really significant declines in fertility. In these countries, the total fertility rate (TFR)' today is around three to four children, and in the first three countries this represents …
Urban Unemployment and Migrants in Africa
Unemployment is a major problem in urban centres in sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of policies associated with structural adjustment programmes has frequently meant major formal job losses in both the public and private sectors. Although it is widely recognized that there has been a major (further) shift into the informal sector, it is also often claimed that 'unemployment' rates have greatly increased. When it is also assumed that net rural-urba…
Worker-peasants and Farmer-housewives in Africa
In much of southern Africa, migrancy has for generations been incorporated into the livelihoods systems of millions of rural families. The regional dimensions vary, particularly where there was very inequitable division of land between racial groups during the era of white minority regimes, the dependence of rural households on migrants' remittances if fundamental to their survival. From a structural perspective, the impact of such migration has …
Basics are now a luxury
This paper describes differences in the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Policy (ESAP) on Zimbabwe's rural and urban areas through the views of recent migrants to Harare. Although the outcomes of ESAP have been more acutely felt in the city than in the countryside, rural populations have also suffered from increases in the prices of basic commodities and in public services fees. Retrenchment and increasing poverty in the city affect r…
Shall We Go Home? Increasing Urban Poverty in African Cities and Migration Processes
The impact of economic decline in 1980s as well as that of IMF structural adjustment programs on urban incomes in Africa is explored. The author notes that in addition to devastating real income of a large proportion of urban population the gap between real rural incomes and real urban incomes has often narrowed considerably. It appears that rate of urban growth in some African countries has slowed considerably and there is also some evidence tha…
The slowing of sub-Saharan Africa's urbanization
According to data from the most recent inter-census period, some sub-Saharan African countries are now urbanizing very slowly. Actual decreases in the level of urbanization are rare, but have been recorded for Zambia (where counter-urbanization began in the 1980s) and Côte d'Ivoire and Mali (where there is evidence of counter-urbanization during the 1990s). Countries where urbanization levels are stagnating or increasing very slowly, especially w…
Restoring Order'? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is experiencing a profound economic crisis, which has devastated the livelihoods of most of its urban population and created conditions of extreme poverty in its towns. Since independence, the state has generally adhered to housing policies that have made it both difficult and expensive for low-income urban residents to comply with legal housing requirements. However, in comparison to most other sub-Saharan African countries, in Zimbabwe…
Challenging the Myths of Urban Dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa
Capital Relocation in Africa
Several developing countries have initiated relocation programmes over the past 30 years. Certain common issues can be shown to have contributed to these decisions: the peripheral location of the capital; its colonial connotations; and the need to spread regional development, allay regional or ethnic jealousies, and provide a focus for national pride. An examination of the transferral of Malawi's capital shows how these issues affected the decisi…
Debates aboutAfrican urbanisation, migration and economic growth
There has been much debate about whether patterns of urbanisation in sub-SaharanAfrica defy the usually accepted links between migration flows and economic geographies. In the 1980s and 1990sAfrican urban economies were weak and increasingly informalised. The livelihoods of the majority of urban households became intensely vulnerable. However, the most widely accepted narrative was that rural-urban migration remained strong and rates of urban gro…
Cities, society and social perception
Basics are now a luxury”
This paper describes differences in the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Policy (ESAP) on Zimbabwe's rural and urban areas through the views of recent migrants to Harare. Although the outcomes of ESAP have been more acutely felt in the city than in the countryside, rural populations have also suffered from increases in the prices of basic commodities and in public services fees. Retrenchment and increasing poverty in the city affect r…
Geography in a Changing South Africa
Geography in the 1990s is a dynamic and diverse discipline. South Africa offers a particularly rich and fascinating subject for research because of its unique blend of First and Third Worlds and the challenges presented by political change. The nineteen contributors to this volume debate geographical issues which are at the cutting edge of contemporary local, and international research on South Africa. Environmental degradation, urban and rural p…
Rural-urban linkages in contemporary Harare
Prior to independence in 1980 the urbanisation of Zimbabwe's African population occurred under a restrictive regime which prevented many urban workers from obtaining rights to remain permanently in urban areas. As a result many families had no choice but to maintain their links with the overcrowded rural areas, to which they would eventually have to return. Once restrictions were lifted it was to be expected that migration patterns would alter. S…
Urban data and definitions in sub-Saharan Africa
Differing definitions of ‘urban’ settlements can make comparative analysis of trends in urbanisation difficult. Definitions used by many African countries include small settlements which may not exhibit the degree of labour specialisation away from agriculture that economic theories about urbanisation presume. This may mean there is a mismatch if urban data are presumed by decision-makers to be proxies for structural economic transformation. Afte…
Counter-urbanisation on the Zambian Copperbelt? Interpretations and Implications
For the past 20 years, the population of Zambia has been gradually ruralising, or de-urbanising. For a country which was once seen as emblematic of the process of African urbanisation, and was very often cited (erroneously) as being among the first in sub-Saharan Africa to have reached the stage where over half the population was urban, this is a dramatic shift. This paper has both an empirical and theoretical element. Empirically, it seeks to de…
Worker-peasants and Farmer-housewives in Africa
In much of southern Africa, migrancy has for generations been incorporated into the livelihoods systems of millions of rural families. The regional dimensions vary, particularly where there was very inequitable division of land between racial groups during the era of white minority regimes, the dependence of rural households on migrants' remittances if fundamental to their survival. From a structural perspective, the impact of such migration has …
Different Places, Different Voices
Urban Unemployment and Migrants in Africa
Unemployment is a major problem in urban centres in sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of policies associated with structural adjustment programmes has frequently meant major formal job losses in both the public and private sectors. Although it is widely recognized that there has been a major (further) shift into the informal sector, it is also often claimed that 'unemployment' rates have greatly increased. When it is also assumed that net rural-urba…
Viewpoint
For decades most analyses of urbanisation in sub-Saharan Africa have started from the premise that towns and cities there are growing rapidly, both in absolute numbers and relative to the rural population. Levels of urbanisation – the proportion of a country’s population living in urban settlements – are thus asserted to be rising rapidly also. For many analyses, a central theme is the swift approach of the time when more than half of Africa’s po…
Africa South of the Sahara
Introduction: New Beginnings? Part I: Overview. The Map of Africa. Imagining Africa: Roots of Western Perceptions of the Continent. Thinking about Development: Development Theory and Practice in the African Context. Part II: Culture and Society. African Culture: Diversity and Creativity. Societal Diversity: Language, Ethnicity, and Religion. Gender Dynamics: Men and Women in African Societies. Part III: The Physical Environment. Geology and Geomo…
Making a Livelihood in (And Beyond) the African City
The formal labour markets and economies of many cities in sub-Saharan Africa have been very weak for decades and this has led to significant adaptations in the nature of the livelihoods of most urban households. The lack of formal and reasonably paid jobs has also had a strong impact on population growth in cities, although this is often not recognized. This article reviews some of these trends and illustrates them with case study material from H…
All my hopes and dreams are shattered’
Conflict and Collisions in Sub-Saharan African Urban Definitions
Shanties, slums, breeze blocks and bricks
In 2005, the Zimbabwean government demolished huge swathes of low-income housing throughout the country's urban centres. This was one of the most radical reshapings of any country's urban housing patterns in the world's recent history. Yet any attempt to understand this event in relation to the current central concerns about the housing of the urban poor of agencies like UN Habitat, or the world's Millennium Development Goals, would only be parti…
We Have A Tiger By The Tail
The development of urban settlements in Zimbabwe from the 1890s was obviously an essential element of the economic landscape as its territory was gradually transformed by the reach of metropolitan and white settler capital. Towns and cities are nodes of power, production and innovation which both structure and serve national space. In white settler states in sub-Saharan Africa their development was fraught with the tensions inherent in a politica…
Rural mobility as a response to land shortages
Malawi is the most densely populated country in southern Africa, and its economy and the livelihoods of the vast majority of its people are dependent on agriculture. Rural land is, therefore, a critical resource. Malawi is divided into three Regions and during the colonial period, such economic development as did occur tended to be concentrated in the Southern Region. The Northern Region was often characterised, by contrast, as the ‘dead North’. …
Fertility in Southern Africa
Over the past twenty to thirty years, a silent revolution has occurred, and is still occurring, in human fertility across the region of southern Africa. In a number of countries - most notably, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho - there is hard evidence of really significant declines in fertility. In these countries, the total fertility rate (TFR)' today is around three to four children, and in the first three countries this represents …
Analysing African urban data
Capital Relocation in Africa
Several developing countries have initiated relocation programmes over the past 30 years. Certain common issues can be shown to have contributed to these decisions: the peripheral location of the capital; its colonial connotations; and the need to spread regional development, allay regional or ethnic jealousies, and provide a focus for national pride. An examination of the transferral of Malawi's capital shows how these issues affected the decisi…
Books reviewed
Peter Duignan and L.H. Gann, The United States and Africa. A History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Pp. xiv+450. William Minter, King Solomon's Mines Revisited. Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1986). Pp. xiii+401. $21.95. Megan Vaughan, The Story of an African Famine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Pp. ix+181. £22.50. Andrew Ross, John Philip (1775–1…
Migrant Laborers
Journal Article Migrant Laborers Get access Migrant Laborers, by Sharon Stichter. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985. 225 pp. £17.50 hardback, £7.95 paperback. ISBN 0 521 251884 and 27213 0. DEBORAH POTTS DEBORAH POTTS School of Oriental and African StudiesLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 87, Issue 346, January 1988, Pages 138–140, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjourna…
Cities, society and social perception
African cities in crisis
Rural-urban linkages in contemporary Harare
Prior to independence in 1980 the urbanisation of Zimbabwe's African population occurred under a restrictive regime which prevented many urban workers from obtaining rights to remain permanently in urban areas. As a result many families had no choice but to maintain their links with the overcrowded rural areas, to which they would eventually have to return. Once restrictions were lifted it was to be expected that migration patterns would alter. S…
Geography in a Changing South Africa
Geography in the 1990s is a dynamic and diverse discipline. South Africa offers a particularly rich and fascinating subject for research because of its unique blend of First and Third Worlds and the challenges presented by political change. The nineteen contributors to this volume debate geographical issues which are at the cutting edge of contemporary local, and international research on South Africa. Environmental degradation, urban and rural p…
Shall We Go Home? Increasing Urban Poverty in African Cities and Migration Processes
The impact of economic decline in 1980s as well as that of IMF structural adjustment programs on urban incomes in Africa is explored. The author notes that in addition to devastating real income of a large proportion of urban population the gap between real rural incomes and real urban incomes has often narrowed considerably. It appears that rate of urban growth in some African countries has slowed considerably and there is also some evidence tha…
Zimbabwe
Different Places, Different Voices
The Shona and Their Neighbours
The government must not dictate’
In the 1990s analyses of [Zimbabwe's land resettlement program] by both supporters and critics of land reform have generally been negative. Yet there is evidence that resettled people themselves have made real welfare and income gains. Strong support for the programme was also expressed by a large sample of rural-urban migrants in Harare in 1994. Their views, reported in this article, showed an appreciation of most aspects of the academic and pol…
Africa South of the Sahara
Introduction: New Beginnings? Part I: Overview. The Map of Africa. Imagining Africa: Roots of Western Perceptions of the Continent. Thinking about Development: Development Theory and Practice in the African Context. Part II: Culture and Society. African Culture: Diversity and Creativity. Societal Diversity: Language, Ethnicity, and Religion. Gender Dynamics: Men and Women in African Societies. Part III: The Physical Environment. Geology and Geomo…
Basics are now a luxury
This paper describes differences in the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Policy (ESAP) on Zimbabwe's rural and urban areas through the views of recent migrants to Harare. Although the outcomes of ESAP have been more acutely felt in the city than in the countryside, rural populations have also suffered from increases in the prices of basic commodities and in public services fees. Retrenchment and increasing poverty in the city affect r…
Basics are now a luxury”
This paper describes differences in the impact of the Economic Structural Adjustment Policy (ESAP) on Zimbabwe's rural and urban areas through the views of recent migrants to Harare. Although the outcomes of ESAP have been more acutely felt in the city than in the countryside, rural populations have also suffered from increases in the prices of basic commodities and in public services fees. Retrenchment and increasing poverty in the city affect r…
Urban Unemployment and Migrants in Africa
Unemployment is a major problem in urban centres in sub-Saharan Africa. The impact of policies associated with structural adjustment programmes has frequently meant major formal job losses in both the public and private sectors. Although it is widely recognized that there has been a major (further) shift into the informal sector, it is also often claimed that 'unemployment' rates have greatly increased. When it is also assumed that net rural-urba…
Worker-peasants and Farmer-housewives in Africa
In much of southern Africa, migrancy has for generations been incorporated into the livelihoods systems of millions of rural families. The regional dimensions vary, particularly where there was very inequitable division of land between racial groups during the era of white minority regimes, the dependence of rural households on migrants' remittances if fundamental to their survival. From a structural perspective, the impact of such migration has …
Socio-Economic Stress, Health and Child Nutritional Status in Zimbabwe at a Time of Economic Structural Adjustment
Leon A. Bijlmakers, Mary T. Bassett and David M. Sanders, Socio-economic Stress, Health and Child Nutritional Status in Zimbabwe at a Time of Economic Structural Adjustment: a three-year longitudinal study. Research report 105. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 1998, 127 pp., £6.95 (US 18.95), ISBN 91 7106 435 4. - Volume 71 Issue 3
Fertility in Southern Africa
Over the past twenty to thirty years, a silent revolution has occurred, and is still occurring, in human fertility across the region of southern Africa. In a number of countries - most notably, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho - there is hard evidence of really significant declines in fertility. In these countries, the total fertility rate (TFR)' today is around three to four children, and in the first three countries this represents …
Counter-urbanisation on the Zambian Copperbelt? Interpretations and Implications
For the past 20 years, the population of Zambia has been gradually ruralising, or de-urbanising. For a country which was once seen as emblematic of the process of African urbanisation, and was very often cited (erroneously) as being among the first in sub-Saharan Africa to have reached the stage where over half the population was urban, this is a dramatic shift. This paper has both an empirical and theoretical element. Empirically, it seeks to de…
African Urban Economies
Are Africa's most populous and economically dominant cities a force to reckon with in the twenty-first century? This book analyzes the economies of East and Southern Africa's 'apex' cities, probing ho
Rural mobility as a response to land shortages
Malawi is the most densely populated country in southern Africa, and its economy and the livelihoods of the vast majority of its people are dependent on agriculture. Rural land is, therefore, a critical resource. Malawi is divided into three Regions and during the colonial period, such economic development as did occur tended to be concentrated in the Southern Region. The Northern Region was often characterised, by contrast, as the ‘dead North’. …
All my hopes and dreams are shattered’
Restoring Order'? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is experiencing a profound economic crisis, which has devastated the livelihoods of most of its urban population and created conditions of extreme poverty in its towns. Since independence, the state has generally adhered to housing policies that have made it both difficult and expensive for low-income urban residents to comply with legal housing requirements. However, in comparison to most other sub-Saharan African countries, in Zimbabwe…
Market institutions and urban food supply in West and Southern Africa
As the urban share of Africa's population increases, the importance of understanding how food supply is shaped by market institutions has grown. However, this topic has received little attention from policy makers and researchers despite the implications of market institutions and regulatory systems for livelihoods and poverty. This paper reviews the existing literature on market intermediaries, access to selling spaces, finance for traders and s…
Geography (31 obras) · Economics (30 obras) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (30 obras) · Economic growth (26 obras) · Political science (26 obras) · Development economics (22 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Economic geography (14 obras) · Urbanization (14 obras) · African studies and sociopolitical issues (13 obras)