Socio-spatial politics of community safety governance in Johannesburg
Date
2013-07-12
Authors
Katsaura, Obvious
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Abstract
Presenting evidence from Yeoville, Johannesburg, I argue that community safety governance is a
field of socio-spatial micro-politics in which the crime, violence and safety governance agenda is
sometimes superseded by other organisational, institutional and social group interests. More
often than not, organisational, institutional, individual and social group actors compete or
coalesce for legitimacy, honour, prestige, and economic resources. I observe that ‘ethno-national
regionalism’ is one of the organising logics in community security initiatives. In Yeoville there
was criminalising scapegoating and counter-scapegoating between some South African and
African immigrant groups. Public perceptions, discourses and practices in the field of
community security governance in Yeoville were territorialised. I argue that safety governance at
neighbourhood level easily materialises into the discursive politics of appropriation, control and
(re)ordering of place and space; which at once either promote or undermine the production of
safety.
Following my empirical observations of the dynamics associated with community safety
initiatives, I argue that community security governing organisations should not simply be viewed
as security producing entities or spaces of creative community building micro-politics, but also as
spaces and entities of socially debilitating and sometimes malicious informal or formal micropolitics.
If debilitating or malicious, this micro-politics has the potential of undermining safety
production and neighbourhood development.
I deploy, test and edify Bourdieusian “thinking tools”, using Yeoville, as my social laboratory for
thinking the materialities, sensibilities and rationalities of the local politics of community safety
governance. The testing of Bourdieusian thought in the study of urban safety is novel, not only
to South Africa, but to elsewhere.
Methodologically, I employ a qualitative research design aimed at enabling an in-depth dissection
of the anatomy of miniature politics associated with community safety governance; and
developing a detailed narrative and theoretical account of this politics. The research methods
utilised include participant observation, unstructured and semi-structured interviews and
document reviews.