UKZN Seminar: “Where There is Fire, There is Politics:” Ungovernability in Democratic South Africa

Development Studies and Population Studies Seminar – note unusual day and time.
Title: “Where There is Fire, There is Politics:” Ungovernability in Democratic South Africa
Speaker: Kerry Chance (Social Anthropology at Harvard University)
Time: 14:00 – 15:30 (Tuesday) 24 July 2012.
Venue: Seminar Room F213, School of Built Environment and Development Studies, Memorial Tower Building, UKZN Google maps: -29.866933,30.981963

Abstract: This talk examines the political meanings of fire amongst residents of townships and shack settlements in post-apartheid South Africa. I argue that fire – inside the home as a hazardous source of light and heat, or on the streets to signal revolt – expresses a grammar of everyday practices and interactions between residents and state officials. Where residents posit the state’s failure to provide formal housing and services as the cause of routine slum conflagrations and street protests, officials posit a new criminal type amongst ‘the poor.’ These practices and interactions have given rise to disputes in South African public discourse over the legitimate demarcation between crime and politics under liberal democratic conditions. Key words: politics; crime; nature; slums; sovereignty; violence; liberal democracy

Dr. Kerry Chance is a University of Chicago-trained anthropologist and currently a Visiting Faculty member and American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow in Social Anthropology at Harvard University. She is a former Visiting Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. She has held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner Foundation, the Marcus Garvey Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Mellon Foundation. She is the author of the forthcoming book Living Politics: Practices and Protests of ‘the Poor’ in Democratic South Africa, as well as other scholarly articles, news pieces and published interviews.