Towards a multi-scalar reading of informality in Delft, South Africa Weaving the ‘everyday’ with wider structural tracings

• Published in: Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 594 - 611
• Main Authors: Cirolia, Liza Rose, Scheba, Suraya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England Sage Publications, Ltd 01.02.2019; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Cities; Everyday life; Housing; Informal economy; Production; Public finance; Social structure; Special issue article: Transcending (in)formal urbanism; Urban studies; Weaving; South Africa; Cape Town South Africa; urbanisation and developing countries; 建成环境; built environment; method; housing; 日常城市研究; informality; 南非; 方法; 城市化和发展中国家; everyday urbanism; South Africa; 住房; 非正规性
• ISSN: 0042-0980; 1360-063X
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098017753326

Informality is a critical theme in urban studies. In recent years, ‘the everyday’ has become a focus of studies on informality in African cities. These studies focus on particularity and place. They offer a useful corrective to top-down and universalising readings which exclude the daily experiences and practices of people from analysis. As we show in this article, everyday studies surface valuable insights, highlighting the agency and precarity which operates at the street level. However, a fuller understanding of informality’s (re)production requires drawing together particularist accounts with wider and more structural tracings. These tracings offer insights into the ways in which state and financial processes influence and interface with the everyday. In this article, we use the case of housing in Delft, a township in Cape Town, to demonstrate this approach and argue for a multi-scalar and relational reading of the production of informality. 非正规性是城市研究的一个重要主题。近年来，“日常”已成为非洲城市非正规性研究的焦点。这些研究关注特殊性和地方。自上而下和普遍化的解读在分析中排除了人员的日常经历和做法，而“日常”研究提供了一种有用的修正方法。正如我们在本文中所展示的，日常研究提供了宝贵的见解，突出了在街道层面运作的机构和精英。然而，对非正规性（再）生产机制的更全面理解需要将具体的论述与更广、更具结构性的追踪相结合。这些追踪有助于深入理解国家和财务过程如何影响日常生活，又如何与日常生活交互。在本文中，我们以开普敦代尔夫特镇的住房为例来展示这种方法，并主张对非正规生产做多标量和关系性的解读。