Romeo Dipura , Elmond Bandauko , Robert Nutifafa Arku
{"title":"‘Precarious power’: Implicit infrastructures and electricity access in Witsand, Cape Town (South Africa)","authors":"Romeo Dipura , Elmond Bandauko , Robert Nutifafa Arku","doi":"10.1016/j.habitatint.2024.103228","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>For the poor residents in Witsand, an informal settlement on the periphery of Cape Town, electricity access is an everyday struggle, where households circumvent Eskom's vouchers and prepaid meters to adapt electricity to their lived realities. In this paper, we argue that in a context where Eskom electricity provision is often exclusionary, residents deploy diverse strategies to challenge this form of infrastructure violence. Drawing on over twenty months of ethnographic work, complemented with participant observations and semi-structured interviews, we demonstrate how resident-made electricity connections prove a critical and implicit part of the electricity infrastructure system. Building from a sociotechnical approach to infrastructure, we use the notion of ‘precarious power’ to explore the mix of agency and precariousness that are entangled in the everyday practices of ordinary people making electricity connections. We highlight that in improvising electricity access, residents in Witsand exercised their agency to circumvent and appropriate Eskom electricity. This paper contributes to an understanding of urban residents' everyday infrastructural experiences through an analytical frame that is neither dismissive of their agency nor celebratory of their struggles.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48376,"journal":{"name":"Habitat International","volume":"154 ","pages":"Article 103228"},"PeriodicalIF":6.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Habitat International","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197397524002285","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"DEVELOPMENT STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
For the poor residents in Witsand, an informal settlement on the periphery of Cape Town, electricity access is an everyday struggle, where households circumvent Eskom's vouchers and prepaid meters to adapt electricity to their lived realities. In this paper, we argue that in a context where Eskom electricity provision is often exclusionary, residents deploy diverse strategies to challenge this form of infrastructure violence. Drawing on over twenty months of ethnographic work, complemented with participant observations and semi-structured interviews, we demonstrate how resident-made electricity connections prove a critical and implicit part of the electricity infrastructure system. Building from a sociotechnical approach to infrastructure, we use the notion of ‘precarious power’ to explore the mix of agency and precariousness that are entangled in the everyday practices of ordinary people making electricity connections. We highlight that in improvising electricity access, residents in Witsand exercised their agency to circumvent and appropriate Eskom electricity. This paper contributes to an understanding of urban residents' everyday infrastructural experiences through an analytical frame that is neither dismissive of their agency nor celebratory of their struggles.
期刊介绍:
Habitat International is dedicated to the study of urban and rural human settlements: their planning, design, production and management. Its main focus is on urbanisation in its broadest sense in the developing world. However, increasingly the interrelationships and linkages between cities and towns in the developing and developed worlds are becoming apparent and solutions to the problems that result are urgently required. The economic, social, technological and political systems of the world are intertwined and changes in one region almost always affect other regions.