Open AccessNarrating the Everyday of Informality: A Multi‐Media Approach to Understanding Basic Service Access in Cape Town, South Africa
Author(s) -
Storey Angela
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
proceedings of the african futures conference
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2573-508X
DOI - 10.1002/j.2573-508x.2016.tb00085.x
Subject(s) - salience (neuroscience) , informal settlements , sociology , cape , citizenship , human settlement , media studies , politics , public relations , gender studies , geography , political science , economic growth , archaeology , psychology , law , economics , cognitive psychology
The distribution of municipal resources is made visible in the physical infrastructure of a city ‐ in the pipes, sewers, wires, and networks that link people to services. This project traces the ways in which residents of informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa, narrate their struggles to secure access to basic services, highlighting often overlooked everyday experiences at urban margins and their political salience. Indeed, residents often narratively map problems with services onto feeling of exclusion from the promise of post‐Apartheid citizenship, offering insight into changing markers of urban social belonging. This project combines photographs and audio‐recorded interviews with residents of several informal settlements to produce interactive photo stories. Posted online and exhibited in print, these stories offer a way to apply research findings beyond the academy by informing greater understandings of lived inequality, engaging interdisciplinary conversations on urban infrastructure, and providing multi‐media teaching resources.