| 1. |
- Fåhraeus, Cecilia, 1981-
(author)
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Drawing a Livelihoodscape from the Slum : Towards a spatial understanding of gendered livelihoods in Zambia
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The overarching aim of the thesis was to draw a livelihoodscape from the slum. The questions guiding this endeavour were: Where do slum dwellers carry out their livelihood activities and how can these spatial livelihood patterns be understood? This involved outlining how livelihoods emerged from and interacted with the slum; following how they detached themselves and unfolded further in urban space; and finally, how they transcended the urban territory and migrated onwards to translocal destinations. Material was collected through surveys, semi-structured interviews and observations in three slum settlements in Lusaka, encompassing 459 research participants.Mapping slum dwellers’ livelihood spatialities generated insights with implications for livelihood theory, but also for Southern/subaltern urban theory and in particular the workings of African cities. First, it revealed that the residential settlement played a critical role in the execution of people’s livelihoods. Mobility constraints attributed to affordability and time poverty contributed to this outcome, but equally important were localised processes of information sharing, matching and learning. At the same time, livelihood activities connected the residential settlement to other key locations in the city, creating a complex system of flows and interactions. The importance of particular sites in the city for slum dwellers’ economic activities could be connected to colonial and post-colonial planning regimes, intermingling with global economic shifts and development policies. But to a limited degree, slum dwellers also carried out livelihood activities beyond the urban scope; such as engaging in agriculture on rural farmland and conducting interurban and cross-border trade. These translocal livelihoods were to a significant extent enabled by social capital. Gender constituted an evident axis of differentiation, with women’s economic activities being more spatially constrained than men’s. This was associated with patriarchal control, disproportional involvement in reproductive chores, limited access to assets, but also a colonial history of spatial marginalisation.By drawing on diverse sets of scholarship, this thesis was able to problematise notions of the African city as a site of contingency and crisis, and demonstrate how it can be characterised by flux as well as permanence; marginalisation as well as integration; alienation and fellowship, all at the same time.
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| 2. |
- Gustafsson, Jessica, 1980-
(author)
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Voicing the Slum : Youth, Community Media and Social Change in Nairobi
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since late 2006, several small media projects have emerged in the slums of Nairobi with the aim to counterbalance the ignorance from mainstream media, provide the slums residents with news, information and an opportunity to voice their needs and discuss relevant issues. These media are best labelled community media, since their main concern is to serve the interests of the community, in this context the slums. The aim of this project is to assess the potential impact community media have on the community in which they operate. Moreover, it considers the role community media play in promoting community development and democracy, especially in relation to young people living in the slums of Nairobi. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Nairobi (January 2007 to April 2010) including interviews with producers and audience, the study not only maps the establishment of the community media landscape in the slums of Nairobi but the advent of community broadcasting. The study reveals that community media and community radio in particular play an import role in the local youth’s identity construction. By promoting a “slum identity” and ascribing to it positive connotations they help the youth strengthening a sense of pride in who they are and where they come from. Moreover, community media and especially community broadcasting provide the audience with information and a platform for debate where the community can interact directly or indirectly with civil society group, local power holders and experts whether in health, law and finance. This can improve the living situations of the audience but also their engagement as citizens. On a macro level, community media’s biggest contribution to social change is their proactive work to combat tribalism by encouraging their audiences to perceive themselves as Kenyans rather than clinging on to identities based on tribal belonging, which is further reflected in their use of Swahili. The political economy of community media is the biggest challenge that prevents the media projects from fully fulfilling their objectives and being a progressive force for social change. The weak financial situation not only affects their output negatively, it makes them dependent on external funding and (mis)use youth as unpaid labour.
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| 3. |
- Jha, Rishi
(author)
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Unsettled City: Neoliberal redevelopment, state crisis, slum resettlement & biopolitical struggle in Mumbai
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation concerns capitalist urban redevelopment and the government of urban housing poverty. It examines the ways urban redevelopment regimes shape resettlements and governance of urban populations in Mumbai. The specific enquiries focus on salient accumulative and dispossessive dimensions of urban redevelopment and linked resettlement construction, the reformation of informal politics of the poor, and possibilities of reordering renewal and resettlement governance processes. These enquiries are addressed through an ethnographic exploration of two mega-projects: transport expansion and pipeline securitization, two resettlement townships, and their multi-scalar and multi-site sociopolitical dynamisms. The theoretical framework of “redevelopment as governmentality” guides analysis connecting macro-institutional practices and their human consequences.This is a compilation dissertation with a Kappa (comprehensive discussion) and four sole-authored journal articles. The dissertation makes four major contributions: First, urban redevelopment regimes employ an extractive-inclusive political economy in resettlement housing developments, which promotes urban growth. This is beyond facilitative or welfarist rehousing linked with displacement-based dispossession. The underlying political-economic logics, and institutional and policy frameworks also shape the life-allowing and limiting materiality of resettlement. Second, state and NGO-mediated resettlements employ unconditional urban displacements through strategies that speak of institutional violence, coercion, and abandonment, but are coated with the hope of inclusion and aspirational formal urban living. Uneven sociopolitical outcomes include contested formalization, widespread institutional vulnerabilities, and arbitrary post-dispossession rule. Third, state powers in redevelopment are complicit in creating death-allowing settlement forms and environmental concerns, and subjecting populations to them. Inhabiting such violent materialities exposes the embedded deadly powers, through life-compromising living. Inhabitation also leads to a new outlook of resistance and negotiation that redefines the politics of human lives at the urban margins. Fourth, the state bureaucracy maintains life-constraining post-resettlement scenarios and biopolitical struggles through arbitrary, informalized, humanistic interventions, and using a new vocabulary of urban habitability. This life-compromising subjection, however, also impacts urban renewal and allows some alternative rehousing. Overall, the dissertation shows certain contradictory outcomes of urban renewal and population governance in the making of the urban imaginary and modernity.
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| 4. |
- Caldenby, Claes, 1946
(author)
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Från slum till världsarv
- 2004
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In: Göteborgs-Posten 1.6 2004..
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 5. |
- Adama, Onyanta, 1961-
(author)
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Slum upgrading in the era of World-Class city construction : the case of Lagos, Nigeria
- 2020
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In: International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1946-3138 .- 1946-3146. ; 12:2, s. 219-235
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The paper examines the tensions that accompany slum upgrading in the era of world-class city construction. The focus is a slum upgrading project in Lagos, Nigeria. The paper observes the intertwining of modernist and neoliberal ideologies in world-class city construction and in slum upgrading projects. The entanglement centres on a number of shared interests; the prioritization of infrastructure and notions about urban space, participation and citizenship. As documented, the project and by extension world-class city construction fails to acknowledge the livelihoods of the poor and is undermined by protests. Historical legacies and systemic failings of governance present additional obstacles. The paper seeks to broaden the scope of world-class city research by acknowledging the local context, but at the same time recognizing the global links. Along these lines, the paper suggests that slum upgrading provides an opportunity to examine how the local is inserted into the global.
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| 6. |
- Wamsler, Christine
(author)
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Bridging the gaps: stakeholder-based strategies for risk reduction and financing for the urban poor
- 2007
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In: Environment & Urbanization. - : SAGE Publications. - 1746-0301 .- 0956-2478. ; 19:1, s. 115-142
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper explores the options that can be used by aid organizations working in human settlement development to more effectively address disaster risk management. Qualitative research was carried out in El Salvador at both the household and institutional levels - to analyze the needs, capacities and perspectives of slum dwellers and aid organizations. A clearer understanding of the gaps between what households need and undertake to deal with disasters and risk, and how organizations support them, yields important insights for the restructuring of development aid. At the household level, the research reveals a huge variety of crucial but somewhat weak coping strategies. At the institutional level, organizational structures and mechanisms for social housing provision and financing offer a potentially powerful platform for tackling disaster risk. However, current project measures are insufficient. Support for and scaling up of selected household coping strategies, combined with the expansion of social housing funding mechanisms for risk reduction and financing, are some of the options proposed for targeting aid.
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| 7. |
- Grundström, Karin
(author)
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Periferins micrópolis - genus, rum och fattigdom i Costa Rica
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I urbaniseringens fotspår materialiseras fattigdomen i slum, kåkstäder och favelas i städer värl-den över. Trots millenniemålen om att minska antalet invånare som lever i slum, visar statistik från FN-Habitat att urbaniseringstakten ökar och att städernas fattiga idag utgör en fjärdedel av världens stadsinvånare. Fattigdomen i städer och den undermåliga byggda miljö människor tvingas leva i, denna fattigdomens arkitektur, är ett stort och växande problem. Den pågående urbaniseringen av fattigdom har genererat forskning och debatt där kvinnor ofta framhålls som de mest utsatta och sårbara för den urbana fattigdomen och den usla materiella standard som människor tvingas leva i. Denna avhandling är en utforskning av fattiga kvinnors egna erfarenheter i en stadsutveckling som sker med en koncentration av städernas fattiga invånare i specifika stadsdelar. Studien ba-seras på fältarbete i två stadsdelar i metropolen San José i Costa Rica. Avhandlingen belyser två pågående processer där fattigdomen å ena sidan koncentreras inom vissa stadsdelar, men där å andra sidan vardagliga praktiker är del i de boendes strävan att appropriera rum för att förbättra sin livsmiljö. Studien visar hur multiplicerande rumsliga effekter samverkar till att skapa periferins micrópo-lis. Periferins micrópolis utgör en egen stad centrerad mot sig själv i en fragmenterad stadsbild inom en storstadsregion. Detta innebär en koncentration av en befolkning som har sin fattigdom gemensamt och är hänvisade till att erbjuda varandra service, tjänster och handel. I periferins micrópolis förekommer en rumslig fattigdom som för många kvinnors resulterar i reducerat till-träde till staden, risk att fattigdomen förstärks, brist på urban erfarenhet samt en exkludering från det urbana livets komplexitet. Samtidigt sker i periferins micrópolis förhandlingar om rum som syftar till att behärska rum-met trots den fattigdom som kvinnor lever i. Avhandlingen visar på tre sätt att organisera var-dagslivet; länkade interiörer, multifunktionella interiörer och dikotoma interiörer. Studien visar på hur kvinnor i vardagen konstruerar rum som överskrider genderiserade gränser och hur kvin-nor approprierar rum i syfte att erhålla olika former av rumslig profit. Även i periferins micrópolis förekommer praktiker för att förbättra både den byggda miljön och den kollektiva och individu-ella sociala positionen hos invånarna. Kvinnors rumsliga förhandlingar är en central fråga i den process varigenom fattiga stadsdelar över åren förbättras och deras praktiker synliggör kunskap om brister och krav på fattigdomen arkitektur.
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| 8. |
- Kejerfors, Johan
(author)
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Parenting in urban slum areas : families with children in a shantytown of Rio de Janeiro
- 2007
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Book (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This is a study of parenting and child development in a slum area in a developing part of the world. The aims of the study were threefold. The first aim was to explore the physical and social contexts for parenting in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro using an ecological perspective. The second aim was to examine parenting and subsequent child outcomes among a sample of families living in the shantytown. The third aim was to explore what factors contribute to differences among parents in how they nurture and protect their children. The theoretical framework of the study was an updated version of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development. Using self-report questionnaires developed by Rohner, data on perceived parental acceptance–rejection were collected from 72 families with adolescents 12–14 years old, representing approx. 75% of all households with children in this age group in the shantytown. Besides self-report questionnaires, each adolescent’s main caregiver replied to several standardized questionnaires developed by Garbarino et al., eliciting demographic and social-situational data about the family, neighborhood, and wider community. The results of the study paint a complex portrait of the social living conditions of the parents and children. Despite many difficulties, most parents seemed to raise their children with loving care. The results from the self-report questionnaires indicate that the majority of the adolescents perceived substantial parental acceptance. The adolescents’ experience of greater or lesser parental acceptance–rejection seems to influence their emotional and behavioral functioning; it also seems to be related to their school attendance. Much of the variation in degree of perceived acceptance–rejection seems to be related both to characteristics of the individual adolescents and their main caregiver(s) and to influences from the social and environmental context in which they and their caregivers interact and live their lives.
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| 9. |
- Drummond, John Amin, et al.
(author)
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COVID-19 Interventions in an informal settlement : A spatial analysis of accessibility in Kibera, Kenya
- 2023
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In: Journal of Transport Geography. - : Elsevier BV. - 0966-6923 .- 1873-1236. ; 113
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper introduces a methodology to explore pedestrian accessibility in informal settlements. This methodology is applied to pandemic intervention sites in Nairobi's Kibera area for 3.5 months (14 April to 31 July 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Freely available transportation network data and open-source GIS software are utilised. Isochrones, areas of equal travel time, are calculated to assess pedestrian accessibility (walk times) from 30,231 Kibera structures to 138 COVID-19 stationary intervention sites. These sites aid in virus control, resource distribution, and COVID-related medical support. Travel times are determined considering different terrain slopes. Unequal access to intervention sites is observed due to indirect routes. Shortest walks (up to 21.5 min) are to handwashing and food distribution points, while longer walks (up to 61.5 min) are to interventions with fewer sites or localised clustering, such as baby product distribution. This simple accessibility analysis helps identify service gaps during crises, aiding planning authorities and communities. Our methodology offers insight into travel patterns in slums and has wider applicability to assess the relationships between transport infrastructure provision and resilience in informal settlements.
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| 10. |
- Hjertman, Martina
(author)
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Afloat and Aflame. Deconstructing the Long 19th century Port City Gothenburg through Newspaper Archaeology
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In line with the international historical-archaeological discipline, this study aims to increase knowledge of marginalising processes and disenfranchised groups in the past and to contribute to the recognised Swedish need to augment the know-how of researching people ‘of little note’ in urban environments. The study aspires a theoretically engaged empirical alternative for developing new knowledge about urban places which are not possible to excavate or where archaeological data is insufficient, while evincing how digitized historical newspapers can step in as a multifaceted historical- archaeological source. By merging historical archaeology with digital history, the study has fashioned a newspaper archaeology, encompassing text-cavation and critical discourse analysis, and applied it to the empirical case, and fringe settlements of the port city Gothenburg, through local newspapers during the long 19th century. The suburbs have been hot topics discussed in, and by newspapers, and furthermore floating (signifiers), variously charged with meaning dependent on situation, correspondent, and text genre. By employing the concept of worldmaking, the study has recognised how inclusion and exclusion of people and spaces through text, encompasses international images, local events, notions of space and architecture, as well as actors − including newspapers and newspaper genres. The concepts of counter-voice and counter-narrative have acknowledged opposing perspectives which have shed light on inequal societal structures and grand narratives and displayed how people ‘of little note’ already from the late 1700s, took part in and reacted to what was printed, and negotiated values. Of the empirical chapters, chapter 6 demonstrates how the name Majorna was geographically floating, but the debate from the 1840s about the suburb Majorna’s integration with the city, anchored the name to a designated space, as well as ushered in a new sense of identity and attempts to fill this location with social meaning. Chapter 7 shows how from around the 1830s, newspaper genres and engaged citizens created in-groups and out-groups through the broadcasting of a mix of internationally spread notions of mariners and workers and bourgeois ideals, and how the space of the port district Majorna from the 1840s, intensifying from the 1860s, was intimately associated with deviant behaviour. Chapter 8 establishes how print representations of urban fires in the fringe had their own worldmaking effects on the creation of communities that bridged geographical and social borders and widened the urban landscape. Chapter 9 evinces how the genre of urban travelogues created othering and typecast representations of the suburb’s built environment and populace, by using internationally known tropes, sensual qualities, semiophores, characters, and narrative techniques, but also was complex and played a less-known role in upholding an informal donation culture. Newspapers as source may carry the only remaining information on erased landscapes, materialities, and social practices and newspaper archaeology can present us with voices from those ‘of little note’ and lesser means. The study demonstrates how newspapers are worldmakers and vehicles in the making of social and spatial inclusion and exclusion, with possibilities of steering debates and halting or accelerating urban change. Consequently, newspapers are not only a pertinent historical-archaeological source, but also affected the very society we study through the newspapers’ contents.
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