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Papers by Kerry Chance

Revue internationale d'anthropologie culturelle & sociale

2022 to 2026. Her research has focused on the politics of urban ecology and climate change.

A central question raised by Giorgio Agamben's (2013) concept of destituent power is: How do popu... more A central question raised by Giorgio Agamben's (2013) concept of destituent power is: How do populations sustain "ungovernability" across emerging orders? This question is relevant in the time of Covid-19 when in South Africa, as elsewhere, governmental power has sought to control not only the virus, but key sites of biological and social reproduction. South Africa had among the strictest Covid-19 lockdowns in the world. I focus on housing and evictions because these lockdowns put such an acute emphasis on "the home" as a place of safety and refuge away from the virus. At the same time, the virus shone a spotlight on "the home" as a place of radical inequality, with marginalized communities faring the worst. In South Africa, Covid-19, and its political and economic repercussions, are deepening a post-apartheid eviction crisis with new, deadly consequences as populations move across the city. While aimed at control and curbing informality tenancies, evictions reproduce peri-urban precarity. Evictions, moreover, give rise to mobilizations among poor residents. Often, these mobilizations are premised upon informal dwelling and informal politics, newly through enshrined citizenship rights. Covid-19 makes visible the dissatisfaction of those who still struggle to make a home in South Africa's cities, and their practices of sustaining "ungovernability."

This article examines the informal housing practices that the urban poor use to construct, transf... more This article examines the informal housing practices that
the urban poor use to construct, transform, and access citizenship in contemporary South Africa. Following the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, the provision of formalized housing for the urban poor has become a key metric for ‘non-racial’ political inclusion and the desegregation of apartheid cities. Yet, shack settlements—commemorated in liberation histories as apartheid-era battlegrounds—have been reclassified as ‘slums’, zones that are earmarked for clearance or development. Evictions from shack settlements to government emergency camps have been justified under the liberal logic of expanding housing rights tied to citizenship. I argue that the informal housing practices make visible the methods of managing ‘slum’ populations, as well as an emerging living politics in South African cities.

This article examines sacrifice in a post-Mandela South Africa. Twenty years since the fall of ap... more This article examines sacrifice in a post-Mandela South Africa. Twenty years since the fall of apartheid, South Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal societies. From street protests to labor strikes to xenophobic pogroms, dissatisfaction with current socio-economic conditions is being expressed through urban unrest, particularly in townships and shack settlements. This article analyzes an emerging idiom of “sacrifice” among youth activists in response to deaths and injuries sustained during recent street protests. I argue that this idiom draws from understandings of liberation and liberalization, from popular imaginaries of the anti-apartheid struggle, and from processes associated with South Africa’s democratic transition. Broadly, I suggest that sacrifice under liberalism reveals the blurring boundaries between “the gift” and “the market” in political life. [Keywords: Sacrifice, violence, policing, race, class, liberalism]

This article combines theories of liberal governance, material life, and popular politics to exam... more This article combines theories of liberal governance, material life, and popular politics to examine the unruly force of fire in state-citizen struggles. Tracking interactions between state agents and activist networks during South Africa’s celebrated democratic transition, I analyze how the urban poor leverage the material properties of fire to secure techno-institutional claims to energy infrastructure, and more broadly to political inclusion and economic redistribution. I highlight how fire, as a social and historical as well as a chemical process, becomes a staging ground for the promise and endangerment of infrastructure. Approaching fire as intertwined with power, I argue, illuminates how those living on the margins of the city come to inhabit political roles that transform economic relationships in the context of liberalism.

Key words: democracy; energy; material life; race; urban poverty

Conferences by Kerry Chance

Book Reviews by Kerry Chance