Living Politics in South Africa's Urban Shacklands

Living Politics by anthropologist Kerry Ryann Chance examines governance and political mobilization in townships and shack settlements in post-apartheid South Africa. Tracking everyday practices and interactions between poor residents and state agents, the manuscript investigates the rise of nationwide protests since the late 1990s. Based on ethnography in Durban, Cape Town, and Johannesburg, Chance analyzes the criminalization of popular forms of politics that were foundational to South Africa’s celebrated liberal democratic transition. She argues that the increasingly murky line between 'the criminal’ and 'the political’ may best be grasped by studying a 'politics of life’ that casts slum and state in opposition to one another. Living Politics shows us how the legitimate domains of politics are redefined, state sovereignty is forcibly enacted, and the production of new forms of citizenship and identity crystallize at the intersections of race and class.