[Debate] FW: I Thus Caught That Colonial Mind-Set At Work

[Neville Adams]

Have not read City of Slums, but can see similar argument being constructed
in relation to deindustrialisation of urban areas that grew out of previous
industrialisation, racially marginalised communities, and privatisation
based scaling back of public housing in '1st world' metropoles.

 

From: debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org [mailto:debate-list-bounces at fahamu.org]
On Behalf Of grinker at mweb.co.za
Sent: 17 April 2012 12:00
To: debate-list at fahamu.org
Subject: Re: [Debate] FW: I Thus Caught That Colonial Mind-Set At Work

 

What are these SMs and where do they come from? Some points drawn from Mike
Davis' City of Slums might be relevant to this discussion. 

 

Davis argues that social theorists have been proved wrong:

.       They associated economic and population growth with
industrialisation and an increase in job opportunities

.       But modern slums are not products of industrial revolutions

.       The size of a city's economy often bears little relation to its
population size

.       European colonialism, Asian Stalinism and Latin American
dictatorships (and South African apartheid) prevented the twin urbanising
criteria of entry and citizenship

.       This resulted in retarded growth of cities in the period from 1900
to 1950

.       Since 1950s public and state-assisted housing in the Third World has
primarily benefited the urban middle classes and elites, through both high
levels of municipal services and clientelist politics

.       Slums are created in gaps between housing provision and formal
employment opportunities. 

 

Slums are a consequence of urbanisation without industrialization:

.       Are the legacy of a global political conjuncture 

.       IMF and the World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes drove the
creation of modern slums:

-      Rapid urban growth happened in the context of structural adjustment,
currency devaluations, state retrenchments, and little or no housing
provision.

-      State as a 'market enabler' led to the privatisation of utilities and
services, and massive decreases in provision

-      Ideas of the magic power of people's capitalism providing land titles
simply accelerated social differentiation in the slums, and did nothing to
aid renters, the actual majority of the poor in many cities

-      Individuals' needs - affordable commodities, accommodation close to
jobs, security, and the possibility of owning property - were simply ignored
by the imposition of ill-suited neoliberal 'boot-strap capitalism'. 

 

The key question is: Do slums [and social movements that develop there],
'however deadly and insecure, have a brilliant future' (There will be two
billion slum-dwellers by 2030 or 2040)? 

 

Davis says on future prospects:

".[t]hus, the cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and
steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely
constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and
scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the
twenty-first century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution,
excrement, and decay." 

 

Future prospects 

.       Will be determined by the political processes on the ground, rather
than by uncontrollable economic developments

.       Will depend on future slum based resistance to global capitalism 

.       A central factor that will determine the future of the slum will be
the relation of its shifting, informal economy to political mobilisation
behind radical causes

.       The informal sector (where 'urban involution' has led to the
sub-dividing of existing jobs rather than job creation) is crucial to the
prevention of any active 'proletarianisation' of slum dwellers in line with
historical precedent

.       Whether these vast informal proletariats possess 'historical agency'
is incredibly difficult to assess except through case studies

 

The future:

.       Is left open

.       Slum populations are growing  at a rate of 25 million a year without
really large-scale migration to the rich countries

.       Slum dwellers are potentially the fastest growing class in the
history of the world

 

Are the slums volcanoes waiting to erupt? Or will ruthless, state-endorsed
competition lead to increased involution and 'self-annihilating communal
violence' ?

 

There is a wide range of responses:

.       charismatic churches 

.       returns to witchcraft and superstition

.       street gangs

.       neoliberal NGOs 

.       ethnic militias

 

and we might add: movements with inputs from radical academics

 

He argues that it is no exaggeration to say that the future of the whole of
human solidarity depends on the nature of the response of the 'victims of
the metropolis' to the marginality that late capitalism has attempted to
assign to them. 

 

 

 

  _____  

From: riaz.tayob at gmail.com
Sent: 2012/04/17 12:07:30 PM
To: debate-list at fahamu.org
Cc: 
Subject: RE: Re: [Debate] FW: I Thus Caught That Colonial Mind-Set At Work

  _____  

Thanks for that. Actually it is more important than your brief note makes
out. I think here you actually touch upon something in SMs that needs to be
looked at, they are often "new" or approach issues without the fetters of
the old in their circumstances as they find them.

On 2012/04/17 12:18 PM, Neville Adams wrote:

Just to add Riaz that there also appears to be a fundamental
misunderstanding about what SM's are and are not; they cannot be coopted to,
and conflated with, a reimagined class revolution in which the 'Poor' play
the part of the new collective historical agents.  This is the new
metaphysics.

 

Neville

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