{"id":5155,"date":"2020-05-22T20:51:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T18:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/?p=5155"},"modified":"2025-07-02T16:24:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T14:24:45","slug":"politics-and-community-based-research-perspectives-from-yeoville-studio-johannesburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/uncategorized\/politics-and-community-based-research-perspectives-from-yeoville-studio-johannesburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics and Community-Based Research. Perspectives from Yeoville Studio, Johannesburg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Edited by Claire Benit-Gbaffou, Sarah Charlton, Sophie Didier, Kirsten D\u00f6rmann<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Wits University Press, 2019, 432 p. (with the support of IFAS-Research)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Yeoville Studio<\/em> was a research and learning initiative driven by a collaboration between the Wits School of Architecture and Planning<\/a> and several community partners in Yeoville, Johannesburg. It ran from 2010 to 2012 and aimed to produce research that would be of relevance, use and interest to the Yeoville community. As a result of the project, a book <\/a>edited by Claire Benit-Gbaffou, Sarah Charlton, Sophie Didier, Kirsten D\u00f6rmann. 
Politics and Community-Based Research: Perspectives from Yeoville Studio, Johannesburg<\/em> provides a textured analysis of a contested urban space that will resonate with other contested urban spaces around the world and challenges researchers involved in such spaces to work in creative and politicised ways. This edited collection is built around the experiences of Yeoville Studio, a research initiative based at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Through themed, illustrated stories of the people and places of Yeoville, the book presents a nuanced portrait of the vibrance and complexity of a post-apartheid, peri-central neighbourhood that has often been characterised as a \u2018slum\u2019 in Johannesburg. These narratives are interwoven with theoretical chapters by scholars from a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds, reflecting on the empirical experiences of the Studio and examining academic research processes. These chapters unpack the engagement of the Studio in Yeoville, including issues of trust, the need to align policy with lived realities and social needs, the political dimensions of the knowledge produced and the ways in which this knowledge was, and could be used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong> is an associate professor at Aix-Marseille University, a researcher at CHERPA (Sciences Po Aix), and a visiting researcher at the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies (CUBES) at the School of Architecture and
Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Charlton<\/strong> is an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, and the associate director of CUBES, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophie Didier<\/strong> is a professor at the Paris School of Planning, University Paris-Est, France and a researcher at Lab\u2019Urba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirsten D\u00f6rmann<\/strong>\u00a0is a lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning, and a\u00a0researcher at CUBES at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is available in paperback or eBook<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Table of contents <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acknowledgements<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Section A Introducing the book<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Chapter 1 Why tell the story of Yeoville Studio? \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li>
  • Chapter 2 Introducing Yeoville: Context and representations \u2013 Sophie Didier and Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li>
  • Chapter 3 Exploring the politics of community-engaged research \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Section B Narrating: The politics of constructing local identities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Chapter 4 Introduction \u2013 Sophie Didier<\/strong><\/li>
    • Chapter 5 Being young in Yeoville \u2013 Potsiso Phasha<\/strong><\/li>
    • Chapter 6 Africa Week Festival in Yeoville: Reclaiming a social and political space through art \u2013 Pauline Guinard<\/strong><\/li>
    • Chapter 7 Love stories \u2013 Willy-Claude Hebandjoko, Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou and Shahid Vawda<\/strong><\/li>
    • Chapter 8 Constructing Yeoville community: Public meetings, local leadership and managing xenophobic discourse \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou and Eulenda Mkwanazi<\/strong><\/li>
    • C<\/strong>hapter 9 Yeoville as a transgressional space: Vo\u00eblvry and the Afrikaner counterculture of the 1980s \u2013 Maria Suriano, William Dewar and Clara Pienaar-Lewis<\/strong><\/li>
    • Chapter 10 Leaving Yeoville \u2013 Sophie Didier and Oph\u00e9lie Arrazouaki<\/strong><\/li>
    • Chapter 11 The Yeoville Stories project: Looking for public history in Johannesburg \u2013 Sophie Didier and Naomi Roux<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      Section C Recommending: From understanding micro-politics to imagining policy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      • Chapter 12 Introduction \u2013 Sarah Charlton<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 13 My place in Yeoville: Housing stories \u2013 Kirsten D\u00f6rmann, Mpho Matsipa and Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 14 Urban compounding in Johannesburg \u2013 Kirsten D\u00f6rmann and Solam Mkhabela<\/strong><\/li>
      • C<\/strong>hapter 15 Community land trusts and social inclusion \u2013 Heinz Klug and Neil Klug<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 16 Building stories \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 17 Learning from low-income living in an inner-city suburb to inform policy \u2013 Sarah Charlton<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 18 Sharing a flat in Yeoville: Trajectories, experiences, relationships \u2013 Simon Sizwe Mayson<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 19 Running a spaza shop \u2013 Mamokete Matjomane<\/strong><\/li>
      • Chapter 20 Integrating the \u2018community\u2019 in the governance of urban informality at the neighbourhood level \u2013 Mamokete Matjomane and Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        Section D Politicising: Community-based research and the politics of knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        • Chapter 21 Introduction \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 22 Street trader stories \u2013 Nicolette Pingo<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 23 Designing with informality: Towards an urban design framework for Yeoville\u2019s main street \u2013 Abdul Abed<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 24 Street photography and the politics of representation: A portrait of Muller Street \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou and Sally Gaule<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 25 Knowledge construction in a multidisciplinary perspective: Portraying Natal-Saunders Street \u2013 Solam Mkhabela, Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou and Kirsten D\u00f6rmann<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 26 Knowledge capital and urban community politics in Yeoville \u2013 Obvious Katsaura<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 27 Activists in their own words \u2013 Eulenda Mkwanazi and Nicolette Pingo<\/strong><\/li>
        • Chapter 28 Knowledge production and the politics of community engagement: Working with informal traders in Yeoville and beyond \u2013 Claire B\u00e9nit-Gbaffou<\/strong><\/li>
        • Contributors<\/li>
        • Photography credits<\/li>
        • Acronyms<\/li>
        • List of tables and figures<\/li>
        • Index<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n


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          Edited by Claire Benit-Gbaffou, Sarah Charlton, Sophie Didier, Kirsten D\u00f6rmann Wits University Press, 2019, 432 p. (with the support of IFAS-Research) Yeoville Studio was a research and learning initiative driven by a collaboration between the Wits School of Architecture and Planning and several community partners in Yeoville, Johannesburg. It ran from 2010 to 2012 and aimed to produce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8163,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-publications","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5173,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5155\/revisions\/5173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ifas.org.za\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}