Awards

• Winner of Winner, 2023 ASA Robert E. Park Book Award Honorable Mention, 2023 Society for the Study of Social Problems Outstanding Book Award.

Overview

A sweeping historical and political analysis with detailed ethnographic fieldwork of the politics of everyday life in postcolonial Africa. In post-apartheid South Africa, nearly a fifth of the urban population lives in shacks. Unable to wait any longer for government housing, people occupy land, typically seeking to fly under the state's radar. Yet in most cases, occupiers wind up in dialogue with the state. In Delivery as Dispossession, Zachary Levenson follows this journey from avoidance to incorporation, explaining how the post-apartheid Constitution shifts squatters' struggles onto the judicial register. Providing a comparative ethnographic account of two land occupations in Cape Town and highlighting occupiers' struggles, Levenson further demonstrates why it is that housing officials seek the eviction of all new occupations: they view these unsanctioned settlements as a threat to the order they believe is required for delivery. Yet in evicting occupiers, he argues, they reproduce the problem anew, with subsequent rounds of land occupation as the inevitable consequence. Offering a unique framework for thinking about local states, this book proposes a novel theory of the state that will change the way ethnographers think about politics.

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9780197629253

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Reviews

This pathbreaking study of the contrasting dynamics of self-organization in two Cape squatter communities opens exciting new windows in social theory. Levenson, in a close re-reading of Gramsci, challenges simplistic dichotomies between 'civil society' and the state, focusing instead on the dialectics of their interaction in collective struggles for housing rights. Post-apartheid South Africa formally recognizes the right to decent shelter but has failed to deliver on the promise of massive new home construction for Apartheid's victims. In the resulting environment of acute scarcity, informal settlements compete with another to articulate their demands within political space-a competition in which a crucial resource for success is the ability of squatters to achieve organic unity as 'fused groups. -Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums Critically departing from the prevailing perspectives on land occupation and eviction in South Africa * such as visibility, gentrification, and public-private property type * A beautifully written book about a heart-wrenching social problem: how can the ANC government, whose legitimacy rests on its promise to provide housing for all, use the logic of 'legitimate government' to regularly dispossess its citizens? This rigorously researched ethnography provides a rare glimpse into the logic of evictions in post-Apartheid South Africa. The text provides a kaleidoscopic view into the problem by showing us not only how government actors see residents but also how residents see the state. Thus, we get a rare glimpse into the way in which dispossessed communities frame and advance their claims, how these claims are seen and understood, and the complex interplay of factors that determine which communities successfully defend their rights and which the state feels authorized to deny. This highly readable and tightly argued book is a 'must read' for ethnographers and social theorists alike. -Zine Magubane, Professor of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill MA

The book's narrative account of the events he examined is powerful, the research is vigorous and rigorous, and his findings are important and generalizable...any reader interested in popular struggles and their interaction with state institutions will learn a great deal from Levenson's admirable book. * Nate Holdren, Department of Law, Politics, and Society, Drake University, Journal of Labor and Society * Delivery as Dispossession is an impressive achievement, drawing together empirical rigor, theoretical innovation, and a compelling story about surplus populations. It will be of great interest and value to scholars and teachers interested in urban sociology, political sociology, and the sociologies of development, race and social movements. * Marcel Paret, University of Utah, USA and University of Johannesburg, South Africa, Social Forces * This pathbreaking study of the contrasting dynamics of self-organization in two Cape squatter communities opens exciting new windows in social theory. Levenson, in a close re-reading of Gramsci, challenges simplistic dichotomies between 'civil society' and the state, focusing instead on the dialectics of their interaction in collective struggles for housing rights. Post-apartheid South Africa formally recognizes the right to decent shelter but has failed to deliver on the promise of massive new home construction for Apartheid's victims. In the resulting environment of acute scarcity, informal settlements compete with another to articulate their demands within political space-a competition in which a crucial resource for success is the ability of squatters to achieve organic unity as 'fused groups. -Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums Critically departing from the prevailing perspectives on land occupation and eviction in South Africa-such as visibility, gentrification, and public-private property type-Levenson offers a fresh and powerful outlook by bringing the state and civil society into an integral explanatory frame. He shows that the dynamics of land occupation and eviction is shaped by how the poor and the state view each other's practices. This is a lucid and engaging book informed by extensive on-the-ground research. * Asef Bayat, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign * A beautifully written book about a heart-wrenching social problem: how can the ANC government, whose legitimacy rests on its promise to provide housing for all, use the logic of 'legitimate government' to regularly dispossess its citizens? This rigorously researched ethnography provides a rare glimpse into the logic of evictions in post-Apartheid South Africa. The text provides a kaleidoscopic view into the problem by showing us not only how government actors see residents but also how residents see the state. Thus, we get a rare glimpse into the way in which dispossessed communities frame and advance their claims, how these claims are seen and understood, and the complex interplay of factors that determine which communities successfully defend their rights and which the state feels authorized to deny. This highly readable and tightly argued book is a 'must read' for ethnographers and social theorists alike. -Zine Magubane, Professor of Sociology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill MA

Author Information

Zachary Levenson is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. His work, which combines political and urban sociology, has appeared in Qualitative Sociology, Urban Studies, the Journal of Agrarian Change, and International Sociology, among other venues.

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