There has been a dramatic shift worldwide from welfare municipalism - where the state both subsidized and provided essential municipal services - to a neoliberal vision of balanced budgets, fiscal restraint and privatization. Cost recovery is at the heart of this new municipal vision with far reaching implications for access to services, affordability and privatization. This book brings together a theoretical and empirical review of the impact of cost recovery on basic municipal services such as water, refuse collection and electricity, with particular reference to South Africa. It describes the theory and practice of cost recovery and presents six case studies drawing on participatory and ethnographic research. The final chapter examines alternative future possibilities, reformist or equity-oriented.

There has been a dramatic shift worldwide from welfare municipalism - where the state both subsidized and provided essential municipal services - to a neoliberal vision of balanced budgets, fiscal restraint and privatization. Cost recovery is at the heart of this new municipal vision with far reaching implications for access to services, affordability and privatization. This book brings together a theoretical and empirical review of the impact of cost recovery on basic municipal services such as water, refuse collection and electricity, with particular reference to South Africa. It describes the theory and practice of cost recovery and presents six case studies drawing on participatory and ethnographic research. The final chapter examines alternative future possibilities, reformist or equity-oriented.

Neoliberalism's "market revolution"--realized through practices like privatization, deregulation, fiscal devolution, and workfare programs--has had a transformative effect on contemporary cities. The consequences of market-oriented politics for urban life have been widely studied, but less attention has been given to how grassroots groups, nongovernmental organizations, and progressive city administrations are fighting back. In case studies written from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives, this book examines how struggles around such issues as affordable housing, public services and space, neighborhood sustainability, living wages, workers' rights, fair trade, and democratic governance are reshaping urban political geographies in North America and around the world.

'Either you are with us or you are with the Terrorists!' President Bush exclaimed in a joint session of Congress ten days after the September 11 attacks. Even though the war on terrorism and the discourse surrounding it were ostensibly unleashed to protect freedom and enhance democracy, they have actually empowered authoritarian elements of state power and relegated human rights to the margins of the political arena. InFrom the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights, Neve Gordon assembles work of leading intellectuals and rights activists from around the globe. While highlighting the importance of human rights, each essay in this volume also encourages a critical perspective, stretching, as it were, the conception of human rights beyond its current borders. Whether it's Iranian premier, Mohammad Khatami, writing on the clash of civilizations, Ytienne Balibar thinking through universalism, racism, and sexism, or Ruchama Marton discussing the relation between human rights and psychiatry, this book comprises a challenge to some of the dominant worldviews circulating in the west. Anyone studying human rights or globalization in the fields of anthropology, philosophy, political science, political theory, economy and sociology should have a copy of this volume.

Seekings and Nattrass explain why poverty persisted in South Africa after the transition to democracy in 1994. The book examines how public policies both mitigated and reproduced poverty, and explains how and why these policies were adopted. The analysis offers lessons for the study of poverty elsewhere in the world.

Frequently praised for its democratic transition, South Africa has experienced an almost uninterrupted cycle of social protest since the late 1990s. There have been increasing numbers of demonstrations against the often appalling living conditions of millions of South Africans, pointing to the fact that they have yet to achieve full citizenship. A Turbulent South Africa offers a new look at this historic period in the existence of the young South African democracy, far removed from the idealistic portrait of the "Rainbow Nation." Jérôme Tournadre draws on interviews and observations to take the reader from the backstreets of the squatters' camps to international militant circles, and from the immediate, infra-political level to the worldwide anti-capitalist protest movement. He investigates the mechanisms and the meaning of social discontent in light of several different phenomena. These include, the struggle of the poor to gain recognition, the persistent memory of the fight against apartheid, the developments in the political world since the "Mandela Years," the coexistence of liberal democracy with a "popular politics" found in poor and working-class districts, and many other factors that have played a crucial part in the social and political tensions at the heart of post-apartheid South Africa.

Reconsiders complex questions about how we imagine ourselves and our political communities