Urban Studies Foundation International Fellowship
Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut
Dr Mary Lawhon, Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology,
University of Pretoria, South Africa
The Urban Studies Foundation International Fellowship provided me with the
opportunity to spend three months (Aug-Oct 2014) under the mentorship of Professor
Garth Myers at Trinity College. Professor Myers is an international expert on African
cities, and has published books and edited volumes on urban and environmental issues
in Africa.
My main goal for the fellowship was to make progress on a book manuscript on urban
political ecology in African cities. Although political ecology draws on a wide range of
theoretical interests and case studies internationally, urban political ecology has been
more limited in its interventions. The book seeks to build on a theoretical framework
outlined in a 2014 article in Antipode (Lawhon, Ernstson and Silver) which argues for
the need to develop urban political ecologies insights starting from the everyday in cities
in the global South. In the monograph, I retain much of urban political ecology’s focus
on the flow of sociomaterials through space and how power shapes these flows. I
depart from early formulations of urban political ecology in placing emphasis on
grounded, everyday understandings of situated urban political ecologies. The empirical
sections focus on three specific sociomaterials as they flow through South African cities:
waste, alcohol, and water. This approach seeks to diversify the kinds of materials
examined through the lens of political ecology. Urban political ecologies of water
dominate the literature both in South Africa and internationally. However, understanding
urban political ecology as an examination of urban flows calls us to consider a diversity
of sociomaterials. Cities are shaped not just by sociomaterials typically examined in
urban environmentalism; the food, drink, built environment and means through which
goods flow in, through and out of the city are all part of urban ecologies. I include the
example of water in order to contrast the way in which a situated approach that seeks to
understands everyday concerns contrasts with the urban political ecologies studies that
have been done (including in South Africa) which start with Northern Marxist and
feminist theory.
During my fellowship, I had regular meetings with Professor Myers, in which he was
able to provide valuable guidance not just on the conceptual content, but also on the
publication process, including on writing a book proposal and how to approach and build
a relationship with a publisher. Professor Myers shared book proposals that he has
used to submit to publishers, as well as stories of how his different books went through
the publications process. Further, we discussed which types of publishers may be
interested in my manuscript, and how to approach them. These insights were incredibly
helpful, as my closest colleagues at the University of Pretoria have not published books
with strong international publishers and were not well suited to provide guidance on this
process. While I felt comfortable with my ability to undertake the writing of the
theoretical and empirical material, the fellowship was able to provide me with the time
and mentorship to help navigate the opaque publication system.
In addition to work on the book project, I submitted three new manuscripts, two revised
manuscripts, undertook multiple journal article reviews and provided support for the
Urban Political Ecology in African Cities Workshop at the University of Pretoria in
September. I also continued to supervise two honours students at UP, who completed
their studies at the end of 2014.
New manuscripts:
1. Miller, Miles, Lawhon, Mary and Nerhene Davis. Gated communities: Global theory
and local experiences. Submitted to Urban Forum
I finalized and submitted a piece on gated communities with Miles Miller and colleague
from UP, Nerhene Davis, based on Miles’s 2013 honours research. This piece argues
for the need to recognize the diversity of experiences of gating (building on Southern
theory), as well as the need to examine the process of gating (in addition to outcomes).
2. Lawhon, Mary and Joseph Pierce. “Power and Development” In The International
Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology. Editors:
Noel Castree, Michael Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, Dick Marston, and
Douglas Richardson. Wiley-AAG. Commissioned by Jim Murphy; submitted.
3. Bouwer, Roy, Lawhon, Mary and Joseph Pierce. Scales of discourse in
environmental media: local news, place identity, and environmental imagination in
Boksburg, South Africa. Submitted to Geografiska Annaler B
This piece is based on Roy Bouwer’s 2014 honours research. In the context of media
studies that typically focus on national news, we argue that there is much to learn from
local media, which is read more often than national news. Based on content analysis
and focus groups, we argue that local representations may well resonate better with
local environmental imaginaries, offering a contrasting understanding to that generated
at the national or global scale.
Revised manuscripts:
1. Grant, Shelby and Mary Lawhon. Reporting on rhinos: A critical analysis of
newspaper coverage of rhino poaching (Revised and accepted by Southern African
Journal of Environmental Education)
This piece based on Shelby Grant’s honours project from 2013 was returned with minor
revisions, which was undertaken during the fellowship.
2. Pierce, Joseph and Mary Lawhon. Observational walking: methodological
forthrightness in qualitative urban research.
Revised and resubmitted to The
Professional Geographer
Extensive revisions were undertaken on this manuscript during the fellowship. The
piece is based on our experiences attempting to gain an improved understanding of
Pretoria/Tshwane through walking through the city. The limitations on our ability to walk
(mostly regarding safety, but constraining where and when we walked as well as our
understanding of what we saw) prompted reflections on the need to adequately reflect
on this process in our writing, and the contributions it makes as well as the challenges
encountered.