Improving shacks, upgrading settlements: An ethnography of solar power infrastructure in the informal settlement of Enkanini, Stellenbosch

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis ethnographically explores an in-situ upgrading experiment known as the iShackProject. Through the use of ethnography as method the research elaborates on the intricaciesand tensions inherent in attempts at establishing a low cost energy institution in the illegalinformal settlement of Enkanini. Demonstrating how infrastructures are more than materialconfigurations, this thesis traces the various human and non-human actors, practices anddiscourses involved in the establishment of the project over the course of ten months. ByDrawing of Fergusons' concept of dependence the research shows that although claims aremade to the 'apolitical' nature of the method for the delivery of solar power, the iShackProject produces new political subjectivities that at times resist the possibilities of a low costenergy institution.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University