IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cipsxx/v24y2019i2p97-109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Planning scholarship and the fetish about planning in Southern Africa: the case of Zimbabwe’s operation Murambatsvina

Author

Listed:
  • Beacon Mbiba

Abstract

Contributing to the resurgent debate on urban informality in the global south, Kamete (2013) charged that urban planners in Southern Africa have a fetish about informality that is fuelled by an obsession with modernity. In these and other writings, Zimbabwe’s 2005 Operation Murambatsvina (OM) is used as a prototype planning malfeasance. Using the concept of fetish and fetishism, this paper argues that a fixation on and fetish about planning and planners has led some planning scholars to churn out misplaced or misleading understandings of OM regarding the role of planning (in) the operation. Inevitably, recommendations for planning reform from such scholarship are largely inefficacious. It is time planning scholars looked seriously beyond planning for both analytical tools and space for political activism.

Suggested Citation

  • Beacon Mbiba, 2019. "Planning scholarship and the fetish about planning in Southern Africa: the case of Zimbabwe’s operation Murambatsvina," International Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(2), pages 97-109, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:cipsxx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:97-109
    DOI: 10.1080/13563475.2018.1515619
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563475.2018.1515619
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13563475.2018.1515619?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:cipsxx:v:24:y:2019:i:2:p:97-109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cips20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.