ABSTRACT
This book has made a case for an actor-oriented approach in analysing how urban politics work in Cape Town. Its main contribution to the debate on public participation in urban governance is grounded in the specific approach of constructing political trajectories and events. The trajectories function as an entry-point in the arena of urban governance through the lens of individual pathways from apartheid to democracy. Additionally, the book has dealt with events where people engender, negotiate, and contest, on a daily basis, concepts, policies, and institutions that have been introduced under the banner of democracy. Conceptualising these events as encounters at different knowledge interfaces develops a locus for an anthropology of policy, i.e. an analysis of negotiations in urban politics. The research has shown a variety of social and political actors participating in the negotiation process, which itself involves intricate, varied, and contentious rationalities of action.
