POWER DYNAMICS AND SUBALTERNS’ ORGANISING IN AN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT: A PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH IN SOUTH AFRICA

Mainstream literature of management and organisational studies (MOS) is based on underlying assumptions and constructions of ideas that have been universalised to justify specific conceptions and forms of organising. In this work, I argue that mainstream MOS has not considered the particular contexts of the marginalised organising in urban areas in the Global South, neglecting the subalterns (understood as the groups or individuals oppressed in various forms and displaced to the margins of society) and the complexities of power dynamics in the context of informal organising. This work combines alternative approaches from critical management studies, postcolonialism, decolonialism, and subaltern urban studies to tackle these gaps in knowledge. Hence, I emphasise the need to examine new and alternative ways of thinking and understanding the subalterns, their forms of participation, and the spaces they occupy in urban areas. In so doing, this thesis also acknowledges how academic production inevitably implies some forms of oppression of the subalterns, too. Arguably, the subaltern cannot be represented adequately by academic knowledge because academic knowledge is a practice that would actively produce subalternity in the very act of presenting it. And while there seems not to be a straightforward solution to this dilemma, by problematising and reflecting on my positionality as a researcher, this work aims to contribute to the debate on the representation of the subalterns in MOS.
This study specifically explores to what extent and how power dynamics affect the organising of the subalterns in an informal settlement in South Africa. Through a participatory methodological approach, it provides a space for the voices of people more usually marginalised by mainstream management and organisational studies. As examined throughout this work, this is where the methodological contribution of this research is focused, providing an insight into organising practices and narratives that tend to be ignored in mainstream western management and organisation literature. Methodologically this research also illustrates an innovative design of digital and at-distance research methods used to ensure participatory research continued during the spread of Covid-19 infection in South Africa.
The findings indicate that organisational practices of the subaltern in the Magangeni informal settlement are shaped by interrelated power dynamics to which they are exposed -their differences and heterogeneity, the neoliberal world order, and their immediate needs and the nature of the demands upon them. All these factors are shown to have been aggravated amidst the pandemic of Covid-19 and a fire incident that took place in October 2020. The national lockdown introduced in March 2020 resulted in people of the informal settlement losing their jobs, increased overcrowding and decreased access to basic services, and more cases of gender-based violence. Drawing from these findings, the thesis illustrates alternative understandings of informal organising not usually acknowledged in mainstream management and organising literature.