
Kira ErwinDurban University of Technology | dut · Urban Futures Centre
Kira Erwin
Doctor of Philosophy
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31
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Introduction
Dr Kira Erwin is a sociologist and Senior Researcher, at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology in Durban, South Africa. Her research and publications focus largely on race, racialisation, racism and anti-racism work within the urban context. Her projects explore how forms of belonging are shaping the social landscape of the city in housing, migration and environmental justice. She uses creative participatory methods, and collaborates with colleagues in the arts.
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (31)
In this article, we centre the knowledge and contributions of environmental justice social movements towards transformations for sustainability in Transdisciplinary Research. Scholar activists within research teams can help bridge networks of scholars with social movement networks to build strongly engaged and relational transdisciplinary research....
The gendered dynamics of informal work in southern cities across the globe has been well documented. Women in the informal sector, usually already marginalised through racialised and class positionalities, face predictable work challenges in patriarchal society, lower pay, longer work hours, more family responsibilities, less social protections, an...
After drawing attention to the crucial role of marine biodiversity, including that of deep-sea ecosystems, in current scientific understanding of the ocean-climate nexus, this article highlights the limited extent to which the international climate change regime has so far addressed the ocean. The focus then shifts to how the international climate...
Owning property is an aspiration for many people living in South Africa. The belief that private ownership is a stepping-stone towards material and financial wealth is dominant in South African housing policy. While property ownership may lead to better living conditions and the accrual of wealth, it can also lead to exclusion, dispossession, and d...
Informal waste pickers in cities across the Global South divert significant amounts of tonnage from landfills. This diversion contributes towards a sustainable environment and better public health practices. Informal workers globally derive livelihoods from collecting, sorting, and selling recyclable waste. In South Africa, there is growing recogni...
Our analysis (Niner et al, 2022) indicates that national blue economy
policies focus on technical solutions that do not address systemic issues,
such as discrimination, gender inequality, and challenges posed by climate
change (SDGs 16C, 5 and 13). These limited blue economy policies have legal
implications: they give rise to expectations in foreig...
Symbolic, cultural and spiritual meanings of the oceans, whilst different depending on positionality, are important aspects of understanding humans’ relationship with the oceans. Currently in South Africa, cultural, social and spiritual meanings of the oceans are given little consideration in the rush for the Blue Economy and ocean governance frame...
This article explores the economic lives of 30 migrant women who recounted their oral histories as part of a project on migration, gender, and inclusion in the city of Durban, South Africa. The oral histories include narratives from internal migrants, South African women migrating from rural areas, as well as women arriving from other African count...
All along the KZN coastline, subsistence fishers and their households depend on the sea
for their basic food security and livelihoods. However, this important local economy has
not been adequately recognised or supported despite two extensive policy and legislative
interventions. While the post-apartheid state recognises the rights of fishers on pa...
Making accessible research findings through forms of storytelling is a useful method for activist and public scholarship. This article explores these possibilities through a project on migration and gender in the city of Durban, in South Africa. The research project collected oral histories of migrant women’s experiences in the city, and, in collab...
Kenneth Gardens is Durban's largest low-income municipal housing estate. Initially built for `poor whites', Kenneth Gardens today is arguably one of the most socially diverse living spaces in the city. While the estate is significant in terms of its size, history and social make-up, very little has been written about it. This book provides a histor...
The movement of people into and out of South Africa has a long history. This flow of
people through the borders of our country is a current, and future, reality that both political
and civil society actors have a responsibility to respond to in ways which strengthen economic and social inclusivity. Since the pressure of inflows of people is mostly...
This publication aims to contribute to the vexing question of how we undo the effects of racism and racialisation in South Africa. This is a long-standing concern of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), whose founding executive director, David Everatt, is the author of The Origins of Non-Racialism: White Opposition to Apartheid in the 1950s...
In this article I examine people’s sense of place and belonging in Kenneth Gardens, a subsidised rental estate in Durban, South Africa. Kenneth Gardens is one of a dwindling number of state-subsidised rental units inherited from the apartheid regime. I offer a background context to the estate itself, as well as a broader discussion of state-deliver...
This article examines the complexities of local community development initiatives within a particular South African context, which of Kenneth Gardens, a low-income housing estate in Durban. The interface between community development, state politics (at a local and national level) and networked arrangements are discussed through the experiences of...
This article presents analysis of a three-year oral history project carried out in Kenneth Gardens, Durban’s largest municipal low-cost housing estate. Originally built to house low-income ‘white’ families under apartheid, Kenneth Gardens today is a richly diverse estate. In the early 1990s, Kenneth Gardens saw rapid transformation as racial barrie...
This article argues that international community-based research projects, embedded in university community engagement sites, offer a dynamic learning environment. It further argues that community-based learning, community engagement and service learning should be seen as allied pillars of tertiary education, using an international community-based r...
This special issue emerges from a concern with academic practice around researching and theorising race, racialism and racism; particularly within the current theoretical climate in which race is, in the majority, accepted as a social construct. In public thinking and discourse, however, acceptance of the biological existence of races continues to...
Using as a starting point the research conducted by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory for the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in 2011 to explore the status of non-racialism in South Africa, we conclude that in nearly all of the focus groups the participants and moderators find it impossible to define the notion of non-racialism—at least, not in a way t...
This article is primarily concerned with the theoretical debates and practical dilemmas of doing research on race and race thinking in South Africa, and beyond. In a society where many micro and macro interactions are mediated through a racial lens, the article questions the role of the state and of research more broadly, in creating a political pr...
For scholars and students interested in the social formation of cityscapes, Taming the Disorderly City offers a well written examination of theoretical and conceptual thinking in urban studies and spatial analysis. Murray admirably integrates diverse macro theory on the social, political and economic landscape of contemporary cities, predominantly...