The Politics of Transformation: Improvement, gender and Transitional Housing in Cape Town, South Africa

840 million people in the world lack access to electricity and 2.9 billion lack access to clean cooking (World Bank, 2019, p.3), with women and children bearing the brunt of this energy poverty due to deeply embedded cultural gender norms. As a result, both energy systems and domestic space play a substantial role in women's subsistence, productive and reproductive activities. Energy poverty is generally reducing around the world, yet of the 674 million people predicted to lack adequate electricity access in 2030, 90 percent will be in Sub-Saharan Africa where approximately half the population live in inadequate slum conditions (World Bank, 2019, p.4). The case studies of "Transitional Housing" in Cape Town, South Africa and the Integrated Housing Development Programme (IHDP) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia both attempt to address a vast housing backlog, urban informality and social inequality through radical housing schemes which aim to not just provide shelter but transform lives.
The objective of this proposal is thus to (1) understand how a material change in housing and access to energy can transform every day practices, and (2) if such transformations are moving towards more equitable cities. Traditional behaviour change theories assume that individuals are autonomous and in control of their choices whilst states and institutions simply act as enablers or deter less desired behaviours (Shove, 2010, p. 1280). Social practice theory, however, provides an alternative framework to explore energy consumption as a "social construct" (Shove, 2010) that is affected by multiple, material, social, cultural and political actors. I therefore intend to (3) use this framework to produce a better understanding of energy as a "social construct" to move towards more transformative policy making which strategically targets the deeply unequal and perhaps gendered lived experiences of domestic space and energy.