THE ACADEMIC—POLICY INTERFACE IN POST-APARTHEID URBAN RESEARCH: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ironically, in the North where only a minority of scholars are engaged in applied or policy research, they are navel gazing about what ‘the policy turn’ implies for geography. Here in South Africa, where consulting, policy or applied research is a ubiquitous feature of geography departments, we have been tardy, or perhaps reluctant, to open the conversation about the implications of the way many of us now work. Nowhere is this more evident than in the broad arena of urban research where the restructuring of local government, massive urbanisation and the uneven growth of the economy has created an insatiable demand for applied work on cities and towns. In this paper I use three general issues raised by our Northern counterparts to open up debate among South African geographers about the drivers of knowledge and the way this might impact on our urban future. The first issue relates to the role of public intellectuals in a society in transition and includes an assessment of the formative versus the evaluative role of intellectuals, as well as discussion on the politics of positionality and who does the policy research. The second issue takes off from here and probes who defines the intellectual and policy agendas. Crucial questions about how knowledge circulates and the role of consultants are highlighted. The third area shifts the debate into the academy and asks about the relevance of geography for urban policy. Drawing from these three pointers the final two sections of the paper make a case for recasting urban geographical scholarship in South Africa to, for example, take issues of scale and the local state more seriously, to move beyond the segregationist frame of the historical geographers and to fill the empirical and conceptual gaps within which the practice of urban government and governmentality actually take place. In conclusion I suggest that to do this it is imperative that we re-bridge the academic policy divide in new and more productive ways than the current covert linkages that exist at present. This means among other things, rethinking the academic value and integrity of policy work, as well addressing the material concerns that reinforce the status quo. This means confronting the place of consultant income for academics, acknowledging that there can be no evidence based policy without government and private sector investment in urban research and overcoming the skills gap in the urban sector.