Urban Development and Social Contingency: A Case Study of Urban Relocation in the Western Cape, South Africa

One of the axes of social transformation in the postapartheid state has been the provision of private property to low-income households. This paper examines the effects of opportunities for housing as residents of a shantytown in the Western Cape moved to formal houses in a new suburban housing development. It argues that residents are engaged in ongoing efforts to secure their visions of ideal domestic relations, and that it is important to see these in terms of efforts to consolidate social arrangements and the contingency and indeterminacy of human social arrangements as people struggle with available social conditions to shape lives that conform to differing ideals.