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Violence consistently undermines efforts to make space public. However, this does not mean that violence and public space can be meaningfully studied in isolation from one another. Rather, it may mean that we need to be even more closely attuned to the reasons why the process of making space public frequently springs from – and results in – violent acts. I argue that we can better understand how violence makes (and un-makes) public space if we pay more attention to the concept of 'protection'. Protection relationships can create contexts in which public dialogue can occur, but relations of protection are themselves the object of contestation and dialogue, and the dynamics of protection can promote unequal, arbitrary outcomes. I illustrate and further explore this dilemma by examining an 'extreme' case, where achieving protection constitutes the core public problem at hand: the neighbourhoods of Hillbrow and Berea in inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa. I use this exploratory case study to call for more attention to the manner in which violence feeds into the ongoing process of making space public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of conviviality explores how everyday interactions and encounters mitigate or ameliorate sociocultural differences. This literature must address the critique that conviviality is a superficial phenomenon, which proves irrelevant in contexts where intergroup differences are deep, complex and punctuated by violent exchanges. This article addresses this criticism by attempting to define the meaning and purpose of convivial exchanges in a context characterized by high levels of violence: policing culture in Johannesburg, South Africa. Using ethnographic methods, the study illustrates how convivial practices often stem from individuals’ sense of insecurity and the search for protection in public settings. The article uses these findings to rethink the extent to which convivial practices might resolve social differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organised violence strongly shapes political boundaries. The modern state's monopoly on legitimate violence has made national borders the primary dividing line between peaceful and violent places. However, governments that are unable to achieve such a monopoly may opt for the more modest goal of moderating the distribution of violent behaviour across their jurisdiction. This paper explores how this latter approach redefines the contours of political space through a grounded ethnography of crime control strategies in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the postapartheid era, South African police and vigilantes have synthesised statistically oriented policing logics with the racial policing tactics of the past to anticipate, locate, isolate, and redistribute patterns of violent crime. In so doing, they have created forms of territorial power and violence that are neither new nor old, but undeniably postsovereign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]