END1019L - Social Infrastructures: Engaging With Community

Course Outline:

This elective is open to students from all departments and faculties, and contributes to the Complementary Studies B requirement of engineering students. The course provides a space to explore the nexus of ‘university studies and knowledge’ on the one hand, and ‘community issues and knowledge’ on the other. Central to this exploration is the concept of ‘social infrastructures’. Social infrastructures recognises that ‘development’ is a socio-technical process, giving rise to particular relationships between households and communities, shaped by the institutional and political context. It is also used to understand the complex set of relationships or forms of social capital developed within under-resourced communities and used to leverage social change. Through a combination of on- and off-campus classes, we utilise a process of ‘horizontal learning’ to explore learning and engagement with a range of community partners in the greater Cape Town area. We look particularly at how we, as students and emerging professionals, might engage with and learn from communities in the context of development and social justice.