Queer Infrastructures: Objects of and Orientations towards Urban Research Practice

Drawing on Ahmed’s seminal work on queer phenomenology, this intervention proposes the concept of “queer infrastructure”. Queer infrastructure, as we deploy it, reflects both an object of and orientation towards urban research practice. As an object, we discuss the function, use, and practice of (our) queer networks, specifically for research assumed to be unrelated to studies of sexuality and located in the urban African context. Here we centre questions of becoming, affect, and relationality. As an orientation, we discuss what can be “seen” both when entering the field through queer networks and by seeing urban spaces through queerness. In doing so, we suggest that sexuality is always present in urban research, even when not explicitly so

Fintech urbanism in the startup capital of Africa

From innovations in mobile money to bookkeeping devices, the burgeoning of financial-technologies (fintech) in the Global South has been critiqued by scholars concerned with financialization, datafication, and recently, neo-coloniality. While sympathetic to these concerns, this paper argues for a more descriptive, ambivalent, and urban reading of the implications and stakes of this fintech boom. Using Cape Town as a case study, we explore how the city has become and positioned itself as a/the capital of fintech innovation in Africa. With two detailed vignettes that look respectively at the recent histories of business process offshoring in the city and at the cycles of experimentation that via Cape Town bring fintech to the rest of the continent, we make three arguments. First, that the urban state has been instrumental in shaping how fintech lands in cities and how the infrastructures which support it develop. Second, that diverse cultural economies of experimentation engender the worlding practices through which local fintech ecosystems operate. Overall, we suggest that paying attention to these different ways in which fintech is enabled and mobilized by the urban state opens a necessary research agenda into the ambivalence of financial innovation in Africa

Leisure pursuits in South Africa as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper aims to present the leisure pursuits in South Africa as observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the world was hit by the pandemic as early as January 2020, South Africa recorded its first case on 5 March 2020. A five-stage lockdown was introduced to flatten the curve and prepare the heath system during the first level. Lockdown regulations were severe, with restricted movement only for essential services. The extreme lockdown measures had a visible impact on the leisure and tourism industry. Small businesses were devastated by the financial hardship and job losses have contributed to the already high level of unemployment and social-economic inequalities among citizens. Observations for this study were based on what people shared on social and popular media, including discussions with friends and family. The pandemic forced many people to revisit how they live, work and play. People change and adapt their leisure pursuits to fit the situation they find themselves in. Technology was embraced to connect with others and to pursue leisure activities. The future of leisure and recreation practices post-COVID-19 is not clear and will change indefinitely. The social and economic impact on the industry has been vast and will be far reaching

Single-cell transcriptomics of 20 mouse organs creates a "Tabula Muris"

Here we present a compendium of single-cell transcriptomic data from the model organism Mus musculus that comprises more than 100,000 cells from 20 organs and tissues. These data represent a new resource for cell biology, reveal gene expression in poorly characterized cell populations and enable the direct and controlled comparison of gene expression in cell types that are shared between tissues, such as T lymphocytes and endothelial cells from different anatomical locations. Two distinct technical approaches were used for most organs: one approach, microfluidic droplet-based 3'-end counting, enabled the survey of thousands of cells at relatively low coverage, whereas the other, full-length transcript analysis based on fluorescence-activated cell sorting, enabled the characterization of cell types with high sensitivity and coverage. The cumulative data provide the foundation for an atlas of transcriptomic cell biology