Rural transformation?  Race and space in Prince Albert, South Africa

McEwen, Haley

Rural transformation? Race and space in Prince Albert, South Africa

Master Thesis

2009

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Sociology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

This critical ethnographic study is concerned with dynamics of race and space in Prince Albert, a rural South African town. Proceeding in the wake of previous studies which have identified mechanisms of informal segregation in urban, post-apartheid contexts, this study aims to explore the ways in which transformation, as a national imperative to democratize South Africa‘s economic, political, and social landscape, is taking shape in small rural towns. It is found that fifteen years after the end of apartheid, Prince Albert’s coloured and white residents remains spatially segregated. It is argued here that this persistent segregation and inequality has become further entrenched by changes which have occurred upon the arrival of white middle class English speaking South Africans during the past fifteen years. Specifically, in advocating for the protection of Prince Albert’s ‘heritage value’ and concomitant development of the tourism industry, these new residents exert a symbolic control of space which centers their own interests and identities and ultimately re-assigns coloured residents a peripheral, disenfranchised socio-economic status.

Description

Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-128).

Keywords

Diversity Studies

Reference:

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Masters

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