Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town

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dc.contributor.advisorFuh, Divineen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorStanford, Murrayen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2015-07-02T08:30:30Z
dc.date.available2015-07-02T08:30:30Z
dc.date.issued2014en_ZA
dc.description.abstractThis is a story about the struggle to become. In detailing the everyday lives of a group of young men from Khayelitsha, this story provides a context for (or entry point into) a wider discussion about a generation of youth who have been born into precarious social environments bereft of toeholds on the ladder to social adulthood. These youth must attempt to come of age and live respectable lives within a politically saturated predicament of bleak prospects and socio-economic exclusion. Yet this is not a story of despair, but one of aspiration. It is an ethnographic account of what Patrick Chabal refers to as ‘the politics of suffering and smiling’: a delineation of dream and drama (Gondola, 1999) amidst precarity. Despite exclusion from the realms of work and power these young men jettison despondence, drawing on association to partake in theatres of sociability that provide them with new contexts for social mobility. It is within these novel ‘hierarchies of being’ (Fuh, 2012) that they are able to position themselves as eminent social actors (i.e. the dream) by acquiring valuable social capital through strategic performances of ritual and repertoire (i.e. the drama). By presenting a detailed ethnographic description of the theatres of sociability in which these young men enact their incarnation of eminence, this dissertation contributes to an emerging perspective on the role of association in the social fantasies and possibilities of youth in precarious situations. In this regard the primary goal of this dissertation is to provide an optic into young people’s navigation of precarity, focusing on how they draw on association to reconfigure the geographies of exclusion and inclusion as they chart trajectories from social dereliction to psychosocial redemption.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationStanford, M. (2014). <i>Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Social Anthropology. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13269en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationStanford, Murray. <i>"Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Social Anthropology, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13269en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationStanford, M. 2014. Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Stanford, Murray AB - This is a story about the struggle to become. In detailing the everyday lives of a group of young men from Khayelitsha, this story provides a context for (or entry point into) a wider discussion about a generation of youth who have been born into precarious social environments bereft of toeholds on the ladder to social adulthood. These youth must attempt to come of age and live respectable lives within a politically saturated predicament of bleak prospects and socio-economic exclusion. Yet this is not a story of despair, but one of aspiration. It is an ethnographic account of what Patrick Chabal refers to as ‘the politics of suffering and smiling’: a delineation of dream and drama (Gondola, 1999) amidst precarity. Despite exclusion from the realms of work and power these young men jettison despondence, drawing on association to partake in theatres of sociability that provide them with new contexts for social mobility. It is within these novel ‘hierarchies of being’ (Fuh, 2012) that they are able to position themselves as eminent social actors (i.e. the dream) by acquiring valuable social capital through strategic performances of ritual and repertoire (i.e. the drama). By presenting a detailed ethnographic description of the theatres of sociability in which these young men enact their incarnation of eminence, this dissertation contributes to an emerging perspective on the role of association in the social fantasies and possibilities of youth in precarious situations. In this regard the primary goal of this dissertation is to provide an optic into young people’s navigation of precarity, focusing on how they draw on association to reconfigure the geographies of exclusion and inclusion as they chart trajectories from social dereliction to psychosocial redemption. DA - 2014 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2014 T1 - Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town TI - Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13269 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/13269
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationStanford M. Struggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Social Anthropology, 2014 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13269en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentSocial Anthropologyen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherSocial Anthropologyen_ZA
dc.titleStruggling to become : youth and the search for respectability in Khayelitsha, Cape Townen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMSocScen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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