Event overview
DANIEL CONWAY (Sociology Dept. Visiting Fellow) PAULINE LEONARD (University of Southampton)
TITLE: 'Whiteness, Diaspora and the Everyday: Identity-Making by the British in South Africa'
ABSTRACT: This paper draws on new ethnographic research to interrogate the positions and experiences of white British residents in South Africa as the post-apartheid government approaches its twentieth year in office. In particular it looks at the everyday lives and attitudes of longstanding and short term British residents in Cape Town and Johannesburg to explore and conceptualise broader questions of migration, transnationalism, diasporic identities and whiteness. The paper focuses, specifically, on everyday material practices and constructions of landscape, food, wine, shopping and animals and how these relate to conceptions of belonging, loss and the how they construct and mediate class, ethnicity and nationality. The research reveals the complexity and diversity of identities and positions within this community, with notions of belonging between its members towards South Africa and Britain often experienced as increasingly problematic. South Africa's British-born community is the eighth largest British-born community in the world and South Africa itself is the seventh most popular destination for retired British migrants- and yet it has been long overlooked by the literature analysing British expatriates. Historically seen as having divided loyalties between Britain and South Africa and residing in South Africa for benefits of lifestyle rather than committing to the nation as full citizens, an important question to emerge is the extent to which the transnational identities and relations of British people are changing in accordance with the new political climate.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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8 Feb 2012 | 5:00pm - 6:30pm |
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