Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid


Book Description

This is a compelling study of the origins and trajectory of a legendary black uprising against apartheid - the Alexandra Rebellion of 1986. Using insights from the literature on collective action and social movements, it delves deep into the rebellion's inner workings. It examines how the residents of Alexandra - a poverty-stricken, segregated township in Johannesburg - manipulated and overturned the meanings of space, time and power in their sequestered world; how they used political theatre to convey, stage and dramatise their struggle; and how young and old residents generated differing ideologies and tactics, giving rise to a distinct form of generational politics. Theatres of Struggle asks the reader to enter into the world of the rebels, and to confront the moral complexity and social duress they experienced as they invented new social forms and violently attacked old ones.




Apartheid, 1948-1994


Book Description

This fresh interpretation of apartheid South Africa integrates histories of resistance with the analysis of power - asking not only why apartheid was defeated, but how it came to survive for so long.




Kunene and the King


Book Description

'What lies beneath the apparent simplicity of Kunene and the King is a lot of moral, political and existential depth. This is testimony to the brilliance of John Kani.' – EUSEBIUS McKAISER South Africa, 2019. Twenty-five years since the first post-apartheid democratic elections. Jack Morris is a celebrated classical actor who has just been given a career-defining role and a life-changing diagnosis. Lunga Kunene is a retired senior male nurse from Soweto now working for private patients. Besides their age, they appear not to have much in common. But a shared passion for Shakespeare soon ignites a 'rich, raw and shattering head-to-head' (The Times) as the duet from contrasting walks of life unpack the racial, political and social complexities of modern South Africa. Kunene and the King is a vital play that combines the magnificence of classic Shakespearean comedy, tragedy and history to reflect on a new yet deeply wounded society.




Intonations


Book Description

Intonations tells the story of how Angola’s urban residents in the late colonial period (roughly 1945–74) used music to talk back to their colonial oppressors and, more importantly, to define what it meant to be Angolan and what they hoped to gain from independence. A compilation of Angolan music is included in CD format. Marissa J. Moorman presents a social and cultural history of the relationship between Angolan culture and politics. She argues that it was in and through popular urban music, produced mainly in the musseques (urban shantytowns) of the capital city, Luanda, that Angolans forged the nation and developed expectations about nationalism. Through careful archival work and extensive interviews with musicians and those who attended performances in bars, community centers, and cinemas, Moorman explores the ways in which the urban poor imagined the nation. The spread of radio technology and the establishment of a recording industry in the early 1970s reterritorialized an urban-produced sound and cultural ethos by transporting music throughout the country. When the formerly exiled independent movements returned to Angola in 1975, they found a population receptive to their nationalist message but with different expectations about the promises of independence. In producing and consuming music, Angolans formed a new image of independence and nationalist politics.




Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa


Book Description

An examination of post-apartheid politics This volume explores some of the key features of popular politics and resistance before and after 1994. It looks at continuities and changes in the forms of struggle and ideologies involved, as well as the significance of post-apartheid grassroots politics. Is this a new form of politics or does it stand as a direct descendent of the insurrectionary impulses of the late apartheid era? Posing questions about continuity and change before and after 1994 raises key issues concerning the nature of power and poverty in the country. Contributors suggest that expressions of popular politics are deeply set within South African political culture and still have the capacity to influence political outcomes. The introduction by William Beinart links the papers together, places them in context of recent literature on popular politics and 'history from below' and summarises their main findings, supporting the argument that popular politics outside of the party system remain significant in South Africa and help influence national politics. The roots of this collection lie in post-graduate student research conducted at the University of Oxford in the early twenty-first century.




Cities of Entanglements


Book Description

How do people live together in cities shaped by inequality? This comparative ethnography of two African cities, Maputo and Johannesburg, presents a new narrative about social life in cities often described as sharply divided. Based on the ethnography of entangled lives unfolding in a township and in a suburb in Johannesburg, in a bairro and in an elite neighborhood in Maputo, the book includes case studies of relations between domestic workers and their employers, failed attempts by urban elites to close off their neighborhoods, and entanglements emerging in religious spaces and in shopping malls. Systematizing comparison as an experience-based method, the book makes an important contribution to urban anthropology, comparative urbanism and urban studies.




Love in the Time of AIDS


Book Description

In some parts of South Africa, more than one in three people are HIV positive. Love in the Time of AIDS explores transformations in notions of gender and intimacy to try to understand the roots of this virulent epidemic. By living in an informal settlement and collecting love letters, cell phone text messages, oral histories, and archival materials, Mark Hunter details the everyday social inequalities that have resulted in untimely deaths. Hunter shows how first apartheid and then chronic unemployment have become entangled with ideas about femininity, masculinity, love, and sex and have created an economy of exchange that perpetuates the transmission of HIV/AIDS. This sobering ethnography challenges conventional understandings of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.




Migration and Xenophobia


Book Description

Migration and Xenophobia: A Three Country Exploration examines issues of migration and xenophobia using the experiences of three nations: the United States, South Africa, and Malta. Through the cases, Kyle Farmbry builds a larger dialogue examining issues related to patterns of movement and the xenophobic realities encountered with such migrations. The book builds upon projections from the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Organization for Migration that say the world will experience a continued wave of movement between people and place for the foreseeable future are true, then the lessons from the nations examined here have implications for a broader set of realities related to migration. The experiences of these nations represent a microcosm of what is happening globally in relation to nation-based questions on the migration realities of the early twenty-first century.




Foucault, Psychology and the Analytics of Power


Book Description

This book introduces and applies Foucault's key concepts and procedures, specifically for a psychology readership. Drawing on recently published Collège de France lectures, it is useful to those concerned with Foucault's engagement with the 'psy-disciplines' and those interested in the practical application of Foucault's critical research methods.




Body/State


Book Description

Body/State brings together original essays addressing various aspects of the evolving interaction between bodies and states. While each essay has different empirical and/or theoretical focus, authors consider a number of overlapping themes to appreciate the state's engagement with, and concern about, bodies. Divided into five parts, the first part, 'Bodies Modified and Divided' considers how the production, regulation, policing and maintenance of borders (physical, social, sexual, political, religious, etc.) are used to enable or constrain the physical (re)shaping of the body. Part two, 'Capital Bodies', extends the state's concern with the flows of bodies that make up the nation to consider how they are enrolled in the complex structures of capitalist exchange that form the basis for maintaining and contesting a set of relationships between states and markets. Part three, 'Deviance and Resistance', examines both how states seek to discipline ’non-normal’ bodies and appreciates the capacity of changes in the socio-cultural meaning and nature of bodies to resist and/or escape states. Part four, ’Sovereignty and Surveillance’, develops themes of deviancy and resistance by considering the impact of new technologies both on the intimate regulatory reach of states into and across bodies and on the nature of embodiment itself. Finally, Part five, ’The Body Virtual’, examines the impact of new technologies and online spaces both on the intimate regulatory reach of states into and across bodies and on the nature of embodiment itself. A varied collection of essays that address important and complex topics in a readable and creative way.




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