At Home with Apartheid
The Hidden Landscapes of Domestic Service in Johannesburg
Despite their peaceful, bucolic appearance, the tree-lined streets ofSouth African suburbia were no refuge from the racial tensions and indignities of apartheid'smost repressive years. In At Home with Apartheid, Rebecca Ginsburg provides anintimate examination of the cultural landscapes of Johannesburg's middle- andupper-middle-class neighborhoods during the height of apartheid (c. Les mer
Despite their peaceful, bucolic appearance, the tree-lined streets ofSouth African suburbia were no refuge from the racial tensions and indignities of apartheid'smost repressive years. In At Home with Apartheid, Rebecca Ginsburg provides anintimate examination of the cultural landscapes of Johannesburg's middle- andupper-middle-class neighborhoods during the height of apartheid (c. 1960-1975) andincorporates recent scholarship on gender, the home, and family. More subtly butno less significantly than factory floors, squatter camps, prisons, and courtrooms, the homes ofwhite South Africans were sites of important contests between white privilege and black aspiration. Subtle negotiations within the domestic sphere between white, mostly female, householders and theirblack domestic workers, also primarily women, played out over and around this space. These seeminglymundane, private conflicts were part of larger contemporary struggles between whites and blacks overterritory and power. Ginsburg gives special attention to the distinct social andracial geographies produced by the workers' detached living quarters, designed by builders andarchitects as landscape complements to the main houses. Ranch houses, Italianate villas, modernistcubes, and Victorian bungalows filled Johannesburg's suburbs. What distinguished theseneighborhoods from their precedents in the United States or the United Kingdom was the presence ofthe ubiquitous back rooms and of the African women who inhabited them in these otherwise exclusivelywhite areas. The author conducted more than seventy-five personal interviewsfor this book, an approach that sets it apart from other architectural histories. In addition tothese oral accounts, Ginsburg draws from plans, drawings, and onsite analysis of the physicalproperties themselves. While the issues addressed span the disciplines of South African andarchitectural history, feminist studies, material culture studies, and psychology, the book'sstrong narrative, powerful oral histories, and compelling subject matter bring the neighborhoods andresidents it examines vividly to life.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- University of Virginia Press
- Språk
- Engelsk
- Sider
- 248
- ISBN
- 9780813931647
- Utgivelsesår
- 2011