Date: September 27 2010(Mon.), 17：00～19:00
Venue: Meeting Room 332, Inamori Memorial Foundation, CSEAS, Kyoto University
Program:PDF»
Presentation:
Prof.Scarlett Cornelissen (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa)
Title:
Urban Space, Collective Memory and Identities in Post-apartheid South Africa: Reflections from Cape Town
Abstract:
Cities have historically played a distinctive role in South Africa’s modern political economy. They acted as central collection points for the capital that was amassed predominantly through mining in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; they were instrumental in providing the means to coordinate the rationalist planning and industrialisation characteristic of the apartheid era; and they were fundamentally shaped by the policies of racial division of that era. The governing of cities in apartheid South Africa was designed to service the infrastructural, and in particular the ideological and spatial, requirements of the apartheid state. Urban authority reflected the spatio-administrative ordering of apartheid, consisting of local councils governing each of the four statutorily defined racial groups (i.e., white, coloured, Indian,and black). Finally, since a key rationale of apartheid planning was the control of the flow of blacks into cities—the intention of apartheid policy being to contain African settlement in designated rural “homelands” or bantustans—urban policy centred on managing and monitoring Africans’ (and other populations’) movements.
In the postapartheid era, urban areas continue to play an important role, although their primary function in the political economy has shifted. In a spatial sense, too, cities are now considered important geographical and economic sites for the enactment of transformation and integration. The postapartheid city, however, has been subject to many other unintended changes, which range from gentrification, informalisation, and deindustrialisation in some instances, to the rise of private securitised spaces and pronounced class polarities. Urban identities have changed concomitantly. In this presentation, I reflect on changes in the spatial, social, and economic geography of the city of Cape Town and their effects on urban identities in the city. The focus is on the broad way that emerging (and older) identities inter-relate with constructions of place in postapartheid South Africa.
Organizer: Yoichi Mine (Professor, CSEAS, Kyoto University)
【Activity Report】
Dr. Scarlett Cornelissen attempted to examine “changes” in urban space, collective memory, and identities in postapartheid South Africa. She focused on Cape Town as “hometown” and “tourist destination.” The former offers stability, familial ties, and continuation of personal identities; the latter offers a place for the fleeting identity of the tourist.
According to Dr. Cornelissen, the city of Cape Town faces two conflicting forces in the postapartheid era: integration (led by the state) and class polarization (led by the market). “Sense of place” is one of the key words in her presentation. This involves “attachment to, affiliation to, and memory of a particular place.” Using the example of “private securitised spaces,” Dr. Cornelissen pointed out that the construction of the “sense of place” is not neutral rather, it is an ideological process.
A number of questions and comments arose in response to her presentation. One graduate student asked what the meaning of “sense of place” was in the context of national and local identity. Professor Sugihara (Center for Southeast Asian Studies) asked how different races competed for employment in Cape Town. The seminar offered a good opportunity to consider the importance of constructions of place and urban identity in postapartheid South Africa.
(Shiro Sato)