Making South Africa Safe: The Gendered Production of Black Place on the Global Stage

This article offers an intersectional analysis of how non-elites frame neighborhood as a synecdoche for nation through tourism. In Cape Town, South Africa, white Western tourists perceive the peripheral Black townships to be more dangerous than the city’s white center but also more representative of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative sociology 2021-06, Vol.44 (2), p.293-312
Main Author: Hikido, Annie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apartheid
Black people
Black women
Central business districts
Cities
Cross Cultural Psychology
Elites
Escort services
Ethnography
Families & family life
Field study
Gender
Geopolitics
Globalization
Goffman, Erving (1922-1982)
Home based
Impression management
Intersectionality
Mothers
Neighborhoods
Personality and Social Psychology
Post-apartheid era
Poverty
Production
Race
Rural areas
Segregation
Social Sciences
Sociology
Tourism
Townships
Visitation
Women
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Summary:This article offers an intersectional analysis of how non-elites frame neighborhood as a synecdoche for nation through tourism. In Cape Town, South Africa, white Western tourists perceive the peripheral Black townships to be more dangerous than the city’s white center but also more representative of the country and thus worth visiting. Drawing from ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, I illustrate how Black women who have established home-based township accommodations iron out the tension between tourists’ fear and desire. I employ Goffman’s theories of impression management to demonstrate how township hostesses make Black South African space fit for Western consumption through race, class, gender, and nation. On the frontstage, women assuage tourists’ inhibitions by acting as maternal African figures. On the backstage, they cover the risks borne of poverty as communal Black mothers. Their gendered production of Black place palliates post-apartheid problems and projects South Africa’s stability on the global stage, which invites further Western visitation and capital.
ISSN:0162-0436
1573-7837
DOI:10.1007/s11133-021-09478-z