The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedom and a
promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction:
define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a
community. Almost two decades later it is clear that it was less the
prospect of that future than the habits and horizons of anxious life
in racially defined enclaves that determined postapartheid freedom. In
this book, Thomas Blom Hansen offers an in-depth analysis of the
uncertainties, dreams, and anxieties that have accompanied
postapartheid freedoms in Chatsworth, a formerly Indian township in
Durban. Exploring five decades of township life, Hansen tells the
stories of ordinary Indians whose lives were racialized and framed by
the township, and how these residents domesticated and inhabited this
urban space and its institutions, during apartheid and after. Hansen
demonstrates the complex and ambivalent nature of ordinary township
life. While the ideology of apartheid was widely rejected, its
practical institutions, from urban planning to houses, schools, and
religious spaces, were embraced in order to remake the community.
Hansen describes how the racial segmentation of South African society
still informs daily life, notions of race, personhood, morality, and
religious ethics. He also demonstrates the force of global religious
imaginings that promise a universal and inclusive community amid
uncertain lives and futures in the postapartheid nation-state.
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Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400842612
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Antall sider
384
Forfatter