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Title: | Living Together, Moving Apart: Home-Made Agendas, Identity Politics and Urban-Rural Linkages in the Eastern Cape, South Africa |
Author: | Bank, Leslie J. |
Year: | 2001 |
Periodical: | Journal of Contemporary African Studies |
Volume: | 19 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | January |
Pages: | 129-147 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | social change rural-urban relations urban households Urbanization and Migration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations Development and Technology |
External links: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589000124428 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=H05K6NUJKUD4VDPF4K57 |
Abstract: | This paper focuses on the social and cultural dynamics of 'living together' or 'ukuthlalisana' households in the shack areas of the Duncan Village township in the city of East London in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It explores the ideological forces that underpinned the (re-)emergence of 'ukuthlalisana' relationships in Duncan Village in the 1980s by relating the changing domestic forms in the township to the changing political environment in the city. The practice of 'living together', which was formerly mainly associated with migrant lifestyles in the city, was appropriated and reconstituted by politicized township youth in the 1980s as emblematic of their newfound freedom and independence. This social form was used to express new social identities and to highlight the ascendancy of the youth within the township. But there was a huge gulf between 'ukuthlalisana' as ideology and as social practice. Contrary to the ways in which youth represented these relationships and policymakers interpreted these representations, 'ukuthlalisana' was fraught with conflicts. In Duncan Village, where more than half of the youth are unemployed and where gender relationships are strained, these relationships proved to be very unstable. Bibliogr., note. |