Persistent pasts,present struggles,imagined futures: Gender geographies in South Africa after apartheid |
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Authors: | Sophie Oldfield Andrew Tucker |
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Institution: | 1. African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa and Urban Studies, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland;2. sophie.oldfield@unibas.ch;4. African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa |
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Abstract: | AbstractAny analysis of South African gendered performances, identities and inequalities confront past and present experiences of and struggles with race, colonialism, post-colonial development and sexuality. These tensions shape gendered geographical work, highlighting the importance of histories of race, class, and sexuality, as well as the ways in which gender itself can be approached as an analytical category and epistemic framing in South Africa. In this paper we focus on two avenues that have engaged scholars since the end of apartheid, namely: gender and development; and gender and geographies of sexualities. The former articulates the particular ways that the historical spatially exclusionary trajectory of the country has impacted especially on women and their ability to engage with state and national building projects post-apartheid. The latter explores how South African geographies (despite the country’s progressive post-apartheid constitution with regard to LGBT rights) continue to reflect and (at times) enable spatial segregation and inequalities related to gender. A key strength of research in South African gender scholarship is that it complicates and challenges how we might approach gender and gender-based inequalities, and the diverse ways in which gender categories and framings can be imagined, deployed and troubled in post-colonial states and cities. |
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Keywords: | Development gender post-colonial race sexuality south Africa |
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