From Here To District Six

The book is a sociolinguistic case study of District Six, an inner-city neighbourhood in Cape Town characterized by language mixing and switching of English and Afrikaans. Its early inhabitants included indigenous people, freed slaves of African and Asian origin, and immigrants from Europe andelsewhere. The ravages of apartheid affected the residents' attitudes towards their languages in various ways, which are described. The book examines the norms and practices regarding language choice for various functions and domains in the only surviving sector of District Six. It also containsdetailed analyses of extended bilingual conversations showing a range of social, linguistic and discourse features. Of particular interest is the paradoxical polarization and blending of the two languages. They are strongly polarized symbolically and functionally, yet they are also habituallyblended in vernacular speech through lexical borrowing and intrasentential language switching. This paradox has interesting implications for the construction of individual, community and language identity.

A place comes into existence through the depth of relationships that underwrite a physical location with layers of sedimented names. In Place Matters scholars and artists conduct varied forms of place-based inquiry to demonstrate why place matters. Lavishly illustrated, the volume brings into conversation photographic projects and essays that revitalize the study of landscape. Contributors engage the study of place through an approach that Jonathan Bordo and Blake Fitzpatrick call critical topography: the way that we understand critical thought to range over a place, or how thought and symbolic forms invent place through text and image as if initiated by an X marking the spot. Critical topography’s tasks are to mediate and to diminish the gap between representation and referent, to be both in the world and about the world; to ask what place is this, what are its names, where am I, how and with what responsibilities may I be here? Chapters map the deep cultural, environmental, and political histories of singular places, interrogating the charged relation between history, place, and power and identifying the territorial imperatives of place making in such sites as Colonus, Mont Sainte-Victoire, Chomolungma/Everest, Hiroshima, Fort Qu’Appelle, Donetsk airport, and the island of Lesbos. With contributions from the renowned artists Hamish Fulton and Edward Burtynsky, the Swedish poet Jesper Svenbro, and others, the collection examines profound shifts in place-based thinking as it relates to the history of art, the anthropocene and nuclear ruin, borders and global migration, residential schools, the pandemic, and sites of refuge. In his prologue W.J.T. Mitchell writes: “Places, like feasts, are moveable. They can be erased and forgotten, lost in space, or maintained and rebuilt. Both their appearance and disappearance, their making and unmaking, are the work of critical topography.” Global in scope, Canadian in spirit, and grounded in singular sites, Place Matters presents critical topography as an approach to analyze, interpret, and reflect on place.

From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.

The District Six Huis Kombuis: Food & Memory Cookbook commemorates the rich fusion of food and cultural heritage in District Six through personal stories, recipes, historical images and craft work. The book is a culmination of memories and narrative. It weaves through the days of a typical week in District Six, focusing on traditional family recipes that were prepared with love and often limited resources. This is a visual celebration of the vibrancy and warmth of the community - who foraged, preserved, baked and cooked together. Portraits of 23 former District Six residents, accompany recollections of lives lived in a significant time. Artifacts, food and anecdotes bring the spirit of District Six alive again.

This book explores how contemporary black literature challenges theoretical approaches of race, gender and sexualities.

One of the biggest challenges in the study of history is the unreliable nature of traditional archival sources which omit histories of marginalised groups. This book makes the case that quantitative history offers a way to fill these gaps in the archive. Showcasing 13 case studies from the South African past, it applies quantitative sources, tools and methods to social histories from below to uncover the experiences of unchartered peoples. Examining the occupations of slaves, victims of the Spanish flu, health of schoolchildren and more, it shows how quantitative tools can be particularly powerful in regions where historical records are preserved, but questions of bias and prejudice pervade. Applying methods such as GIS mapping, network analysis and algorithmic matching techniques it explores histories of indigenous peoples, women, enslaved peoples and other groups marginalised in South African history. Connecting quantitative sources and new forms of data interpretation with a narrative social history, this book offers a fresh approach to quantitative methods and shows how they can be used to achieve a more complete picture of the past.

Understanding the process and culture of self-identification