This section used to be called Visual Anthropology. Its new name-Multimodal Anthropologies-reflects changes in the media ecologies we engage as anthropologists, changes that have broadened our perspective to include other forms of media practice, while remaining inclusive of visual anthropology. Many of these changes can be linked to three developments: (1) the (relative) democratization and integration of media production; (2) the shift toward engagement and collaboration in anthropological research; and (3) the dynamic roles of anthropologists vis-à-vis both the profession and the communities in which they work. Together, these changes suggest a new framework, multimodal anthropology, by which we mean not only an anthropology that works across multiple media but one that also engages in public anthropology and collaborative anthropology through a field of differentially linked media platforms. This is not, however, a decisive "break" with the past. Many of us already practice multimodal anthropology (Collins and Durington 2014;Cool 2014;Edwards 1997;Pink 2011;Postill 2011;Stewart 2013). When we consider the different opportunities and possibilities for engaging with ethnographically intended media in the age of diverse tools and platforms, we see multimodal anthropology. When we look at the transmedia installations of Ethnographic Terminalia, we see articulations of multimodal anthropology. Multimodal anthropology is also encapsulated within the numerous visual, aural, and tactile media that anthropologists produce, post, and share-the growing decoupage of social media that is one symptom of a changing anthropological practice. Multimodal practice is not limited to self-identification as a visual anthropologist. Rather, it encompasses this subdiscipline and also invites practitioners from within and outside anthropology. Finally, we see multimodality in the ways communities of nonanthropologists interact with us, from para-anthropological productions to critique and commentary. In what follows, we lay out our vision and ever-expanding areas of interest for this section as we explore the transformative potentialities of the multimodal. It is meant less as a provocation than an invitation to submit works that engage multimodal possibilities.
This paper explores gated community culture and development in the suburbs of North Durban in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Using perspectives from the anthropology of space and place as a theoretical and methodological framework, ethnographic fieldwork in one community in this area explores the cultural reasoning behind the movement to a fortified suburban enclave in South Africa by problematizing why, in a newly democratic society based on an ethos of desegregation, do individuals feel the need to segregate themselves along class and racial lines in fortified developments in a fashion reminiscent of homeland demarcation during apartheid? And, is the movement to gated communities within post-apartheid South Africa solely a white cultural and class phenomenon? While these questions are necessary, and perhaps commonsensical in terms of the unique social history of South Africa, research also attempts to complicate these lines of inquiry to apprehend the cultural reasoning and lifestyles of gated community residents to move past racial and class stereotypes and delve into the complex culture of these environments and the different rationalizations that individuals work with to justify their surroundings.
The last 20 years has witnessed an explosion not only in the growth of private residential territories throughout the world, but also in the literature addressing them. The majority of research is centred on experiences in the United States and Latin America (although studies elsewhere are increasing) and suffers from a tendency to homogenise the processes and consequences of gating as synonymous whether experienced in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City or São Paulo. Whilst axiomatic to state the unlikelihood of identical trends in such differing contexts, the absence of such a statement in the literature is significant. This paper addresses the social and spatial phenomenon of residential gated communities in three of South Africa's major cities: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Detailed background and discussion regarding the development and experience of 'gating' in each city is analysed, emphasising the uniqueness of each city's gating experience. These indications, that gating is not a universal experience despite some common themes, serve to counter the homogenous discourse in both popular and academic parlance throughout the world and within South Africa. In addition, particular concerns related to the growth of residential forms based on exclusion and privatisation within the South African context, are considered. In essence, we conclude that while 'gating' may be an individually rational decision in the context of South Africa's growing crime, its collective consequences produce a divided city, at odds with post-apartheid ideals of unity and equality.Urban Forum (
A disjuncture between the reality of crime and its perception has created a culture of fear within South Africa that bolsters gated community development and an accompanying fear industry that supports media, private security companies, and a number of other industries that provide security apparatuses. Is the establishment of gated communities an irrational response to perceptions of crime in South Africa in the twenty-first century? Or, are they deemed necessary in a perceived culture of violence that exists in the country? The article explores these questions through ethnographic research with residents of a gated community and the security company hired to provide security for the
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