Racial remains in a company town? Iscor houses and the appearance of race in contemporary newcastle

Abstract

This article developed out of a qualitative study of the lives of four white working-class families in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal. It focuses on how race appears in the built environment -rather than being consciously 'thought' -and how, for these families, racism is tied to the loss of place. For them, the experience of living in a house that once promised security and has now become a site of insecurity produces a specific kind of alienation and a racial consciousness which is subtly different from the 'white talk' described by Steyn (2001) in analysing white South African discourse.

Group Identity and Groupness: Student Experiences at University

“…This is also true in work that is not mainly concerned with race and ethnicity, as in research on poverty and development (Wale and Foster 2007), elite attitudes (Kotzé 1993), work values (Steyn and Kotzé 2004), and the life satisfaction of students (Møller 1996), as well as in the sociology of work (Webster 1999). Empirical work has dealt with race and ethnicity in relation to most social realms, among others in connection with citizenship (Klugman 2008), racial relations at White universities (Gwele 2002), linguistic diversity and identity politics (Venter 1998;Kriel 2003), racialized and (de)segregated places (Piper et al 2005;Peens 2012), and racial stereotypes (Vahed 2001). The occurrence of (small) groups built around racial and ethnic categories thus remains a characteristic of society in general and of South African society in particular.…”