EBOOK
Rethinking the South African Crisis
Nationalism, Populism, Hegemony
Gillian HartSeries: Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation(0)
About
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has become an extreme yet unexceptional embodiment of forces at play in many other regions of the world: intensifying inequality alongside "wageless life," proliferating forms of protest and populist politics that move in different directions, and official efforts at containment ranging from liberal interventions targeting specific populations to increasingly common police brutality.
Rethinking the South African Crisis revisits long-standing debates to shed new light on the transition from apartheid. Drawing on nearly twenty years of ethnographic research, Hart argues that local government has become the key site of contradictions. Local practices, conflicts, and struggles in the arenas of everyday life feed into and are shaped by simultaneous processes of de-nationalization and re-nationalization. Together they are key to understanding the erosion of African National Congress hegemony and the proliferation of populist politics.
This book provides an innovative analysis of the ongoing, unstable, and unresolved crisis in South Africa today. It also suggests how Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution, adapted and translated for present circumstances with the help of philosopher and liberation activist Frantz Fanon, can do useful analytical and political work in South Africa and beyond.
Rethinking the South African Crisis revisits long-standing debates to shed new light on the transition from apartheid. Drawing on nearly twenty years of ethnographic research, Hart argues that local government has become the key site of contradictions. Local practices, conflicts, and struggles in the arenas of everyday life feed into and are shaped by simultaneous processes of de-nationalization and re-nationalization. Together they are key to understanding the erosion of African National Congress hegemony and the proliferation of populist politics.
This book provides an innovative analysis of the ongoing, unstable, and unresolved crisis in South Africa today. It also suggests how Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution, adapted and translated for present circumstances with the help of philosopher and liberation activist Frantz Fanon, can do useful analytical and political work in South Africa and beyond.
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Reviews
"Hart's text is extremely important and courageous in the context of South Africa's fiercely contested political discourse. Hart steps in front to contest existing understandings of the state, racial geographies, crisis, hegemony, and transition. Her attempt to challenge what exists is not only an academic intervention but also grounded in deep normative concerns about the trajectory of South Afri
Vishwas Satgar, Antipode
"Gautier is good at what she does. . . . Her true achievement is her capacity to tell stories of urgency, sensitivity and grace. Her characters are bearers of psychological complexity. . . . all familiar stories in their basic broad strokes, it is her fine sense of detail, her intimate knowledge of the quirks and foibles of her character, and her capacity to write lines with seemingly effortless g
Ari Sitas, professor of sociology at the University of Cape Town
"Rethinking the South African Crisis provides an insightful and much-needed deconstructive lens for interpreting the increasing socioeconomic disparity in post [-] apartheid South Africa. . . . [Hart] deftly integrates nuanced critical understandings to rethink the present crisis . . . It is precisely her intimate knowledge, involvement, and investments in these places that lend a personalized tou
Dave Knieter, Social & Cultural Geography