Home Renovation as National Modernization: Colonial Fantasies and Postcolonial Aspirations in South African Township Tourism.

This article theorizes the home as a site where women rearticulate racialized narratives of neighborhood and nation. I focus on Black women who operate their homes as accommodations within South African township tourism. In post-apartheid cities, Black townships remain segregated and stigmatized by...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 435 - 459
Autor principal: Hikido, Annie
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: University of Chicago Press Winter2024
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:This article theorizes the home as a site where women rearticulate racialized narratives of neighborhood and nation. I focus on Black women who operate their homes as accommodations within South African township tourism. In post-apartheid cities, Black townships remain segregated and stigmatized by underdevelopment. Drawing upon fourteen months of fieldwork in Cape Town, I illustrate how hostesses communicated visions for modernization through their displays of household consumption. Women's homes interrupted the dominant imagery of stagnant township poverty but did so in different ways for international and domestic audiences. Hostesses who targeted white Westerners drew upon colonial icons of African tradition and framed Black townships as respectable suburbs rooted in ethnic heritage. In contrast, hostesses who catered to Black South Africans tapped into Black postcolonial aspirations by appropriating signs of Western luxury to portray Black townships as world-class destinations. Comparing these two sectors reveals how hostesses reframed Black place through gendered ideals in relation to racial and class hierarchies within and among nations. Taken together, they demonstrate how women's jurisdiction over domestic space enables them to produce transnational narratives of place. But as tourism enterprises, women's homes obscured the structural inequalities that these markets were predicated upon.