Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Citizen and Pariah
Hoping for a better life, many migrants have made the journey to South Africa and set up as informal spaza shop traders in small towns and township areas, supplying the local residents with essentials. These traders work hard, open their shops early, close late and support their relatives and kinspeople in starting new businesses. But thriving in environments afflicted by unemployment and crime is almost impossible when armed robberies are a daily reality, protection from law enforcement is not a given, and access to justice is effectively out of reach.?Engaging first-hand with small traders and the Somali communities in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein and Philippi, Vanya Gastrow investigates the ...
Problematizing the Foreign Shop
Small businesses owned by international migrants and refugees are often the target of xenophobic hostility and attack in South Africa. This report examines the problematization of migrant-owned businesses in South Africa, and the regulatory efforts aimed at curtailing their economic activities. In so doing, it sheds light on the complex ways in which xenophobic fears are generated and manifested in the country’s social, legal and political orders. Efforts to curb migrant spaza shops in South Africa have included informal trade agreements at local levels, fining migrant shops, and legislation that prohibits asylum seekers from operating businesses in the country. Several of these interventi...
The Aesthetics of Belonging
After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola's three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reimagine the Luanda cityscape. Awash with petrodollars cultivated through strategic foreign relationships, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos rolled out a national reconstruction program that sought to transform Angola's capital into what he considered to be a modern, world-class metropolis. Until funds dried up in 2014, the program—in conjunction with sweeping private investments in real estate—involved mass demolitions of vernacular architecture to make way for high-rise buildings, large-scale housing projects, and commercial centers. The progr...
Refractive Realisms
Refractive Realisms positions the township as a lens through which to engage the South African canon, endeavouring to provide a reorientation towards a black creative archive and surfacing under-represented forms of literary and cultural expression. The book converses with the long history of realism in black South African writing to show how the refractive realisms of the contemporary township simultaneously bear witness to precarity and articulate lively diversity. It brings together narratives that take the reader through persuasive depictions of township life and its flexible identities, the failures of post-apartheid, the possibilities that emerge from the ruins of historical injustice, the practices of commodity consumption, and the limits of race and gender discourses that align with (non)belonging to township spaces. An incisive read on the literary and cultural forms of the twenty-first-century South African township, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literary studies, identity politics, cultural studies, ethnicity and race, sociology and African Studies.
Violence, Inequality and Transformation: Apartheid Survivors on South Africa's Ongoing Transition
Despite its lauded political transition in 1994, South Africa continues to have among the highest levels of violence and inequality in the world. Organised survivors of apartheid violations have long maintained that we cannot adequately address violence in the country, let alone achieve full democracy, without addressing inequality. This book is built around extensive quotes from members of Khulumani Support Group, the apartheid survivors' social movement, and young people growing up in Khulumani families. It shows how these survivors, who bridge the past and the present through their activism, understand and respond to socioeconomic drivers of violence. Pointing to the continuities between ...
Local Officials and the Struggle to Transform Cities
Why are even progressive local authorities with the ‘will to improve’ seldom able to change cities? Why does it seem almost impossible to redress spatial inequalities, deliver and maintain basic services, elevate impoverished areas and protect the marginalised communities? Why do municipalities in the Global South refuse to work with prevailing social informalities, and resort instead to interventions that are known to displace and aggravate the very issues they aim to address? Local Officials and the Struggle to Transform Cities analyses these challenges in South African cities, where the brief post-apartheid moment opened a window for progressive city government and made research into ...
Soomaali Mi’yaa?
“Soomaali Mi’yaa?” invites you to explore what it means to be Somali in South Africa. This captivating ethnography is a deep dive into the heart of the Somali community in Cape Town, following a young Somali woman’s journey of discovery as she grapples with her own sense of identity while uncovering the experiences of others. Through intimate conversations and insightful observations, Billan Omar reveals how this vibrant community navigates belonging in a dynamic and sometimes challenging context. She explores the intricate ways Somalinimo (Somaliness) is constructed and maintained through cultural tools like clan ties, language, and faith, showcasing the diverse experiences of Somal...
The Paradox of Planetary Human Entanglements
The Paradox of Planetary Human Entanglements provides a nuanced understanding of the complexity of planetary human entanglements in this age of increased borderisation and territorialisation, racism and xenophobia, and inclusion and exclusion. One of the greatest paradoxes of the 21st century is that of increased planetary human entanglements enabled by globalisation on the one hand and by the rising tide of exclusionary right-wing politics of racism, xenophobia, and the building of walled states on the other. The characteristic feature of this paradox is the unrestrained move towards the detention and incarceration of those who attempt to migrate. This brings to the fore the issue of border...
The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 2
Alena Ledeneva invites you on a voyage of discovery to explore society’s open secrets, unwritten rules and know-how practices. Broadly defined as ‘ways of getting things done’, these invisible yet powerful informal practices tend to escape articulation in official discourse. They include emotion-driven exchanges of gifts or favours and tributes for services, interest-driven know-how (from informal welfare to informal employment and entrepreneurship), identity-driven practices of solidarity, and power-driven forms of co-optation and control. The paradox, or not, of the invisibility of these informal practices is their ubiquity. Expertly practised by insiders but often hidden from outsid...
