Overview

How did African women experience apartheid? How did they create a sense of belonging in a city that actively denied and resisted their presence? Through detailed analyses of women's management of domestic economies, their participation in township social organizations, their home renovation priorities and patterns of energy use, this study evokes a larger history of gendered and generational struggles over identity, place and belonging. It provides a deeper and more nuanced understanding of African women in apartheid and post-apartheid society, and of urbanization in South Africa.

Full Product Details

9781784537852

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Rebekah Lee's work makes a major contribution to South African urban history, sociology and anthropology. It is a unique and sustained analysis of the experiences of African women of Cape Town. Her research techniques are particularly innovative and revealing.' - Professor William Beinart, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 'This book offers an extraordinarily rich contribution to the historiography of African urban life in South Africa and the importance of women's creation of a home to that process. It fills a gap in urban scholarship in South Africa since the mid-1950s, extending its scope to the post-apartheid era, and complements past scholarship on women's role in public resistance and defiance by showcasing the importance of women's everyday concerns with domestic economies. This is wonderful work, presented with lots of details, and revealing many insights because of its fresh combination of historiography and ethnography. African Women and Apartheid will find eager readers among historians and anthropologists with interests in South Africa, urban studies and gender.' - - Profess Karen Tranberg Hansen, Northwestern University

Author Information

Rebekah Lee is Lecturer in the Department of History, Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has published on the social and cultural history of South Africa, and her research interests include gender and migration, religion, identity, health and material culture. She is currently engaged in a collaborative project on the history of death in Africa from c.1800 to the present day.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available