Home Renovation as National Modernization

Colonial Fantasies and Postcolonial Aspirations in South African Township Tourism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2229653
AutoresAnnie Hikido (0000-0002-7675-2730, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen49
Número2
Páginas435-458
Fecha de publicación2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0097-9740 • E-ISSN: 1545-6943
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/726639
OpenAlexW4388742368
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas38

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

Colonialism · Middle class · Modernization theory · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · Tourism · Vision · White (mutation) · African history and culture studies · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Sex work and related issues