Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
says the opportunity is here to be grabbed and you're quite close to the people
who are trying to grab the opportunities.
Lauren and Matt's production of space in Johannesburg is quite different to Stephen's
and Neil's. For them Jozi is a space of quite differently imagined opportunities, social
and cultural rather than material. Their landscapes of privilege are those that enable
themtomixfreelyinablackcommunityandmakenewfriends.Laurensays:“I'mgrate-
ful that a lot of our friends are different to us and I feel really enriched by that.” Having
actively chosen the neighborhoods and social circles which most white people in South
Africaavoid,LaurenandMattthuspositionthemselvesas“other”towhatareperceived
as normative white attitudes and behavior. However, whilst they are keen to put a moral
distance between themselves and the white majority, Lauren's narratives reveal that the
couple is still enmeshed in a colonial sense of entitlement to what Johannesburg has to
offer (Reay et al. 2007, 1043).
Being British in South Africa
InthischapterIhavedrawnonaspatialanalysistoexploretheeverydaylivesofasmall
selection of the British community in Johannesburg. I argue that the different ways in
which Stephen, Neil, and Lauren draw on space in the production of their identities and
everydaylives,andtheirtalktomeaboutthese,arehighlyrevealing: showingbothhow
they make themselves and their social relationships. The minutiae of their spatial prac-
tices, and their language to describe these, offer a point of access to understanding how
this very small group of people is positioning themselves in the post-1994 regime, as
well as how privilege itself may be changing. The complexity and multiplicity of their
narratives reflect that there is by no means a unilinear response within the British com-
munity to the social and political changes: some still cling to the wreckage of separated
existences, others are consumed by fear of the Other, while still others look forward to
the opening up of opportunities which new metaphors of Johannesburg attempt to en-
capsulate in built and symbolic form.
In its various interpretations, however, it is clear that for the British participants fea-
tured in this chapter race is still central to their South African existence. It is deeply em-
bedded in representations of space, in spatial practice, and in representations of space.
The point at issue here is that: “Space is not the setting in which things are arranged,
but the means whereby the position of things becomes possible” (Merleau-Ponty 2002,
284). Whilst for some Johannesburg space offers the possibility to arrange differently
raced people in very different spaces, and, in the process, to use geography to produce
and maintain the privileges whiteness has always enjoyed in South Africa, others, like
Lauren, articulate a changing relationship to and imagination of space.
