Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
mental constructions of self and place, and was of interest for its rhetorical and political
effects and not merely for what it described (Durrheim and Dixon 2005a). For example,
when white suburban residents of a neighborhood of Cape Town complained that the
emerginginformalsettlement ofblack“squatters” destroyedthe“pristinebeauty”ofthe
place, the actual beauty of the place and the emotional reactions of the white residents
were not treated as descriptions, but as elements of politically attuned rhetoric of exclu-
sion (Dixon et al. 1994).
Place identity provided the groundsforprivate preference schemes that worked tose-
cure white privilege and exclusivity. Second, as an immediate consequence of the fo-
cus on talk, the attention to place-related affect, emotion, and feeling that had been so
important in the phenomenological tradition was rendered problematic. These diverse
and nuanced subjective elements of place attachment were now viewed with some sus-
picion, as ways of grounding exclusion and privilege in naturalized and thus apolitic-
al mental states. Third, the rhetorical approach to place identity was often concerned
with constructions of belonging. Arguments about who did or did not belong provided
the political impetus for this work. The focus on the rhetoric of place attachment, dis-
placement, and belonging was informed by the idea that privilege and domination oper-
ated principally by means of an exclusion-inclusion dynamic (e.g., Dwyer 1999; Rose
1990; Sibley 1995). Consequently, much of the social psychological research on place
identity in South Africa was primarily concerned with how various forms of segrega-
tion—such as informal segregation (Durrheim and Dixon 2005b), semigration (Ballard
2004), and gated communities (Hook and Vrodiljak 2002)—operate to maintain racial
privilege. For example, Durrheim and Dixon (2005b) observed how white resistance to
the end of beach apartheid focused on how beaches had been transformed from arenas
of family and relaxation to arenas of fear, suspicion, and hypervigilance. Yet these feel-
ings, thoughts, and emotions were of little direct interest. The focus was placed firmly
on how these forms of subjectivity were utilized in arguments for exclusive spaces of
racial privilege.
In the present chapter, we suggest that privilege does not only operate in the narrow
field of practice marked by the rhetoric of inclusion- exclusion. First, research needs
to move beyond concerns with rhetoric and representation to consider other “possibil-
ities of performance” by which spaces are enlivened (Latham and Conradson 2003). In
addition, we need to consider how these practices are implicated in relations of power
and privilege that transcend a simple impulse to exclude the historically disadvantaged.
To evoke the Foucaultian model, power is not merely repressive and exclusionary but is
also productive of truth and of subjects (Foucault 1978, 1982). Privilege is thus main-
tained by modes and tactics of “governmentality” by which the conduct of free subjects
