Browsing by Author "Puttergill, Charles Hugh"

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    Discourse on identity : conversations with white South Africans
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2008-03) Puttergill, Charles Hugh; Bekker, S. B.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
    The uncertainty and insecurity generated by social transformation within local and global contexts foregrounds concerns with identity. South African society has a legacy of an entrenched racial order which previously privileged those classified ‘white’. The assumed normality in past practices of such an institutionalised system of racial privileging was challenged by a changing social, economic and political context. This dissertation examines the discourse of white middle-class South Africans on this changing context. The study draws on the discourse of Afrikaansspeaking and English-speaking interviewees living in urban and rural communities. Their discourse reveals the extent to which these changes have affected the ways they talk about themselves and others. There is a literature suggesting the significance of race in shaping people’s identity has diminished within the post-apartheid context. This study considers the extent to which the evasion of race suggested in a literature on whiteness is apparent in the discourse on the transformation of the society. By considering this discourse a number of questions are raised on how interviewees conceive their communities and what implication this holds for future racial integration. What is meant by being South African is a related matter that receives attention. The study draws the conclusion that in spite of heightened racial sensitivity, race remains a key factor in the identities of interviewees.