Xenophobia in South Africa - A History

This book is a vivid history of racism in post-apartheid South Africa, focusing on how colonialism still haunts black intraracial relationships. In 2008, sixty-four people died in a wave of anti-immigrant violence in the Alexandra township of Johannesburg; in the aftermath, Hashi Kenneth Tafira went to Alexandra and undertook an ethnographic study of why this violence occurred. Presented here, his findings reframe xenophobia as a form of black-on-black racism, unraveling the long history of colonial dehumanization and self-abnegation that continues to shape South African black subjectivities. Studying vernacular, popular stereotypes, gender, and sexual politics, Tafira investigates the dynamics of love relationships between black South African women and black immigrant men, and pervasive myths about male sexuality, economic competition, and immigrants. Pioneering and timely, this book presents a cohesive picture of the new face of racism in the twenty-first century.

List of contents

1. Introduction.- 2. Is Xenophobia Racism?.- 3. Inside the Mind of a Xenophobe.- 4. The Interface between Race, Nation, Nationalism, and Ethnicism.- 5. Politics of Difference.- 6. Local Woman and Immigrant Lover.- 7. The Immigrant's Phallus.- 8. Particularisms and Relationships.- 9. Postscript.

About the author

Hashi Kenneth Tafira is an independent researcher, writer, and consultant, and the author of Black Nationalist Thought in South Africa: The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Summary

Redefines and explores the sources of contemporary xenophobia, placing globalization and its discontents in dialogue with critical race theory

Presents the first formal analysis of romantic relationships between immigrant and non-immigrant communities in South Africa
Examines xenophobic language and terminology, uncovering the semantic and cultural origins of anti-immigrant sentiment and violence

Product details

• Authors: Hashi Kenneth Tafira
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 25.08.2018
• EAN: 9783319884745
• ISBN: 978-3-31-988474-5
• No. of pages: 148
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 9 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 222 g
• Illustrations: XIII, 148 p.
• Series: African Histories and Modernities
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; C, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte, Ethnische Gruppen und multikulturelle Studien, Kolonialismus und Imperialismus, Ethnic Studies, History, Social History, Social & cultural history, Colonialism & imperialism, auseinandersetzen, African History, imperialism, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Imperialism and Colonialism, Africa—History, Sociology of Racism, Racism in the social sciences