Geography 608: South Africa: Society and Space
Course focus:
Geography 608 (South Africa: Society and Space) focuses on a country where so much that is central to our understanding of societies in the late twentieth century comes together. Furthermore the outcomes of that combination of social processes -- racism, capitalist development, colonialism, territorialization -- assume exaggerated forms. These make it a particular useful instance in understanding those processes.
These processes have produced very distinctive geographies: geographies of intense racial segregation, of displaced urbanization, and of markedly uneven development, as between so-called 'white' South Africa and the black Homelands. Geography has been mobilized to achieve white domination and to facilitate capitalist domination of the country's working class, both white and black. It has also been mobilized by black liberation movements in their attempts to overthrow successive white regimes. It is therefore a graphic instantiation of the interrelations of society and space and how difficult it is to study one without the other.
The social processes that have made South Africa socio- spatially include: imperialism; colonialism; racism; nationalism; the displacement of pre-capitalist by capitalist forms of production; conflicts between mining, manufacturing and agriculture; decolonization; and the emancipation of black peoples. These have deep historical roots. Consequently much of this course has an historical emphasis. A good deal of time, for example, will be devoted to an understanding of apartheid (1948-1989) and to its antecedents. The era of a post-apartheid South Africa is now heralded but it will be a very long time before the country throws off its peculiar historical and geographical heritage, if ever.
The major text used in the course is a book written specifically with it in mind by the instructor, Professor Cox. It is entitled The Changing Politics of Space in South Africa. In addition students read Luli Callinicos's Gold and Workers.
Ten modules are used on this class and can be accessed below: