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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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"Sex, the City and Ekasi" - negotiating gender, identity and personhood across space in post-apartheid Cape Town, South Africa
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34. Post-apartheid: ethnographies of the South African transition
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| Paper ID | 601 |
| Author(s) |
Salo, Elaine Rosa
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | This paper draws on ethnographic data collected from research conducted amongst youth in different coloured and Xhosa townships in Cape Town, to examine how young men and women negotiate gendered identities and sexuality across urban space. I draw upon the concept of personhood developed by Meyer Fortes in the 1940s, to show how the these young people draw upon the diverse social and cultural meanings of physical space to negotiate, rennovate and reconstruct extant notions of personhood. This paper argues that theories of cosmopolitanism and modernity should take account of the Fortesian concept of personhood in order to understand the shift in young men and women's sexual behaviour across urban space. |
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