In the South African debate it is often correctly emphasised that the peo-ple of colour were oppressed and deprived during the era of segregation (1910-1948) and apartheid (1948-1994). Less well known are the details of how racial segregation and its effects affected the white population, apart from the obvious accumulation of wealth.
Unlike their fellow citizens, contemporary white South Africans have seldom been subjects of anthropological research. Early studies on white South Africans were van den Berghe’s Caneville, the Social Structure of a South African Town (1964) and Brian du Toit’s People of the Valley (1974), which was a study of Afrikaner rural inhabitants in a remote val-ley of the Gamkaskloof. A controversial view presented by Crapanzano (1986) has possibly infl uenced some young researchers (e.g., Ribeiro 1995), but was much criticised by South African anthropologists (Hugo 1987: 328-358). Boonzaier and Sharp undertook one of the few attempts to look at the white South Africans of the 1990s. However, it is not a thor-ough research, merely a suggestion. (Boonzaier and Sharp 1995.) Local anthropologists have not examined the manifestations and ideas of white-ness in South Africa, and it can be safely concluded that these discourses have to date been under-researched.
In the fi eld of cultural studies a new interest in studying South African whites emerged at the end of the millennium (see, e.g., Steyn 1997, 2001;
Nuttall 2000) in the wake of the US-originating whiteness studies. During
the past ten years71 discussions on whiteness have become very popular in the intellectual circles of the United States. The topic has been embraced by literary and fi lm critics, historians, sociologists and anthropologists.72 It has been seen as a new way to criticise the discourses of race and to eradicate racial inequality in the United States as well as elsewhere in the world (Hartigan 1997a: 495-496).
Ruth Frankenberg defi nes whiteness as a place, a social construction from which white people look at their social relations. Therefore ’white-ness’ refers to a set of cultural practices of race privilege and dominance that is usually normatively and structurally invisible, containing material and discursive dimensions. The colonial discourses clearly show the in-visibility of whiteness and its unproblematic nature in the eyes of white/
Western people. (1993: 1-6, 16-18.)
The study of whiteness means a shift of focus from the ways in which the centre of power determines racial margins to the ways in which that centre formulates itself. In other words, the emphasis is turned from the
’Other’ to the ’Self’. Thereafter it is possible to perceive how the domi-nant group simultaneously constructs and reproduces its centre of power and its disempowered margins - such as the poor whites.
In the United States the main emphasis of the whiteness studies has been on making visible the invisible power position of whiteness by pointing out how the whites benefi t from their social position, which they perceive as normal and natural (Lipsitz 1998).73 In South Africa, the power position of whites has never been invisible. That makes it easier
71 African-American intellectuals such as W.E.B. du Bois, in his 1920 essay collection Darkwater, had looked at and dealt with issues of ‘whiteness’ long before it became an academic fashion. He perceived white American society from a marginal social position, which also made it possible to observe it critically.
72 Many basic whiteness studies emerge from a variety of disciplines. To mention but a few: Theodore Allen (1994,1997) and David Roediger (1991) were among the fi rst to study whiteness from a historical perspective. David Ignatiev (1995) wrote an important historical account on the treatment of the Irish in the USA. Ruth Frankenberg’s (1993) conceptualisations were ground breaking for whiteness studies, while Toni Morrison (1992) introduced the study of whiteness into the fi eld of literature studies. Black femi-nist critique has been involved via the works of bell hooks (2000), while George Lipsitz (1998) has written studies on the economic advantage of being white; and Anne McClin-tock (1995) has looked at colonial history and whiteness.
73 South African Melissa Steyn further defi nes whiteness “as a social positionality occu-pied by people of European descent as a consequence of the racial ideologies of European colonialism and imperialism”. In the present social science debate this narrative has been named “Master Narrative of whiteness”, which Steyn defi nes as “the colonial narrative, which had come to dominate other possible explanations for the differences between Eu-rope and its Others”. (Steyn 1997: 5-10.)
to study them, but it also makes it easy to stereotype and oversimplify the white experience. The shades of white seem to disappear where they should most be looked at.
The study of whiteness can be helpful to those anthropologists un-dertaking studies of Western cultures instead of concentrating on alien, exotic cultures. Studying whiteness offers the anthropologist an op-portunity to ‘decolonize anthropology’ (Harrison 1991). But whiteness studies could also be a potential new way of justifying the self-absorbed concentration of the academic world on the dominant white centre, and lead to the legitimisation of white racism and nationalism instead of re-moving whiteness from its authoritarian position (Dyer 2000: 542). Some academics have therefore abandoned the whole discourse as an altogether too dangerous one.
Hence, also when studying South African whites, there is a need to stay alert and be aware of the pitfalls in the discourse of whiteness, and of the complexity of the whole concept of being White. Frankenberg notes that since whiteness has had many different phases and forms over time and space, it is a complexly constructed product of local, regional and global relations, past and present. Whiteness is a constantly changing category constructed together with class, gender and many other racial and cultural categories. (Frankenberg 2000: 454.) Mark McGuinness therefore warns us against forgetting to deconstruct whiteness when looking at the Other (2000: 225-230).
While both the United States and South Africa were melting pots of whites of ‘all colours’ (Jacobson 1998: 91-135), whiteness in both countries differs demographically and historically. Thus, transferring a North American discourse without signifi cant critique to a South African context as such is not viable. Undoubtedly parts of this US-originating discourse on whiteness, such as the interest in hybridity in whiteness, the studies that demonstrate the othering of lower class whites, and discus-sions on the representations of Self and the Other within whiteness, are relevant when studying South African whites. These ideas and interests to be found in the whiteness studies have also infl uenced the background of this thesis.
While the anthropologically inspired approach to South African whiteness is still seeking its expression, local historians have conducted convincing work on whites. The work of Carnegie Commission was an indisputable starting point for the academic interest in poor whites. Many South African historians in particular have also thought the poor whites a worthy topic (see Dubow 1995; Freund 1992; Hyslop 1995; Marijke du
Toit 1992 and 2003; Morrell 1992; Parnell 1988 and 1992; Pirie 1982;
van Onselen 1982; Vincent 2000).
However, all the above-mentioned studies (with the exception of du Toit) were concentrated on the Johannesburg area. In addition to the spa-tial gap in the poor whites research, there is a temporal one. Even those who did venture to examine the poor whites did not examine them during or after the apartheid era, and there is no apartheid era ethnography or his-tory on them. However, due to their very marginality they were and are a crucial group for the formation of white South African identities and the category White.
The purpose of this chapter is to give a theoretical insight into the con-struction of the category of the poor white. In the previous chapters it was shown how this category developed within the triangle of economic circumstances, contemporary practices and intellectual currents. This category was produced and reproduced through the practices of em-bodiment, on which the empirical chapters of this thesis will focus. Both the transformation of this category during the twentieth century and its symbolic boundaries become visible, when the shift in the practices of embodiment is studied.
The theoretical approach to the study of the category poor white and its making through embodiment consists of two partly overlapping lev-els of thought. On one hand are the ideas of body as the locus of power and social control, which perceive the body as semiotic and structurally signifying in the sphere of the social, while on the other hand the body is produced through practices and ensuing bodily experiences.
In the twentieth century South African society the body was strictly controlled. In Epping Garden Village, the fi eld site of this study, the prac-tices of embodiment were governed by the state, but were also affected by their seemingly passive subjects. In this chapter, the different aspects of the social body and embodiment and their relation to category White in the twentieth century South Africa are discussed.