Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Brain, David

Keywords

South Africa, Segregation, Apartheid, Socio-Spatial Dialectic, Social Form, Spatial Form, Afrikaner Nationalism

Area of Concentration

Sociology, International and Area Studies

Abstract

This historical and geographical analysis of South Africa aims to determine the extent to which the history of segregation and apartheid has affected the social and spatial form of the country's urban spaces. The history of segregation and apartheid in South Africa has left a distinct social and spatial form that, I argue, have consequential effects on the social equity of the nation's cities today. The apartheid is shown to be a social and spatial regime that used a determined spatiality to maintain hegemonic power over the nation. Additionally, I trace an Afrikaner nationalism from the early Dutch settlement of the Cape to explain the dramatic shift from de facto segregation to state-led apartheid in the mid-1900s. This analysis uncovers a dialectic dimension between social and spatial form that show how spatiality was used as a tool by the state, as a platform for social resistance, and as a mechanism by which the social inequity of the past is still perpetuated in the country's urban forms today.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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