Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town - Hardcover

Jensen, Steffen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847011047 ISBN 13: 9781847011046

Publisher: James Currey, 2008

Synopsis

This is a vivid study of the day-to-day experience of living in a working class neighbourhood on the Cape Flats. It deals with issues of criminality and the search for dignity in a harsh, economically depressed urban landscape. Gangs are the main focus of the study, but gang members are presented on a broader canvas as family members, neighbourhood friends, members of sports clubs, employees. Within this intensely claustrophobic world devout Christians and Muslims, drug dealers, cops, gangsters and welfare workers all rub shoulders. Mothers, despite being disempowered in many ways, are hugely important figures in 'the courts', commanding respect within the family and even from gangsters. Criminality is a blurred concept in the township, where alternativeand competing moral codes have emerged. Central to this analysis is the complicated and diverse concept of dignity. How is it constructed? What is its basis? How does it differ among the various protagonists of the township?
Steffen Jensen is Senior Researcher at the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims, Denmark
North America: University of Chicago Press; South Africa: Wits U Press(PB)

About this title

Review:

A valuable contribution to understanding the Cape Flat battles for survival amid poverty and racial denigration. THE WEEKENDER (South Africa), 16-17 August 2008

About the Author:

Steffen Jensen is Assistant Professor in International Development Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark

About this edition

• Publisher: James Currey
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1847011047
• ISBN 13: 9781847011046
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232