Bibliography: leaves 78-79.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-111). / This dissertation is intended as an "ethnography of the particular" that might demonstrate the inter-subjectivity of 'hosts' and 'guests' subject-positions so often presented as static and oppositional of township tourism in Cape Town, South Africa. The majority of research engages in a continuing debate that emphasizes either the 'hosts' or 'guests' of a global tourism industry as either the victims or profiteers of exploitation, or innovative and entrepreneurial agents of change. I attempt is to look for the transformative potentials in the ambiguities and ambivalences surrounding township tourism, as an industry representing evidence of further penetration by neoliberalism in sub-Saharan Africa, that does not pardon the proclivities of late capitalism to widen the gaps of social stratification, but rather questions its determinism in shaping subjectivities.

This study is concerned with the makings of conviviality in the market spaces in Cape Town's city centre. It investigates the strategies through which diverse actors in the Church Street Antique Market, Greenmarket Square and St George's Mall negotiate - even celebrate - difference. In doing so the study offers an ethnographic account of everyday life in the market spaces, and considers the ways in which prosaic actions and interactions contribute to the cultivation of habits of accommodation. The study shows that conviviality emerges out of everyday negotiations of space, where actors recognise their shared interest in securing livelihoods. Furthermore, it argues that conviviality is not only rooted in the recognition of a basic sameness, but also in the acknowledgement that interconnections with diverse others are necessary for the achievement of individual and collective goals. Finally, this work brings attention to the significance of habits of accommodation for experiences of belonging and citizenship.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-180). / South Africa faces enormous challenges in the face of burgeoning urbanisation and the growth of underserviced shack settlements. Waste water disposal is but one of many aspects of basic services that are lacking. This anthropological dissertation is focused upon a Water Research Commission funded project, conducted by University of Cape Town academics from the departments of Civil Engineering, Social Anthropology and Environmental and Geographic Sciences, and carried out in two shack settlements in the Western Cape, South Africa. The project's aim was to engender community-level greywater management through participatory methods in the two shack settlements. The dissertation involves close analyses of participatory methods, the legislation and policy which governs service delivery to shack settlements in South Africa, and ethnographic accounts of shack settlement residents' experiences of service delivery. This information is compared with the assumptions upon which the project was predicated, to argue that the project's participatory aims were challenged from the outset by the political and socio-economic context within which the project was carried out. Moreover, in line with enduring criticisms of participatory development - in spite of a professed adherence to the methodologies - was unable to achieve its participatory goals.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-166). / Waldorf schools were first established in Germany in 1919 under the guidance of Rudolf Steiner, with the intention of educating children for the renewal of society. Since the spread of Waldorf schools to South Africa in the 1950's, South African Waldorf teachers have been faced with the challenge of localizing the pedagogy to meet the needs of modern South African children. One arena for this challenge is in planning the school festivals. Through data derived from ethnographic observation of festival planning and enactment at Michael Oak Waldorf School in Cape Town, South Africa, I show that Michael Oak teachers consider the celebration of school festivals to be intrinsic to the education of the children, and that in adapting the festivals to their own context they are confronted with conflicting opinions and ideas about how to juxtapose the Christian and seasonal festivals, how to negotiate religious differences, and to what extent to adapt the festivals to reflect specific aspects of South African culture. Using data obtained from participant observation, predominantly semi-structured, unstructured, and informal interviews with more than seventy people (including Michael Oak teachers, former pupils, and past and present parents), along with background reading and study, I show how the these teachers, recreating each festival anew every year instead of relying solely on established traditions, took a dialogical approach to conceptualizing and planning their festivals - one that, though time-consuming and sometimes complicated, was itself a ritual meaningful to the teachers. This dialogical approach was outwardly manifest in the festival's ritual symbols, particularly the use of time and space, and the objects and performance filling them. It was also observed in the planning meetings and was described by the Michael Oak teachers in interviews. Through this dialogical approach, the teachers experienced what Victor Turner calls communitas, a liminal, threshold state of creativity, changed relationships, and potentiality. I demonstrate through teachers' statements that by remaining on the threshold of these often conflicting ideas, the teachers found in themselves a creative energy that extended to the children as the teachers included them in festival preparation and enactment.

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-283).

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-106).

Bibliography: leaves 91-[101].

What if gender is not in the body, but happens to it through a combination of tangible and intangible means – through the coverings that mask, as well as the translations of and on the body? What if gender was malleable? If we cannot break gender, smash it to pieces, then, hopefully we might be able to bend it and fashion it into something that is more useful in the world, desirable, and something functional for an immediate need, or purpose. This thesis introduces the reader to the performance of drag and neo-burlesque, as these take place in bars and nightclubs in Cape Town. I use the concepts of the gaze and the mask in this research to unpack and understand the feminine and hyper-feminine performances by drag and neo-burlesque performers. I argue that contemporary understandings of the “male” gaze, as posited by Laura Mulvey, have become inefficient in addressing the complexities of viewing gendered performances and audience interpretation thereof. I ask the reader to consider how audiences are set up to look at a performance and performing body and what they are meant to interpret about the person, or their character, by looking at the performance. I want to look beyond the stereotypical “male” gaze. I attempt to add to the conversation on objectification in performance, by arguing that the performances that take place on drag and neo-burlesque stages, possess the ability to challenge dominant ideals and social regulations regarding the ways in which gendered bodies ought to perform in public and private space through the prescriptions of a hetero-dominant society. In this thesis I discuss gendered performance, and expression, and the ways in which these performances and expressions work alongside prescribed perceptions of femininity and feminine performance. These prescriptions inform the ways in which individuals are allowed to perform a homogenous idea of gender, and work against gender variance, which in turn, informs the manner in which individuals are allowed to perform sexuality in relation to what is socially mandated and allowed in the heterodominant society. In this thesis, I also explore the creation of the staged performance, and discuss themes of stigma and shame as it is used to discipline those who attempt to perform potentially subversive content in publicly accessible spaces. Further, I explore understandings of beauty and performance, making 7 connections to race, class, and aspirational performance by those who perform drag and neoburlesque in Cape Town. This leads to an exploration of the potential ways in which life outside of the performance might inform the life on stage, and vice versa – asking what is feminine performance, in what ways are feminine performances meant to be viewed, as well as questioning what kinds of feminine performances are socially acceptable?

This dissertation explores the concepts of pregnancy and motherhood held by women in body positive communities in Cape Town, South Africa. By focusing on their expectations and experiences of these concepts within body positive communities and their wider social circles, the research examines what it means for women to want or not to want to be pregnant; what it means to be pregnant; whether pregnancy and motherhood are experienced as sociallyascribed performance, and what it might look like to challenge the social conventions around pregnancy and motherhood. The contextual landscape where the perception of women is typically polarized into contradictory identities through pro-natal social convention, frames the research. I collected data over a six month period through multi-sited ethnography and the qualitative anthropological techniques of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and autoethnography. Through an overarching lens of intersectional feminism I drew from an interdisciplinary body of literature, focusing on body positivity, embodiment, gender identity roles, sexuality and resistance, to consider each woman's lived experiences and the ways in which they inhabit or don't inhabit the conflicting identities that society impresses upon them. The research revealed a number of themes: Firstly, within these communities, the exploration of body positivity is inextricably fused with the project of reclaiming female sexuality. Secondly, expectations and experiences of pregnancy and motherhood revealed tensions and paradoxes between the expectation of the ‘ordentlike', natural mother as a social object and the individual subjective self and her rights and desires. Thirdly, body positive communities enable members to enact both overt and tacit forms of resistance in opposition to South African gender norms and roles. The research demonstrates that, body positive communities provide safe spaces and support for these women in terms of personal expression, growth and healing.