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Go Home or Die Here

More by user: tshepo.neito
Created: 2nd Jul 2009
Modified: 2nd Jul 2009
Publisher:
Wits University Press

Go Home or Die Here:

Violence, Xenophobia and the Reinvention of Difference in South Africa

 

Edited by Shireen Hassim, Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby

Photographs by Alon Skuy

Foreword by Bishop Paul Verryn

 

The xenophobic attacks that started in Alexandra, Johannesburg in May 2008 before quickly spreading around the country caused an outcry across the world and raised many fundamental questions: Of what profound social malaise is xenophobia—and the violence that it inspires—a symptom? Have our economic and political choices created new forms of exclusion that fuel anger and distrust? What consequences does the emergence of xenophobia hold for the idea of an equal, non-racial society as symbolised by a democratic South Africa?

 

On 28 May 2008 the Faculty of Humanities in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg convened an urgent colloquium that focused on searching for short and long term solutions. Nearly 20 individuals—mostly Wits academics from a variety of disciplines, but also two student leaders, a journalist and a bishop—addressed the unfolding violence in ways that were conversant with the moment, yet rooted in scholarship and ongoing research.

 

Go Home or Die Here emanates directly from the colloquium. It hopes to make sense of the nuances and trajectories of building a democratic society out of a deeply divided and conflictual past, in the conditions of global recession, heightening inequalities and future uncertainty. The authors hoped less to provide answers or formal contributions to scholarship; more to pose questions that would lead both to research and to more informed, reflective forms of public action.With extensive photographs by award-winning photographer Alon Skuy, who covered the violence for The Times newspaper, the volume is passionate and engaged, and aims to stimulate reflection, debate and activism among concerned members of a broad public.

 

Shireen Hassim, Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby are all academics based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

978 1 86814 487 7         Soft cover, colour photographs    November 2008              R150.00/$34.95

 

Please send orders to:

Africa:                    Book Promotions, PO Box 5, Plumstead 7800, South Africa        

Tel: 021 707 5700                  Fax: 021 707 5795 orders@bookpro.co.za

US:                          Transaction Publishers, 390 Campus Drive, Somerset, NJ 08873, USA

                                Tel: 732 445 1245                  Fax: 732 748 9801  www.transactionpub.com

UK/Europe/Australasia:     The Eurospan Group

                                Tel: +44 207 845 0803           Fax: +44 207 379 3313                                     www.eurospanonline.com

 

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