Gated Nature and Its Role in Creating Place Attachment and Place Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa: an Analysis of Grotto Bay Private Residential Estate
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GATED NATURE AND ITS ROLE IN CREATING PLACE ATTACHMENT AND PLACE IDENTITY IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA: AN ANALYSIS OF GROTTO BAY PRIVATE RESIDENTIAL ESTATE By Sharon Ramsawmy, Master of Philosophy candidate Minor dissertation presented for the partial fulfilment of degree of Master of Philosophy Town Cape of Department of EnvironmentalUniversity and Geographical Science University of Cape Town Supervisor: Dr Bradley Rink Co-Supervisor: Dr Pippin Anderson July 2017 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town DECLARATION I declare that the entirety of the work contained in this minor dissertation is my own, save for that explicitly stated otherwise. Sharon Ramsawmy July 2017 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my mum and Ken for their infallible support through the pursuit of this Master’s degree, which saw me through pregnancy and the birth of my daughter. Thank you my baby girl for not only making this pursuit more challenging, but also a lot more rewarding. My gratitude also extends to my dad, my brother and members of my family, who although questioned my decision to take up studying again, supported me through it. Many, many thanks go to my supervisor Bradley, my companion from the conception to the final writing of this dissertation, thank you for your time and advice. Thank you Pippin for guiding, listening and encouraging me through this process. A very special thank you to my friend Andrea, for her invaluable friendship in the short years that I have known her. And lastly, thank you South Africa for introducing me to a variety of landscapes, all of breath-taking beauty, and to the warmth of your people. ii ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on a private residential estate, known as Grotto Bay, situated on the West Coast of the Western Cape province of South Africa. It examines the motivations of its participants to move to a non-metropolitan gated community and focuses on the participants’ experiences of life in gated nature. In analysing the participants’ subjective experiences, this work aims to understand how such experiences contribute to the development of place attachment, against the backdrop of the understanding of whiteness in the post-apartheid landscape. This qualitative, ethnographic research uses semi-structured interviews and participant observation to collect data. To analyse the data collected, this research uses thematic content analysis of texts and observations to identify motivations and link them to the body of literature on gated communities and lifestyle migration in South Africa. Drawing on the Person, Place and Process Framework, this work further probes into an understanding of the processes of place attachment to Grotto Bay, by speaking back to insights from the literature on place attachment, landscape and identity, within the post-apartheid South African context. The findings show that through gating and a migration back to the rural land, the participants of this research have enlisted the natural landscape to root themselves to place and to find a sense of continuity in self and in their identity, by linking the reconstruction of their past with the present and future. The results further indicate that discourses of withdrawal and attachment to place, read through a lens of white privilege, drive the making and re-making of boundaries in the post-apartheid context of South Africa. This work shows that through the privatisation of the rural landscape, Grotto Bay facilitates notions of power and control through the respondents’ romantic and nostalgic idealisation of their new social imaginary. The respondents’ subjective experiences exemplify the ways in which estates such as Grotto Bay may stand to perpetuate white hegemony and environmental injustice in the post-colonial and post-apartheid contexts. iii Contents 1 Chapter one: South Africa, a country of boundaries. .................................................. 1 1.1 Focus of the study .......................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Motivation for the study .............................................................................................. 5 1.3 Aim and structure of the study ................................................................................. 6 2 Chapter two: setting the scene (ry). .................................................................................. 8 2.1 Gated communities globally: definition and features ...................................... 8 2.1.1 Reasons for gating .............................................................................................. 10 2.2 Walls and whiteness: gated communities in South Africa........................... 12 2.3 Walls and whiteness: gated communities in non-metropolitan areas ... 15 2.3.1 Lifestyle migration ............................................................................................. 16 2.4 Walls and nature: land and environmental justice in post-apartheid South Africa ................................................................................................................................ 18 2.5 Place attachment through a reconnection with the land ............................. 20 2.5.1 Place identity through a reconnection with the land ........................... 21 3 Chapter three: research design and methodology ................................................... 23 3.1 Paradigm and design .................................................................................................. 23 3.2 Procedure ....................................................................................................................... 24 3.2.1 Procedure and sampling method ................................................................. 24 3.3 The research site ......................................................................................................... 26 3.4 Data collection methods ........................................................................................... 29 3.4.1 Semi-structured interviews ............................................................................ 29 3.4.2 Participant observation .................................................................................... 30 3.5 Data analysis ................................................................................................................. 31 3.6 Ethical considerations and reflexivity ................................................................. 33 3.7 Limitations to the study ............................................................................................ 36 4 Chapter four: data analysis ................................................................................................ 38 4.1 Part one: leaving the city .......................................................................................... 38 4.2 The spatiality of withdrawal ................................................................................... 39 4.2.1 ‘Semigration’ ......................................................................................................... 39 4.2.2 Safety and fear of crime .................................................................................... 42 4.2.3 Failure of the state .............................................................................................. 44 4.3 Lifestyle migration ...................................................................................................... 47 4.3.1 Counterurbanisation ......................................................................................... 47 4.3.2 Retirement migration ....................................................................................... 50 4.3.3 Second homeownership ................................................................................... 51 4.4 The maintenance of geographies of privilege .................................................. 55 iv 4.5 The role of nature in lifestyle migration ............................................................. 57 4.6 Part two: back to nature ........................................................................................... 58 4.6.1 The spatiality of attachment ........................................................................... 58 4.7 The person dimension ............................................................................................... 58 4.7.1 Personal experiences of place attachment ............................................... 58 4.7.2 Group experiences of place attachment ..................................................... 59 4.8 The place dimension .................................................................................................. 62 4.8.1 Community place attachment at Grotto Bay ............................................ 64 4.8.2 The romantic re-enactment of a placed-based community ............... 68 4.8.3 Place attachment in the natural landscape ............................................... 69 4.9 The psychological dimension ................................................................................. 72 4.9.1 Place identity through the process of rerooting