University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Soweto, The s“ torybook Place”: Tourism And Feeling In A South African Township Sarah Marie Kgagudi University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Linguistics Commons, Music Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Kgagudi, Sarah Marie, "Soweto, The s“ torybook Place”: Tourism And Feeling In A South African Township" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3320. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3320 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3320 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Soweto, The s“ torybook Place”: Tourism And Feeling In A South African Township Abstract This dissertation deals with the role of tour guides in creating and telling the story of Soweto – a township southwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. The ts ory speaks of a place afflicted by poverty because of its history of segregation during apartheid but emerging out of these struggles to lead its nation in a post-apartheid culture. I argue that Soweto’s story was created out of a governmental mandate for the township to become one of Gauteng’s tourism locations, and out of a knowledge that the transformation story from apartheid to a ‘rainbow nation’ would not sell in this context. After being created, Soweto’s story was affirmed through urban branding strategies and distributed to tourism markets across the world. It is a storybook – a narrative with a beginning, a climax, and an ending; it is easily packaged, marketed and sold to individuals from across the world, and this is done through the senses and emotions. In tours of Soweto, the story comes to life through sensitizations, which are either: (1) signs of communication that link individuals to artifacts in commodity formulations through the senses, or (2) artifacts in a commodity process whose object formulations involve sensoria. The an rrative told about Soweto has sold well in tourism, as the Sowetan tourism industry grows in size each year. It has sold so well that the South African government has co-opted Soweto’s local repacking of apartheid into their national narrative. What this dissertation reveals is the centrality of Soweto in contemporary political and social post-apartheid South Africa. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Music First Advisor Carol A. Muller Second Advisor Asif Agha Keywords Ethnomusicology, Linguistic Anthropology, Senses, South Africa, Soweto, Tourism Subject Categories Linguistics | Music | Social and Cultural Anthropology This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3320 SOWETO, THE “STORYBOOK PLACE”: TOURISM AND FEELING IN A SOUTH AFRICAN TOWNSHIP Sarah Marié Kgagudi A DISSERTATION in Music and Anthropology Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation Co-Supervisor of Dissertation ______________________ ______________________ Dr. Carol Muller Dr. Asif Agha Professor of Ethnomusicology Professor of Anthropology Graduate Group Chairperson, Graduate Group Chairperson, Music Anthropology ______________________ ______________________ Dr. Timothy Rommen, Dr. Theodore Schurr, Davidson Kennedy Professor in the College Professor and Graduate and Director of Graduate Studies in Music Group Chair in Anthropology Dissertation Committee Dr. Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi, Assistant Professor (African Language Department, The University of the Witwatersrand) SOWETO, THE “STORYBOOK PLACE”: TOURISM AND FEELING IN A SOUTH AFRICAN TOWNSHIP COPYRIGHT 2019 Sarah Marie Kgagudi This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ iii Dedicated to the memory of my late uncle, Robert (Bobby) Drinan. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT There are too many people to thank for the final product in hand. First and foremost I must thank my advisors, Dr. Carol Ann Muller and Dr. Asif Agha, for their guidance and support over the past five years. Dr. Muller fought for my chance to study with her at The University of Pennsylvania before we had even met in person. Her intellectual creativity has challenged me to step outside of my rather straightforward way of thinking about music and scholarship, and begin exploring new theories, methodologies, and styles of writing. Beyond this intellectual creativity, which I have held dear since I first read her books in my undergraduate studies, Dr. Muller has been a source of support and encouragement in times of hardship. As many of her former students attest, Dr. Muller is an academic mother to all of her advisees. I find her own words in writing about jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin reflective of my experiences of her; they have been wonderful experiences of, “interiority, the senses, the voice, dreams, visions, compositional process – (all) generated by the (stories) of an extraordinary woman” (Muller 2011, xvi). Dr. Muller has been nothing but supportive of my pursuit of a joint degree with Anthropology. Dr. Agha, of course, was the person to recommend this pursuit. Enrolling in his ‘Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology’ course in my first year opened my mind to a body of research which seemed to align with my training in philosophy and my disposition to details. Dr. Agha’s intellectual rigor has informed the way that I think about social phenomena, language, and life more generally. v Dr. Innocentia Mhlambi also deserves thanks for her role on my committee. She has arduously reviewed and commented on my writing, and many a conversation in her office has shaped the way that I think about political, social, and linguistic life in Soweto and South Africa at large. She has introduced me to a body of Global South scholarship that has improved and localized my research tremendously. Beyond her intellectual generosity, Dr. Mhlambi warmly welcomed me into The University of Witwatersrand’s Department of African Languages as a visiting scholar from August 2017 to June 2018. There I have had the opportunity to advise some of her brilliant post-graduates (writing, by the way, in a number of African languages), and become part of the intellectual community that has become a second academic home to me over the past five years. Beyond my advisors and committee member, there are many professors who have assisted me in the formation of my ideas. At Indiana University, my professors in Folklore and Ethnomusicology – Dr. Daniel Reed, Dr. Fernando Orejuelo, Dr. Mellonee Burnim, and Dr. Sue Tuohy – have had a particularly lasting impression on me as an individual and scholar. At The University of Pennsylvania, professors in music – Dr. Timothy Rommen and Dr. Jim Sykes; anthropology – Dr. Nikhil Ananad and Dr. Theodore Schurr; English – Dr. Rita Barnard; and critical writing and history – Dr. Sara Byala, have taught me so much and have served as sources of inspiration for me as a young scholar. Colleagues that I have accrued over the years have been great sources of support and have helped me tremendously with my developing research methods. Many a phone call vi with Katherine Culver and Kristina Nielson (University of Pennsylvania, Anthropology) lifted me from the fog of in-the-moment ethnographic research in 2017 and 2018. Brittany Birberick (University of California Berkeley, Anthropology) has also been a friend and support in our shared fieldwork periods over the years. I am indebted further to Dr. Carol Ann Muller for organizing a dissertation writing group, composed (in varying iterations) of Lee Veeraraghavan, Hanna Khuri, Jonah Chambers, and Orlando Fiol. Listening to my colleagues’ writing developments each week for a number of years, and then receiving feedback from them was a major motivating factor throughout my dissertation writing journey. I am also tremendously thankful to be part of such a successful and supportive cohort in the Music Department; Siel Agugliaro, Juan Castrillon, and Keisuke Yamada. I also have Thomas Lesaffre (University of the Witwatersrand, Political Science) to thank for his transcription and translation of a French text. In terms of language familiarity, I must thank a great number of people. Many professors have been involved in my fluency in isiZulu; Drs. Betty Dlamini (Indiana University), Mpolokeng Lesetla (Indiana University), Galen Sibanda (Michigan State University), and most profoundly - Lwazi Mjiyako (The University of the Witwatersrand) and Dr. Audrey Nonhlanhla Mbeje (The University of Pennsylvania). Dr. Bonolo Odirile and her husband Dr. Shumie Odirile have not only taught me how to speak, read, and write Setswana, but have welcomed me into their lives. The Sinumas (Mawe Rose, Nozicelo, Fezi, Nokuzola, Nombulelo, and Siyanda) have helped me learn Sesotho and isiXhosa, they have perfected my fluency in isiZulu, they have allowed me to reside with them for one of my vii four-month pre-dissertation fieldwork trips, and they have been my family and support system here in South Africa (2015). Finally, my acknowledgements would not be complete without reprise to my family. To my parents – Mark and Patty Neterer – thank you for giving me a happy and healthy childhood,