Security assemblages: enclaving, private security, and new materialism in suburban Johannesburg
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Date
2016-07-27
Authors
Clarke, Paul T
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Abstract
This research report explores how private security is materially assembled in suburban
Johannesburg. Based on ethnographic fieldwork within a private security company operating
across the northern suburbs of Greater Johannesburg, it examines how the materiality of security
is intimately intertwined with shaping the socio-spatial terrain of the city. Using a new
materialist “assemblage” theory proposed by Jane Bennett, it contends although the materials of
private security are designed to protect and exclude, they often work rather differently on the
ground, resulting in strange new ways of seeing, moving, and relating in the city.
Description
A research report submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements of the degree
Master of Arts in Anthropology
March 2016