Constructing white autochthony in South Africa’s “soul country” : Intersections of race and land
(2019) In Discourse, Context & Media- Abstract
- Over twenty years since the formal end of apartheid, South Africa's (largely black) government faces opposition from (largely white) communities over mineral resources that lie beneath the land. A powerful group of environmentalists, lawyers, and landowners have successfully prevented hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed to lie beneath the vast Karoo region. The anti-fracking campaign found a fertile channel for development on Facebook. In order to investigate the intersections of race, class and control of the land, a corpus of the 100 posts with the highest engagement from the most popular anti-fracking Facebook group from the period 2013-2016 was built, and analysed using... (More)
- Over twenty years since the formal end of apartheid, South Africa's (largely black) government faces opposition from (largely white) communities over mineral resources that lie beneath the land. A powerful group of environmentalists, lawyers, and landowners have successfully prevented hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed to lie beneath the vast Karoo region. The anti-fracking campaign found a fertile channel for development on Facebook. In order to investigate the intersections of race, class and control of the land, a corpus of the 100 posts with the highest engagement from the most popular anti-fracking Facebook group from the period 2013-2016 was built, and analysed using post-foundational discourse theory. Though this online space claims to welcome all social groups, it is dominated by white people who construct the campaign around three exclusionary articulations: a definition of ‘non-racialism’ that prevents racial redress; a colonial conception of ‘reason’ that constructs white technological and intellectual superiority; and an account of ‘rootedness’ in the Karoo. These three nodal points are woven narratively into a mythically constructed autochthony that asserts white belonging on the land, and projects their control of it into the future. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/567a5d10-685b-4f4a-991b-4bd00962419c
- author
- Burnett, Scott LU
- publishing date
- 2019
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- epub
- subject
- keywords
- autochthony, whiteness, South Africa, social media, fracking
- in
- Discourse, Context & Media
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85059378776
- ISSN
- 2211-6958
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- no
- id
- 567a5d10-685b-4f4a-991b-4bd00962419c
- date added to LUP
- 2019-02-04 13:03:08
- date last changed
- 2022-04-25 20:44:08
@article{567a5d10-685b-4f4a-991b-4bd00962419c,
abstract = {{Over twenty years since the formal end of apartheid, South Africa's (largely black) government faces opposition from (largely white) communities over mineral resources that lie beneath the land. A powerful group of environmentalists, lawyers, and landowners have successfully prevented hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas believed to lie beneath the vast Karoo region. The anti-fracking campaign found a fertile channel for development on Facebook. In order to investigate the intersections of race, class and control of the land, a corpus of the 100 posts with the highest engagement from the most popular anti-fracking Facebook group from the period 2013-2016 was built, and analysed using post-foundational discourse theory. Though this online space claims to welcome all social groups, it is dominated by white people who construct the campaign around three exclusionary articulations: a definition of ‘non-racialism’ that prevents racial redress; a colonial conception of ‘reason’ that constructs white technological and intellectual superiority; and an account of ‘rootedness’ in the Karoo. These three nodal points are woven narratively into a mythically constructed autochthony that asserts white belonging on the land, and projects their control of it into the future.}},
author = {{Burnett, Scott}},
issn = {{2211-6958}},
keywords = {{autochthony; whiteness; South Africa; social media; fracking}},
language = {{eng}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Discourse, Context & Media}},
title = {{Constructing white autochthony in South Africa’s “soul country” : Intersections of race and land}},
year = {{2019}},
}