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Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town
This ethnographic study explores how people deal with suspicion and navigate the fear of crime in the Observatory suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The study grapples with the question of how the neighbourhood watch, as a recently revived institution, operates. It analyses the institution and relat...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Social Anthropology
2016
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| _version_ | 1867613178291027968 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Junck, Leah Davina |
| author2 | Fuh, Divine |
| author_browse | Fuh, Divine Junck, Leah Davina |
| author_facet | Fuh, Divine Junck, Leah Davina |
| author_sort | Junck, Leah Davina |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This ethnographic study explores how people deal with suspicion and navigate the fear of crime in the Observatory suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The study grapples with the question of how the neighbourhood watch, as a recently revived institution, operates. It analyses the institution and relationships within and around it as an alternative source of trust to the state in combatting crime and its wider impact on lived sociality in the suburb and, perhaps, beyond. The focus of the study lies in understanding the strategies people employ habitually in order to create a sense of security in a context where the anticipation of violence permeates various everyday routines. In analysing strategies of living through insecurities, I focus on examining material and highly visible security measures, such as patrol cars and barbed wires, and engage with the body as a site of social and political memory and struggle, while considering the roles it takes on in the face of perceived precariousness. This dissertation offers an insight in to how the body is deployed as an instrument or buffer to deal with insecurity and crime vulnerability. The quality of public life becomes compromised through embodied strategies of (in)security and vulnerability as employed by the neighbourhood watch. The capacity of a constantly perceived presence of criminal violence in shaping individual and institutional bodies and strategies constitutes the main focus of this study. While the study does not identify the roots of crime as is currently practice with related studies of crime in South Africa, it illuminates the engagement with its perceived presence and thus moves away from a fixed victim-perpetrator dichotomy that has dominated the public discourse. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20687 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:32:00.945Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | Social Anthropology |
| publisherStr | Social Anthropology |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/20687 Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town Junck, Leah Davina Fuh, Divine Social Anthropology This ethnographic study explores how people deal with suspicion and navigate the fear of crime in the Observatory suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The study grapples with the question of how the neighbourhood watch, as a recently revived institution, operates. It analyses the institution and relationships within and around it as an alternative source of trust to the state in combatting crime and its wider impact on lived sociality in the suburb and, perhaps, beyond. The focus of the study lies in understanding the strategies people employ habitually in order to create a sense of security in a context where the anticipation of violence permeates various everyday routines. In analysing strategies of living through insecurities, I focus on examining material and highly visible security measures, such as patrol cars and barbed wires, and engage with the body as a site of social and political memory and struggle, while considering the roles it takes on in the face of perceived precariousness. This dissertation offers an insight in to how the body is deployed as an instrument or buffer to deal with insecurity and crime vulnerability. The quality of public life becomes compromised through embodied strategies of (in)security and vulnerability as employed by the neighbourhood watch. The capacity of a constantly perceived presence of criminal violence in shaping individual and institutional bodies and strategies constitutes the main focus of this study. While the study does not identify the roots of crime as is currently practice with related studies of crime in South Africa, it illuminates the engagement with its perceived presence and thus moves away from a fixed victim-perpetrator dichotomy that has dominated the public discourse. 2016-07-25T11:28:11Z 2016-07-25T11:28:11Z 2016 Master Thesis Masters MSocSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20687 eng application/pdf Social Anthropology Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Social Anthropology Junck, Leah Davina Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town |
| title_full | Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town |
| title_fullStr | Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town |
| title_full_unstemmed | Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town |
| title_short | Cultivating suspicion: an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in Observatory, Cape Town |
| title_sort | cultivating suspicion an ethnography of corporeal strategies deployed against vulnerability to crime in observatory cape town |
| topic | Social Anthropology |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20687 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT junckleahdavina cultivatingsuspicionanethnographyofcorporealstrategiesdeployedagainstvulnerabilitytocrimeinobservatorycapetown |