White Belongings

White Belongings critically deconstructs everyday white discourses of the land in South Africa at a time of increasing stridency and defensiveness over restitution and reform, showing how articulating environmental stewardship and belonging are interwoven with asserting ownership and control.

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White South Africans have continued to enjoy the lion’s share Africa’s land and riches since the end of statutory apartheid. With the recent threat of land expropriation without compensation, many believe that the racial order itself is about to be undone. It is in these dying moments of the myth of the “Rainbow Nation” that White Belongings: Race, Land, and Property in Post-Apartheid South Africa deepens ongoing critical deconstruction of the role of whiteness in maintaining racial order. The book analyses white discourse at a time of increasing stridency and defensiveness, arguing that the protection of white entitlement and cultural connection to the land are intimately interwoven. To show this, Scott Burnett uses detailed discourse analysis of campaigns aimed at preventing rhino poaching, stopping fracking in the Karoo, and advocating for the existence of a poverty “crisis.” These social and traditional media texts reveal how whites hold on to their “belongings” in everyday talk. The author mobilizes key strategies such as asserting ecological indigeneity, promoting enclave entrepreneurialism, and reproducing the rationality of market liberalism. White Belongings goes beyond the preoccupation with identity in whiteness studies to elaborate how specific subject roles and institutions are motivated and rationalized in hegemonic discursive regimes.