The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

whites. In this process any ethnic differences between whites were underplayed,
and no separate areas were established for English-speakers or
Afrikaners, who were also treated similarly.
The empirical part of this thesis shows how various rehabilitation 12
measures were targeted at diverse areas of Epping Garden Village residents’
lives. The professionals (such as social workers, teachers, dominees
13 and medical doctors) guided the residents of poor white suburbs in
the areas of:
a) Work and use of free time
b) Cleanliness and health
c) Morals and sexuality
d) Bodily appearance and behaviour
e) Family life
f) Social and racial relations
g) Correct use of space and spatiality
The above themes included standardised bodily models and experiences,
which were centred on the binary opposition of primitive and civilised. 14
These models and experiences were presented to the poor whites as
guidelines for the proper presentation of the self and social body (the human
body in its social and cultural context, and the symbols and practices
of values and attitudes attached to it).
In the twentieth century South Africa, both the ideologies and practices
that constituted the daily process of the rehabilitation of the poor whites
were utterly concentrated on their bodies. Hence, also the analysis presented
in this thesis is focussed on the measures and discourses around
the ways their identity and the experience of whiteness were created and
categorised through the process of embodiment.
The term embodiment has been understood in multiple ways in ethnographies,
depending on the wider context and theoretical approach that
12
The expression was popular in South Africa, although, as Parnell notes, ”what was
meant by rehabilitation was never made absolutely clear” (1988a: 590). In this analysis,
rehabilitation means the measures used in order to turn the poor whites into good whites.
13
Afrikaans word for a Protestant church minister.
14
Whilst analysing sixteenth century travel accounts, Michel de Certeau noted that in
these early ethnographies “a series of stable oppositions globally upholds the distinction
between the primitive and the civilized man”. These binary oppositions were, e.g., nudity
vs. clothing, ornament vs. finery, leisure vs. work, cohesion vs. division, pleasure vs.
ethics. De Certeau recognised these divisions as fundamental to the later development of
ethnology. (De Certeau 2000: 141-147.)
16