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This paper is about how people experience places through the visuals that populate the place. I interviewed people who are part of Rhodes University in South Africa. It is the case that people experience places in a highly targeted manner and that from this manner they fashion ideas about the place. Experiencing universities through their visual culture is a phenomenon that is seldom studied. In South Africa, this reality of rare study was highlighted by the occurrence of the 2015 #RhodesMustFall moment when students across the country argued that there are visuals within the university space that remain experientially problematic within a postcolonial society. The South African higher education landscape was taken by surprise as it had not been adequately aware of the power that visuals can gain when considered as part of a culture of representation. Visual culture is in this paper defined as what is seen and allows itself to be placed within a culture of seeing and representation. As South Africa is a postcolonial society, it has been argued that the colonial period showed bias towards certain visual cultures throughout the country's spheres – especially in the country's tertiary education institutions. This is a paper documenting how students at a South African university experience the university through its visual culture. In‐depth mobile interviews, closely related to transect walks, were conducted with 12 "Rhodians" purposefully selected in the hope for maximum sample variation. The study finds that the experience of Rhodes University as a place through its visual culture is highly informed by the isolation of parts of the visual presentation of the built up and decorated environment, the expectation of what the visual culture should be, and the experience of alleged contestation over what is visually presented as the university. Ultimately, the university space is experienced often through its socially‐learned visual representations and the experiential templates that people bring to the place as seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, young men are generally considered to generate many of the risks associated with informal settlement life, yet their own vulnerability in these environments is seldom considered. Seeking insights into male susceptibility in these impoverished urban spaces is methodologically challenging. How does one encourage poor marginalised young men to speak with candour about their insecurities and challenges? The research methods used, while facilitating openness, should also build their confidence as they reflect on the challenges of everyday life. This paper describes the methodological journey undertaken in a study of young Black men living in informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa, revealing how they perceive their vulnerability in these environments. It demonstrates how a suite of methods gradually developed through trial and error, with the young men themselves assisting in the adaptation of tools, ranging from interviews using adapted participatory methods to non‐prescriptive diary‐writing. Together they delivered deep and penetrating insights into the lives of the young men, and the nature of their vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research at multiple sites and "talking across worlds" have generally been important in feminist and geographic scholarship. Some studies have examined methodological dilemmas endemic to research involving multiple locations. Other studies have drawn on multi‐sited research including perspectives of participants and researchers beyond a single site. Most of these studies have explored how groups, individuals and discourses move between local and transnational spaces. However, evidence on how such methodologies improve our understanding of transnational concepts is still scarce. This paper draws on two research projects on women's human rights activism in Honduras and South Africa and explores how multi‐sited research improved the understanding of "women human rights defenders." In Honduras, activists in various women's groups have identified themselves as women human rights defenders since the coup d'état in 2009. This identity enabled them to integrate women's rights into a broader international human rights agenda. In South Africa, activists mostly use the term to influence decision‐making at international organisations and to build alliances with activists globally. This multi‐sited research reveals that women's human rights concepts are not "given." Rather, activists' lived experiences on multiple scales shape the way they understand and "translate" such concepts. This paper draws on two research projects on women's human rights activism in Honduras and South Africa and shows how multi‐sited research methodologies can improve our understanding of transnational concepts. It reveals that women's human rights concepts are not "given." Rather, activists' lived experiences on multiple scales shape the way they understand and "translate" such concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of personal solicited diaries as a qualitative research tool within social geography. Diaries were used with women from South Africa who recorded their experiences of violence over a period of one month. The paper analyses diaries in terms of their longitudinal benefits, their socially constituted nature, their use in conjunction with interviews and finally their potential for empowerment. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the diary as a methodological tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's #FeesMustFall protests have widely been seen as a reckoning with the limitations of post‐apartheid citizenship and young people's frustrations over the slow pace of socio‐economic transformation. This paper seeks to analyse how working‐class students from one township community interpreted these protests. It argues that the protests reflected collective aspirations toward social mobility among working‐class students and concerns over the threat that high levels of future debt posed to this mobility. It contributes to geographical research on young people's experiences of debt by highlighting how the burden of debt intersects with experiences of racialised poverty and inequality. It suggests that young people's aspirations, even in the context of neoliberalism, frequently focused on collective social mobility and family well‐being. Finally, it proposes global comparative research on young people's experiences of debt and economic uncertainty in order to understand this increasingly globalised phenomenon and its political consequences. This article seeks to analyze how working‐class students from one township community interpreted South Africa's #FeesMustFall protests. It argues that the protests reflected collective aspirations toward social mobility among working‐class students and concerns over the threat that high levels of future debt posed to this mobility. It contributes to geographic research on young people's aspirations and experiences of debt in contexts of economic uncertainty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is set against the backdrop of criticism from certain quarters framing second homes as an elitist phenomenon that is part of the negative consequences of changing rural geographies. It is shown that South Africa has a long history and ever growing number of second home owners across the whole spectrum of class cohorts who form an integral part of the country's rural geographies. It is argued that accepting and framing second homes as a potential positive development agency might suggest strategies that could enhance rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's democratic transition has had a significant impact upon localized governance systems in mediating development opportunities within the former apartheid homelands. This paper uses a case study from the former KaNgwane homeland to evaluate the role of the Matsamo Tribal Authority in shaping livelihoods and access to environmental resources. It is argued that although the colonial and apartheid empowerment of the tribal authorities continues to have symbolic and material meaning for rural populations, newly created democratic structures are challenging traditional governance systems in the post-apartheid era. The intersection between these contrasting, and historically situated, systems suggests a dynamic renegotiation is occurring that will continue to impact rural households within the former places of apartheid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to reassess the land degradation and desertification problem in South Africa. The country has a wide range of interrelated environmental and development challenges existing in a socio–political context recently subject to substantial change. The paper outlines the fundamental environmental constraints and opportunities that underlie degradation phenomena and illustrates the nature, extent and geographical distribution of the major forms of soil and vegetation degradation in the country. The principal causes of degradation are identified and some important land use and land tenure questions that need to be addressed in the near future are posited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical accounts of relocation settlements in South Africa have emphasized processes of dispossession in the creation of these settlements. This paper considers other related histories of movement into relocation settlements as evidence of seldom considered contradictory and ambiguous experiences around movement and attachment to place — hence encouraging a rethink of the laden term ‘the dumping grounds’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary places British geography within transnational currents of student-focused decolonisation movements. In October 2015, the author travelled to South Africa for the first time, visiting Witwatersrand University (Johannesburg), University of Cape Town ( UCT) and Rhodes University in Grahamstown. This paper draws on historical accounts of the British colonisation of what is now South Africa, contextualising both the domestic and global inequalities which it's students are currently challenging. British imperial history also provides a basis for understanding the roots of British geography, offering the campaigns to decolonise the South African university as an opportunity to critically reflect on how our own discipline produces knowledge. The commentary asks this timely question: as geographers, particularly those based in the old centre of Empire, how can our work be used to dismantle the colonialism our discipline has been implicated in since its formal inception? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographical indications, as a form of intellectual property, are becoming increasingly important in global trade. In South Africa’s trade and cooperation agreement with the European Union, problems over the use of names such as ‘port’ and ‘sherry’ provided an important obstacle to the conclusion of the trade deal. This paper argues that the conflict over geographical indications in this trade agreement must be seen in the context of broader initiatives to establish a system of protecting this form of intellectual property through the World Trade Organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on fieldwork with rural teachers in South Africa, this article highlights the significance of cellphone technology in participatory video and its potential to alter the research environment. To date much of the work in the area of participatory visual methodologies (including participatory video) and particularly in the context of working with marginalized communities, has relied on researcher-led projects wherein it is the research team who as outsiders bring cameras for research with the community. In most cases the team departs, taking the cameras with them, but even in cases where the video cameras are left behind, sustainability is still an issue. In the case of cellphones and the production of cellphilms, the dynamics change. We reflect on our fieldwork in two rural schools, where all of the teachers had cellphones and regularly used them for various forms of communication including texting and accessing Facebook. None however, prior to the project had ever produced cellphilms, and only one had used a cellphone in any pedagogical way. In considering critical issues of using participatory video, we address Touraine and Duff's (1981 The voice and the eye: an analysis of social movements Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) notion of the sociological intervention, and ask questions such as: Can this work with cellphones be regarded as a non-interventionist intervention? How does the widespread use of cellphone technology alter the power dynamics related to ownership of both the production and the recording device? To what extent do some of the ethical concerns of previous work become obsolete and to what extent are there new ethical concerns (for example, distribution) to be addressed? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural geography, as a label for a sub-discipline or a mode of enquiry, has little purchase in South Africa. Studies of the cultural production of place are, however, undertaken in multiple fields, usefully if loosely grouped under the banner of 'cultural studies'. I argue that geographers have much of value to contribute to this field, particularly through engaging in debates that currently enliven cultural geography elsewhere. In particular, the geographical work inspired by performance studies can help balance the dominance of discursive frameworks in South African cultural studies of place. Using Nigel Thrift's non-representational theory as a springboard, I suggest that a materialist perspective on cultural production may productively re-orient the dominant ontology and epistemology of both geographical and cultural research into South African place-making, but that this need not rely on an opposition between representational and non-representational approaches. I argue that this dualism can be displaced by the concept of 'embodied stories', which allows the social, narrative, referential and symbolic functions of performance to be knitted together with its irreducible materiality. Through a reading of three recent performing arts events in Cape Town, I explore the value of this framework for knowledge production in cultural geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within and beyond geography, there has been a growing concern in understanding how and why exclusion can occur within ‘gay spaces’, with a specific focus on Western Europe and North America. Heidi Nast's (2002 Queer patriarchies, queer racisms, international Antipode 34 874–909) work on the ‘white queer patriarch’ has taken this work further by exploring the multiple, interrelated, historical and contemporary factors that can lead to exclusion and exploitation. Despite growing interest surrounding South Africa's new liberal queer agenda, issues of contemporary exclusion among queer groups as a direct result of race and racism have remained relatively unexplored. By incorporating elements of Nast's schema, this article will examine the power that exists in the creation and framing of essentialistic ‘white’ and ‘coloured’ queer male subjects in Cape Town's gay village. These subjects will be shown to simultaneously draw on historical inequalities while also re-imagining them in contemporary settings to re-inscribe perceptions of classed and gendered difference. The creation of such inequitable subjects helps us understand how exclusion can become real and normalised within a space such as Cape Town's gay village in a way that draws on a history of material inequalities and discursive perceptions of race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]