Whites Writing Whiteness
Whiteness – Introductory Reading List
There is a huge literature on whiteness. This is however dominated by work concerned with and emanating from the United States, with much of it not fitting very easily the South African context. The short reading list below focuses on a number of areas of particular interest to the Whites Writing Whiteness project.
Recommended key reading is indicated with ** against author names
A. KEY READING
**JM Coetzee (1988) White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa New Haven: Yale University Press. (THE classic account of white writing; essential reading.)
** JM Coetzee (1980) Waiting for the Barbarians London: Secker & Warburg. (Stunning novel about waiting and the tensions and stresses engendered in those in control in a society, around the strong sense of being beleaguered.)
B. THE SOUTH AFRICAN RACIAL ORDER & WHITENESS WITHIN IT
David Harrison (1981) White Tribe of Africa: South Africa in Perspective London: BBC Books. (A popular account of white control in South Africa, from an amazing and in its day very influential BBC TV series.)
Timothy Keegan (1996) Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order Cape Town: David Philip. (Sees the period before the 1850s as especially formative in the making of the racial order in South Africa. Lots of good stuff here, while the general argument has been superseded by more recent work.)
**Paul Maylam (2001) South Africa’s Racial Past Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. (A sustained and well-argued attempt to track and theorise the different dimensions of the racial order in South Africa over time. It relies on and is mainly concerned with engaging with the secondary literature, so some parts of this are dicey; but it remains the best overall account of South Africa’s emergent racial order. Essential reading, while recognising the issues.)
***Robert Ross (1993) ‘Going beyond the pale: on the roots of white supremacy’ Beyond The Pale: Essays On The History Of Colonial South Africa Hanover, USA: University Press of New England, pp.69-110. (An important examination of the highly complex and sometimes contradictory factors bearing on the origins of the racial order and white domination. Essential reading.)
Robert Ross (1993) ‘The etiquette of race’ Beyond The Pale: Essays On The History Of Colonial South Africa Hanover, USA: University Press of New England, pp.111-21. (Very interesting use of three small case studies to indicate some of the complexities of how ‘race’ was re/configured in everyday practice.)
Nancy Rothschild (2011) The Inner Life of Empires Princeton: Princeton University Press. (An excellent use of family history sources to explore the complex interconnections between Scotland, Britain, and the colonial world in relation to the Johnstone family. Readable and engaging, Rothschild’s account shows how identity, family, business and empire overlaid each other.)
C. COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF WHITE SUPREMACY
John Cell (1982) The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: The Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A comparative study of white supremacy in South Africa and the American South.)
**George Frederickson (1981) White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History Oxford: Oxford University Press. (An excellent study of the rise and dynamics white supremacy in America and South Africa and a tour de force of comparative analysis. Essential reading.)
Anthony W. Marx (1998) Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa and Brazil Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (An interesting comparative sociology which in the South African case suggests that black subordination was in a sense ‘invented’ as part of building and maintaining unity between contending groups of whites. There is however more evidence (including in the at the time arguments of Olive Schreiner) to support the opposite argument, that whites came to a rapprochement so as to ensure white domination and the privileges flowing from this. Nonetheless, lots of good stuff here, particularly its comparative aspects.)
D. WHITE IDENTITIES
Simon Clark & Steve Garner (2010) White Identities: A Critical Sociological Approach London: Pluto Press. (Good sociological take on the social construction of whiteness at interpersonal and structural levels.)
Vincent Crapanzano (1986) Waiting: The Whites of South Africa New York: Random House. (Fascinating anthropological study of the tensions & concerns engendered by the sense of ‘waiting for the barbarians’ (to use the title of Coetzee’s novel) in a South African white community ‘waiting’ in the troubled 1980s.)
Jean Goodwin & Ben Schiff (1995) The Heart of Whiteness: Afrikaners Face Black Rule in the New South Africa New York: Scribner. (A readable popular interview-based study of the fears and concerns of white South Africans in the charged period around democratic transition.)
**Melissa Steyn (2001) Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa New York: SUNY Press. (A cultural studies look at South African whiteness based on online responses to some questions. Sometimes simplistic, it still ‘makes you think’.)
Marc de Villiers (1987) White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid’s Bitter Roots Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. (Loosely based on family papers, this is primarily concerned with tracing out how South Africa came to be how it was, and how white South Africans came to be as they were, in the middle 1980s.)
SOME USEFUL JOURNALS
J African Studies
J Commonwealth & Imperial History
J Southern African Studies
South African Historical Journal
South African Review of Sociology
Last updated: 20 December 2014
