Opportunity and constraint : historicity, hybridity and notions of cultural identity among farm workers in the Sundays River Valley

This thesis focuses on relationships of opportunity and constraint among farm workers in the Sundays River Valley (SRV), Eastern Cape Province. Relationships of 'constraint' include those experiences of displacement and forced removal and war, including forced removals by the apartheid state in 1960 and 1970. Relationships of 'opportunity' include the ways in which residents in the SRV have contested their experiences of upheaval and domination, and the formation of a regional sense of place and belonging/ investigate how farm workers actually draw elements of locality and identity from their experiences of upheaval, and how displacement bolsters feelings of belonging and place. Instead of viewing displacement as a once-off experience, this thesis investigates displacement in historical terms, as a long-term, 'serial' experience of human movement, which is continued in the present- specifically through the creation of the Greater Addo Elephant National Park. I concentrate on developing a spatialised and cultural notion of movemenUplacement. 'Place' is investigated as a term that refers to rather indeterminate feelings of nostalgia, memory and identity, which depend on a particular connection to territory (ie: 'space'). I emphasise that elements of place in the SRV are drawn from and expressed along dualistic lines, which juxtapose situations of opportunity and constraint. In this way, farm workers' sense of connection to farms and ancestral territory in the SRV depends on their experiences of stable residency and work on farms, as well as their memories of removal from land in the area. I emphasise that those elements of conservatism (expressed as 'tradition' and Redness) among Xhosa-speaking farm workers are indications of a certain hybridity of identity in the region, which depend on differentiation from other groups (such as so-called 'coloured' farm workers and 'white' farmers), as well as associations between these groups. This thesis lays emphasis upon those less visible and definable 'identities' in the Eastern Cape Province, specifically by shifting focus away from the exhomeland states of the Ciskei and Transkei, to more marginal expressions of identity and change (among farm workers) in the Province. I point out that labourers cannot solely be defined by their positions as farm workers, but by their place and sense of cultural belonging in the area. In this sense, I use the idea of work as a loaded concept that can comment on a range of cultural attitudes towards belonging and place, and which is firmly embedded in the private lives of labourers - beyond their simple socio-economic conditions of farm work. I use Bourdieu's conception of habitus and doxa to define work as a set of dispositions that have been historicised and internalised by workers to such an extent, that relationships of domination are sometimes inadvertently obscured through their apparent 'naturalness'. Moreover, I point out that work can be related to ritualised action in the SRV through the use of performance and practice-based anthropological theory. Both work and ritual are symbolic actions, and are sites of struggle within which workers express themselves dualistically. Rituals, specifically, are dramatic events that combine disharmonious and harmonious social processes - juxtaposing the powerlessness of workers (on farms), and the deep sense of belonging and place in the SRV. I argue that the deep historical connections in the SRV have largely been ignored by conservationists in the drive to establish new protected zones (such as the Greater Addo Elephant National Park), and that a new model of shared conservation management is needed for this Park