{"title":"Moving Beyond the Gay Metropolises: Lessons Learned from Stellenbosch.","authors":"Gustav Visser","doi":"10.1007/s12132-023-09490-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>After roughly 20 years since the emergence of urban scholarship in same-sex sexualities in South Africa, it is worthwhile considering how some of the concerns that originally animated that scholarship have evolved and also how such concerns are today reflected differently away from primary cities (where much earlier research was conducted). In this commentary, I explore the unique history of Stellenbosch, a university town/secondary city 50 km away from Cape Town. Stellenbosch's own unique history of-and recent developments with regard to-public (male) same-sex expression help set into relief earlier scholarship and also points towards some future research questions that may also be applicable elsewhere on the African continent. While, as made clear, Stellenbosch is in some key instances unique in terms of its sexualized and raced history both in South Africa and the wider continent, its position as what we might increasingly want to frame as a secondary city, its particular racial composition, and also its changing spaces of socio-sexual interaction since the COVID-19 pandemic gesture towards key areas of potentially generative wider research interest.</p>","PeriodicalId":35221,"journal":{"name":"Urban Forum","volume":"34 1","pages":"179-189"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10018635/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Urban Forum","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-023-09490-2","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/3/16 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"URBAN STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
After roughly 20 years since the emergence of urban scholarship in same-sex sexualities in South Africa, it is worthwhile considering how some of the concerns that originally animated that scholarship have evolved and also how such concerns are today reflected differently away from primary cities (where much earlier research was conducted). In this commentary, I explore the unique history of Stellenbosch, a university town/secondary city 50 km away from Cape Town. Stellenbosch's own unique history of-and recent developments with regard to-public (male) same-sex expression help set into relief earlier scholarship and also points towards some future research questions that may also be applicable elsewhere on the African continent. While, as made clear, Stellenbosch is in some key instances unique in terms of its sexualized and raced history both in South Africa and the wider continent, its position as what we might increasingly want to frame as a secondary city, its particular racial composition, and also its changing spaces of socio-sexual interaction since the COVID-19 pandemic gesture towards key areas of potentially generative wider research interest.
期刊介绍:
This journal publishes papers, which engage broadly with urban processes, developments, challenges, politics and people, providing a distinctive African focus on these themes. Topics covered variously engage with the dynamics of governance, everyday urban life, economies and environments. The journal uses empirical data to reinforce and refine theoretical developments in urban studies, draws on the specificities of the African context, and opens up geographically diverse conversations on African cities. Urban Forum welcomes papers that provide rich evidence from African cities and, in doing so, builds debate and theory that often remains peripheral to urban scholarship. The journal is open to research based on a range of methodologies, but prioritizes qualitative analysis and interpretation. With this mix, research in Urban Forum demonstrates the ordinary and the exceptional nature of urbanization in African cities.