Good fences make new neighbours : a material ethnography of an Enclaved City in Boom

Abstract

Boomed suburbs, along with various other residential and non-residential enclaves, have increasingly characterised the South African urban socio-spatial order following the transition to democracy in 1994. Boomed suburbs, otherwise referred to as ‘enclosed neighbourhoods’ in the literature, are forms of ‘gated communities’ that constitute resident-driven initiatives to fortify and securitise already-existing suburbs with fences, booms, gates, surveillance technologies, and security guards. Unlike other gated communities, however, boomed suburbs are legally prohibited from denying access to any person seeking to access or move through them. The city of Pretoria-Tshwane hosts over 90 enclaves of this type, and continues to witness the growth of this figure with each passing year. Based on data made over a period of nine months, through participant observation with a range of actors involved in booming, interviews, walking the city, and an analysis of documents and visual material, this dissertation describes the diverse set of actors involved in the process of their development and maintenance and repair of boomed suburbs, including suburban residents; project managers; private security forces; municipal officials suburban vigilante groups; and criminals. The main field site was ‘Pretoria East,’ an area of the city concentrated with these enclaves, although this ethnographic research was also multi-sited and participants were drawn from different boomed suburbs and the city space located in between them. A key research participant in the study was an individual and project management company that sits at the heart of the booming enterprise in the city, an individual actor that has singularly shaped the security landscape of the capital city. The dissertation describes the actors involved in booming open suburbs, as well as the often long processes, diverse practices, labour, and costs involved in these enclosure projects. It demonstrates how these variously positioned actors get entangled across a complex, unpredictable, and experimental urban borderlands characterised by conditions of severe criminality and state abandonment, or hypogovernance. Moreover, arguing from the data made in this study, the dissertation suggests that amidst borderland relations between human actors and the technologies and infrastructures of enclavement, a new coproduced city is emerging, alongside technological and legislative innovations, knowledges and expertise, infrastructural hybrids, and redrawn understandings of citizenship and community.