Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:13:32.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Remembering Durban’s “Grey Street Casbah and surrounding”: Creating Urban History through Digital Spaces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2022

Cacee Hoyer*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Southern Indiana, EvansvilleIN47712, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The “Grey Street Casbah and surrounding” is a closed Facebook group about the historically “Indian” neighborhood in downtown Durban, South Africa. It creates an informal archival repository and provides a new space to reify contemporary understandings of historical places within the Durban Central Business District. The informal nature of this space allows the layperson the ability to participate in historical inquiry and exhibits the diverse ways places in Durban are remembered and memorialized. In this paper, I argue the wealth of knowledge generated on informal online platforms, such as this Facebook group, should influence and inform historical interpretations of our urban pasts.

Résumé

Résumé

La « Casbah de la rue Grey et ses environs » est un groupe Facebook fermé sur le quartier historiquement « indien » du centre-ville de Durban, en Afrique du Sud. Il crée un dépôt d’archives informel et fournit un nouvel espace pour réifier les compréhensions contemporaines des lieux historiques dans le quartier central des affaires de Durban. La nature informelle de cet espace permet au profane de participer à une enquête historique et expose les diverses manières dont les lieux de Durban sont mémorisés et commémorés. Dans cet article, je soutiens que la richesse des connaissances générées sur les plateformes en ligne informelles, telles que ce groupe Facebook, devrait influencer et informer les interprétations historiques de nos passés urbains.

Type
Special Section on the Digital Humanities
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the African Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alderman, Derek H, “A Street Fit for a King: Naming Places and Commemoration in the American South,” Professional Geographer 52–4 (2000), 672684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alderman, Derek H, “Place, Naming and Interpretation of Cultural Landscapes,” in Graham, B. and Howard, P. (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Hampshire, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 195214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allman, Jean, “#HerskovitsMustFall? A Meditation on Whiteness, African Studies, and the Unfinished Business of 1968,” Presidential Lecture presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, 29 November 2018.Google Scholar
Azaryahu, Maoz, “The Critical Turn and Beyond: The Case of Commemorative Street Naming,” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 101 (2011), 2833.Google Scholar
Azaryahu, Maoz, “The Power of Commemorative Street Names,” Environment and planning D: Society and Space 14 (1996), 311330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badsha, Omar, “Imperial Ghetto: People and Rituals in a South African Ghetto,” Social Identities 64 (2000), 511535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bass, Orli, and Houghton, Jennifer, “Street Names and Statues: the Identity Politics of Naming and Public Art in Contemporary Durban,” Urban Forum 294 (2018), 413427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhardsson, Magnus T., “Faith in the Future: Nostalgic Nationalism and 1950s Baghdad,” History Compass 9–10 (2011), 802817.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhebhe, Sindiso, and Ngoepe, Mpho, “Elitism in Critical Emancipatory Paradigm: National Archival Oral History Collection in Zimbabwe and South Africa,” Archival Science (2020): 118.Google Scholar
Bickford-Smith, Vivian, The Emergence of the South African Metropolis: Cities and Identities in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickford-Smith, Vivian, “Urban History in the New South Africa: Continuity and Innovation since the End of Apartheid,” Urban History 35–2 (2008), 288315, doi:10.1017/S0963926808005506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bigon, Liora, “African Urban History and Global History-a Comment,” Global Urban History (7 July 2016), https://globalurbanhistory.com/2016/07/07/african-urban-history-and-global-history-a-comment/ (accessed 29 May 2019).Google Scholar
Birch, T., “‘A Land So Inviting and Still Without Inhabitants’: Erasing Koori Culture from (Post)colonial Landscapes,” in Darian-Smith, K., Gunnar, L., Nuttall, S. (eds.), Text, Theory, Space: Land, Literature and History in South Africa and Australia (London: Routledge, 1996).Google Scholar
Caswell, Michelle, “Inventing New Archival Imaginaries: Theoretical Foundations for Identity-Based Community Archives,” in Daniel, Dominique and Levi, Amalia S. (eds.), Identity Palimpsests: Archiving Ethnicity In the U.S. and Canada (Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2013).Google Scholar
Chamelot, F., Hiribarren, V., and Rodet, M., “Archives, the Digital Turn, and Governance in Africa, History in Africa, (2019), 118. doi:10.1017/hia.2019.26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiluwa, Innocent, and Adegoke, Adetunji, “Twittering the Boko Haram Uprising in Nigeria: Investigating Pragmatic Acts in the Social,” Africa Today 59–3 (Spring 2013), 83102.Google Scholar
Cornelius, Beverley Jane, “Postcolonial Nostalgia and Meaning: New Perspectives on Contemporary South African Writings,” PhD dissertation, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, 2019).Google Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia, “Revisiting the Observer's Paradox,” American Speech 75–3 (2000), 253254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dei, George J. Sefa, and Atweneboah, Nana Sefa, “The African Scholar in the Western Academy,” Journal of Black Studies 45–3 (2014), 167179, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24572948.Google Scholar
Desai, Ashwin, and Vahed, Goolam, “Between Apartheid and Neoliberalism in Durban’s Indian Quarter,” in Bond, Patrick (ed.), Durban’s Climate Gamble: Trading Carbon, Betting the Earth (Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Diener, Alexander C., and Hagan, Joshua, “The City as a Palimpsest and Crucible of National Identity,” Global Urban History (9 November 2018), https://globalurbanhistory.com/2018/11/09/the-city-as-a-palimpsest-and-crucible-of-national-identity/, (accessed 16 May 2019).Google Scholar
Douglas, Jennifer, “A Call to Rethink Archival Creation: Exploring Types of Creation in Personal Archives,” Archival Science 18–1 (2018), 2949.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duminy, James, “Street Renaming, Symbolic Capital, and Resistance in Durban, South Africa,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2014), 310328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ebr.-Vally, Rehana, Kala Pani: Caste and Colour in South Africa (Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2001).Google Scholar
Forest, B., and Johnson, J., “Unravelling the threads of history: Soviet-era monuments and post-Soviet national identity in Moscow,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (2002), 524547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fourchard, Laurent, “Between World History and State formation: New Perspectives on Africa’s Cities,” The Journal of African History 52–2 (2011), 223248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyot, S., and Seethal, C., “Identity of Place, Places of Identities: Change of Place Names in Post-Apartheid South Africa,” South African Geographical Journal 89–1 (2007), 5563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helland, Christopher, “Diaspora on the Electronic Frontier: Developing Virtual Connections with Sacred Homelands,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007), 956976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennell, Kath, Limmer, Mark, and Piacentini, Maria, “Ethical Dilemmas Using Social Media in Qualitative Social Research: A Case Study of Online Participant Observation,” Sociological Research Online 25–3 (2020), 473489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Amy L., “'Learn from My Story': A Participatory Media Initiative for Ugandan Women Affected by Obstetric Fistula,” Community Media 77 (2008), 4860.Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, Isabel, “African History and Global Studies: A View from South Africa,” The Journal of African History 54–3 (2013), 341349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoyer, Cacee, “Red Square: Geographies of Democracy, Spaces of Protest, and Indian South Africans of Durban,” paper presented at the 2015 African Studies Association Conference, San Diego, 19–22 November 2015.Google Scholar
Jaksch, Marla L., and Nieves, Angel David, “Africa is a Country? Digital diasporas, ICTs, and Heritage Development Strategies for Social Justice,” The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy 6 (2014), https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2014/11/29/.Google Scholar
Jansen, Jan, Hanson, John H., Doortmont, Michel R., and van den Bersselaar, Dmitri, “In Search of Africans’ Histories – Editors’ Introduction,” History in Africa 40 (2013), 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jemielniak, DariuszThick Big Data: Doing Digital Social Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kominko, Maja, “Crumb Trails, Threads and Traces: Endangered Archives and History,” in Kominko, Maja (ed.), From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015).Google Scholar
Kothor, Marius, “Race and the Politics of Knowledge Production in African Studies,” Black Perspectives, 8 April 2019, https://www.aaihs.org/race-and-the-politics-of-knowledge-production-in-african-studies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=race-and-the-politics-of-knowledge-production-in-african-studies, (accessed 11 October 2019).Google Scholar
Kumar, P. Pratap, “Grey Street Casbah: Market Town as a Symbol of Indian Diasporic Experience,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 54–2 (2019), 155168, doi: 10.1177/0021909618797147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ligaga, Dina, “Virtual Expressions”: Alternative Online Spaces and the Staging of Kenyan Popular Cultures,” Research in African Literatures 43–4 (Winter 2012), 116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Limb, Peter, “The Digitization of Africa,” Africa Today 52–2 (Winter 2005), 319.Google Scholar
Maharaj, Brij, “The Integrated Community Apartheid Could Not Destroy: The Warwick Avenue Triangle in Durban,” Journal of Southern African Studies 25–2 (1999), 249266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mama, Amina, “Is it Ethical to Study Africa? Preliminary Thoughts on Scholarship and Freedom,” African Studies Review 50–1 (2007), 126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mamet, C., “Fictional Constructions of Grey Street by Selected South African Indian Writers,” MA Thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, 2007).Google Scholar
Masaka, Dennis, “‘Open Access’ and the Fate of Knowledge from Africa: A Theoretical Discussion,” The Journal of Negro Education 87–4 (2018), 359374, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7709/jnegroeducation.87.4.0359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNulty, Niall, “The Ulwazi Programme: A Case Study in Community-Focused Indigenous Knowledge Management,” in Osei-Bryson, K.-M. et al. (eds.), Knowledge Management for Development, Integrated Series in Information Systems 35 (2014), 215232, doi: 10.1007/978-1-4899-7392-4_13.Google Scholar
Moreillon, Olivier, “‘Remember the Old Days?’: Durban’s Grey Street Area in Mariam Akabor’s Flat 9,” Cities in Flux: Metropolitan Spaces in South African Literary and Visual Texts: Festschrift in Honour of Professor Em. Dr. Therese Steffen 12 (Münster, Germany: LIT Verlag, 2017), 145169.Google Scholar
Muller, Alan, “A Handful of Spaghetti: Entanglements of Space, Place and Identity in the Works of Imraan Coovadia,” PhD dissertation, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban, 2014).Google Scholar
Ocita, J., “Diasporic Imaginaries: Memory and Negotiation of Belonging in East African and South African Indian Narratives.,” PhD Dissertation, University of Stellenbosch (Stellenbosch, 2013).Google Scholar
Okem, Andrew Emmanuel, Myeni, Sithembiso Lindelihle, Mtapuri, Oliver, and Nkambule, Sipho, “A Historicity of Housing Policies in Apartheid South Africa,” in Myeni, Sithembiso Lindelihle and Oken, Andrew Emmanuel (eds.), The Political Economy of Government Subsidised Housing in South Africa (New York: Routledge, 2019).Google Scholar
Olteanu, Alexandra, Castillo, Carlos, Diaz, Fernando, and Kıcıman, Emre, “Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries,” Frontiers in Big Data 2 (2019), doi: 10.3389/fdata.2019.00013.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pailey, Robtel Neajai, “Where is the ‘African’ in African Studies,” African Arguments (7 June 2016), https://africanarguments.org/2016/06/07/where-is-the-african-in-african-studies/, (accessed 11 October 2019).Google Scholar
Parke, Aubrey, “StoryCorps and Crowdsourcing in the World of Digital Humanities,” Oral History Review (8 January 2021), http://oralhistoryreview.org/.Google Scholar
Pickover, Michele, “Patrimony, Power and Politics: Selecting, Constructing and Preserving Digital Heritage Content in South Africa and Africa,” paper presented at International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) World Library and Information Congress (WLIC), Libraries, Citizens, Societies : Confluence for Knowledge, Lyon, France, 1622 August 2014http://library.ifla.org/1023/1/138-pickover-en.pdf.Google Scholar
Rieder, Bernhard, “Studying Facebook via Data Extraction: the Netvizz Application,” paper presented at the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci '13), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, May 2013, 346355, doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/2464464.2464475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose-Redwood, Reuben, Alderman, Derek, and Azaryahu, Maoz, “Geographies of Toponymic Inscription: New Directions in Critical Place-name Studies,” Progress in Human Geography 34–4 (2010), 453470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, L. G., “A City within a City: Vestiges of the Socio-spatial Imprint of Colonial and Apartheid Durban, from the 1870 to 1980s,” MA dissertation, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban, 2012).Google Scholar
Salganik, Matthew J., Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Samuel, Gabrielle, Derrick, Gemma E., and van Leeuwen, Thed. “The Ethics Ecosystem: Personal Ethics, Network Governance and Regulating Actors Governing the Use of Social Media Research Data,” Minerva 57–3 (2019), 317343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sansone, Livio, “The Dilemmas of Digital Patrimonialization: The Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Memory,” History in Africa 40 (2013), 257273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sapire, Hilary, and Beall, Jo, “Urban Change and Urban Studies in Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 21–1, Special Issue: Urban Studies and Urban Change in Southern Africa (1995), 317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sikarskie, Amanda Grace, “Citizen Scholars: Facebook and the Co-creation of Knowledge,” in Dougherty, Jack and Nawrotzki, Kristen (eds.), Writing History in the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Slumkoski, Corey, “History on the Internet 2.0: The Rise of Social Media,” Acadiensis 41–2 (2012), 153162.Google Scholar
Soske, Jon, Internal Frontiers: African Nationalism and the Indian Diaspora in Twentieth-Century South Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternfeld, Joshua, “Archival Theory and Digital Historiography: Selection, Search, and Metadata as Archival Processes for Assessing Historical Contextualization,” The American Archivist 74–2 (Fall/Winter 2011), 544575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stiebel, Lindy, “Last Stop “little Gujarat”: Tracking South African Indian Writers on the Grey Street Writers’ Trail in Durban,” Current Writing:Text and Reception in Southern Africa 22–1 (2010), 120.Google Scholar
Suomela, Todd, Chee, Florence, Berendt, Bettina, and Rockwell, Geoffrey, “Applying an Ethics of Care to Internet Research: Gamergate and Digital Humanities,” Digital Studies/le Champ Numérique  9–1 (2019), doi: 10.16995/dscn.302.Google Scholar
Sutherland, Catherine, Scott, Dianne, Nel, Etienne, and Nel, Adrian, “Conceptualizing ‘the Urban’ Through the Lens of Durban, South Africa,” Urban Forum 29–4 (2018), 333350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svensson, Patrik, Big Digital Humanities: Imagining a Meeting Place for the Humanities and the Digital (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swanson, M. W., “The Durban System: Roots of Urban Apartheid in Colonial Natal,” African Studies 35–4 (1976), 159176, doi:10.1080/00020187608707473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Alistair, “in Oral History, Four Paradigm Transformations,” The Oral History Review 34–1 (2007), 4970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tiidenberg, Katrin, “Research Ethics, Vulnerability, and Trust on the Internet,” in Hunsinger, J., Allen, Matthew, and Klastrup, Lisbeth (eds.), Second International Handbook of Internet Research (Dordecht, Neth.: Springer Nature, 2020).Google Scholar
Tolsi, Niren, “Back in the Day,” Mail & Guardian (2 August 2006), https://mg.co.za/article/2006-08-02-back-in-the-day (accessed 11 October 2019).Google Scholar
Whiteman, N.Control and Contingency: Maintaining Ethical Stances in Research. International Journal of Internet Research Ethics 3-1 (2010), 622.Google Scholar
Willis, Roxana, “Observations Online: Finding the Ethical Boundaries of Facebook Research,” Research Ethics, 15–1 (2019), 117, doi:10.1177/1747016117740176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmer, Michael, “’But the Data is Already Public’: on the Ethics of Research in Facebook,” Ethics and Information Technology 12 (2010), 313325, doi:10.1007/s10676-010-9227-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar