Growing Up in the New South Africa: Childhood and Adolescence in Post-Apartheid Cape Town

A compelling account of everyday life for the first generation of children and adolescents growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, this pioneering study is based on rich ethnographic research conducted in the outskirts of Cape Town in the Fish Hoek Valley, an area of affluent middle-class suburbs, semi-rural smallholdings, working-class housing estates, and semi-formal settlements of African residents. Findings show that the society has changed in profound ways, but many features of the apartheid era persist—material inequalities and poverty continue to shape everyday life, race and class continue to define neighborhoods, and "integration" is a sought-after but limited experience for the young.