Browsing by Author "Rink, Bradley M."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Community as utopia: Reflections on De Waterkant
    (Springer, 2008) Rink, Bradley M.
    This paper will reflect on research currently in progress in Cape Town's De Waterkant neighbourhood�an area also known as Cape Town's 'gay village'. This paper engages the literature of utopia as a framework of analysis for interrogating the performance of community�while at the same time problematising the terms "community" and "utopia" upon which much geographical description of the area is based. This research argues that both 'comforting' and 'unsettling' relational achievements amongst the human and non-human actors in De Waterkant function as building blocks of real or imagined community and further recognises multiple tensions that affect the formation of community and the pursuit of utopia in the South African urban context.
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    Performing cities: Engaging the high-tech fl�neur
    (The Forum on Education Abroad, 2011) Rodr�guez, Karen; Rink, Bradley M.
    The city as place forms the backdrop to many study abroad experiences. Our sense of place, however, is often fractured by modern mobilities. As Sack (1988) notes, we move from place to place so much that places often begin to appear ever more generic and alike. Or they seem to be �out there,� and we forget that they are humanly constructed. If we now have trouble conceptualizing place, when we turn to cities in particular, we also find that they are being submerged into a discourse of sameness where today�s �global cities� are portrayed as almost cookie-cutter copies of one another in their consumption-based, high tech identities. Yet the culture-neutral character of this discourse about contemporary cities belies the cultural-historical personality that each city retains, and it can obscure or even erase the rich placespecific learning opportunities that each city offers.
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    Quartering the city in discourse and bricks: Articulating urban change in a South African enclave
    (Springer, 2016) Rink, Bradley M.
    Focusing on the urban enclave in Cape Town known as De Waterkant, this paper examines the product and process of �quartering� urban space�shaping urban space as the locus for the symbolic framing of culture. This paper advances recent studies of De Waterkant by applying the concept of quartering to understand urban change in an African context. Complicating existing research on De Waterkant, the findings show that the area has witnessed four distinct quartered identities including: an ethnic quartering which was dismantled under apartheid; a Bohemian quartering that changed racial dynamics and improved housing stock; a �gay village� quartering that engaged sexual identity performance as a strategy for place-making; and most recently a consumer lifestyle quartering that exhibited new notions of citizenship and consumption. This paper advances theorization of how quartering as a process is articulated through the application of discursive and material tropes to the urban fabric of the city.
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    Que(e)rying Cape Town: touring Africa�s gay capital with the pink map
    (Centre for Geographical Studies: Lisbon, 2013) Rink, Bradley M.
    Since 1999, Cape Town�s Pink Map has attempted to provide local and international visitors alike with a cartographic representation of the city�s queer landscape. This paper engages with the archive provided by more than a decade of the Map to trace the outlines of this �pink� discourse while contributing to debates on the promotion of �pink� tourism and the nature of South African queer communities. This paper will demonstrate that, in addition to being a commercial publication that locates gay- and gay friendly leisure venues, services, and shopping, the Pink Map also engages particular tropes of the body and gender to inscribe sexual and consumer citizenship in the city of Cape Town with specific emphasis on the urban quarter known as De Waterkant. The analysis will show how the journey one takes while holding the Pink Map is illustrative of events taking place on the urban landscape that the Map depicts. In the final analysis, this paper reveals how the Pink Map serves as an archive of a limited notion of queer visibility, new modes of consumption, the queer tourist gaze and the embodied shaping of destination space.