Space-off: A Critical Commentary on the Special Focus Section ‘Racial Isolation and Interaction in Everyday Life’

Abstract

In September 2005 the South African Journal of Psychology (SAJP) published a special focus section on ‘Racial isolation and interaction in everyday life’ (SAJP volume 35 number 3). The professionalism of the research undertaken and the calibre of the researchers notwithstanding, we argue that labelling this collection of studies a stock taking of racial segregation in contemporary South Africa is not justified. The studies presented in the special focus section do offer the reader an assortment of expert research that contributes to debate on the issue, but we argue that there are limitations to this research and important issues arising from it that ought not to be discounted. In this commentary we argue that in terms of a stock tacking of racial interaction in contemporary South Africa, the reader is offered a rather limited analysis in that the research presented focuses almost exclusively on privileged spaces. In the light of the fact that the reader is presented with a stock taking in “racialised terms” (Foster, 2005, p. 495), some debate on the concept of race would not have gone amiss. We would also have welcomed more debate on the ‘turn to the material’, and the implications of that in terms of its political utility.