Book Review: Surviving gangs, violence, and racism in Cape Town: Ghetto chameleons

• Date: 01 March 2022
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016819833133
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Lindegaard, M. (2018).

Surviving gangs, violence, and racism in Cape Town: Ghetto chameleons. New York, NY: Routledge. 289 pp. $128.00,

ISBN 978-0-415-81891-9.

Reviewed by: Heith Copes, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016819833133

In the early 2000s, parkour gained worldwide popularity. Parkour is the practice of navigating an

urban landscape in an artful way and involves moving across physical space efficiently to remove

obstacles and impediments. Practitioners of parkour (i.e., tracuers) must be aware of the environment,

what obstacles are near, and how to navigate them based on personal skills. As parkour was gaining

prominence, Marie Lindegaard began her ethnographic work in Cape Town, South Africa. In the

product of this work, Surviving Gangs, Violence, and Racism in Cape Town: Ghetto Chameleons,

Lindegaard explains how young people in Cape Town navigated their social worlds to avoid violence

and victimization. In many ways, both Lindegaard and those she studied resemble traceurs navigat-

ing an urban environment. Like a traceur, Lindegaard adeptly traverses the world of those she

studied. Similarly, her participants are like traceurs as they travel between social worlds (from

ghettos to suburbs and back) and invoke various cultural repertoires to avoid threats that emerge

during their travels.

Lindegaard begins by placing her study in a larger social, theoretical, and methodological context.

She describes the historical legacy of apartheid and the resulting definitions and fluidity of race found

in South Africa. This context provides the stage where South Africans act out race and identity using

available cultural repertoires. The larger theoretical argument of the book is that people navigate their

worlds by drawing on the various cultural repertoires—“tool kits that includes a range of actions,

habits, skills and styles that are drawn upon in the process of social positioning”(p. 20)—at their

disposal. She finds that young South Africans could call forth gang, township, suburban, and flexible

cultural repertoires when making their way through ghettos, townships, and suburbs. While people

are constrained by culture, they have agency in how they choose specific repertoires. People vary in

their access to specific repertoires and in their adeptness at situationally using these repertoires. Those

who are more flexible in drifting among cultural repertoires may have more success in traversing cul-

tures than those who are not. In short, culture is fluid and people can pull from a variety of cultural

beliefs when acting and making sense of their actions.

Those who draw on flexible cultural repertoires (i.e., ghetto chameleons) highlight the similarities

shared with traceurs. That is, they show the improvisational and situational nature of switching

among repertoires. They must be prepared for situations and adapt to their social surroundings

based on their particular abilities. Those with more proficiency at this are more successful in navi-

gating multiple terrains. They can move between the races and classes much like traceurs move

over and around obstacles in the urban environment.

Lindegaard is able to bring the participants’worlds to the reader when telling their stories. I espe-

cially like the inclusion of participant-driven photos in the book. By providing participants with

cameras, Lindegaard was able to show aspects of participants’lives that would otherwise remain

distant to readers. We see their homes, their families, and their troubles. We see their struggles

with poverty, drugs, and violence. And, we are shown all of this from the literal point of view of

the participants. When one young man discusses the ways he navigates the anxiety caused by

drug use, gambling, and alcoholism in and around his home, we can see, firsthand, the places he

must traverse and the people he must manage.

We should not forget that research is also influenced by those who conduct it. The researcher’s

personality and social position can influence data collection. Thus, we must be aware of how data

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