This work examines a common, heavily racialized discourse of spatial decay circulated among White... more This work examines a common, heavily racialized discourse of spatial decay circulated among White South African emigrants, particularly in electronic newsletters, blogs, and social media. The discourse claims that the condition and comfort of the built environment in post-apartheid South Africa has deteriorated as a consequence of the end of white rule. I examine how this discourse, in reifying a certain type of White South African space assumed to have existed in the past, idealizes the apartheid era and creates a nostalgic, racialized spatial norm for South Africa. Furthermore, I propose that this discourse of decay relies on an idea of the “ruined white space” that sits at the intersection of South African whiteness and nostalgia. This paper is based on a content analysis of fifty-four articles, forum threads, and blog posts from white expatriate media, in which I find two discourses of ruined spaces that achieve the goals above: that of mourning for old white spaces, and that of a precarious future for white middle-class people based on prior spatial decay. After analysing these discourses, I demonstrate how they together build a nostalgia for white life during apartheid South Africa, while simultaneously constructing the spaces of that time as a norm. Furthermore, the proclaimed ruin of these spaces is shown to be used as justification for emigration. This paper is more broadly situated in literatures discussing the ramifications of nostalgia for lost hegemonic spaces globally and whiteness in South Africa.
Dartmouth Quarterly of East Asian Studies 1(1), 2014.
During the British colonial era in Penan... more Dartmouth Quarterly of East Asian Studies 1(1), 2014.
During the British colonial era in Penang, Malaysia and Singapore, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants – laborers and merchants alike – contributed to a vast expansion of both cities’ urban landscape. This influx was such that both cities became dominated by members of the Chinese diaspora.
Part of this domination comprised the housing stock and urban morphology of these colonial entrepôts. Chinese builders developed shop-houses – a distinctive, local type of row-house – with attached “five-foot-way” public arcades. British colonial rulers, in the interest of maintaining dominion, sanitation, and Victorian English ideals of separation between the public and private spheres, strongly regulated Chinese use and construction of shop-houses, “five-foot-ways,” and other architecture. Colonial concern was especially raised by the different spatial practices Chinese migrants used at home and in the city: the “five-foot-ways” acted as liminal public-private extensions of shops and institutions, whilst domestic architecture and back-lanes did not strictly adhere to a public and private dichotomy. These practices were deemed lamentable and as the cause of disease by colonial rulers. The response of migrants was one of adherence to both Chinese and British spatial practice. On the one hand, Chinese builders sought to obey building regulations and integrate ideas of Western practice into the architecture and morphology they built. On the other hand, spatial practices imported from China remained the basic structure, and were integrated into and evolved with the “Westernized,” adjusted shop-houses – thus producing a simultaneously vernacular and colonial architecture. This paper explores the implication of this hybridity not just in terms of the daily lived experience of colonialism, but as part of establishing Penang and Singapore in the wider world of the Chinese diaspora.
In late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Africa, an effort to construct a white natio... more In late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Africa, an effort to construct a white nation was undertaken throughout settler society in the country, in political and social spheres alike. One aspect of this construction was the formation of an imagined settler landscape – a space conceived of as the home of the new settler nation in South Africa. Whites sought to identify with this landscape in tangible and intangible manners. The white immigrant communities of Paarl Jewry, in the Cape, and Marburg Norwegians, in Natal, offer two such contemporary examples of these trends in South Africa. This work compares the two communities’ integration into the white settler landscape, and by extension, White South African society in physical and rhetorical terms. Whitewashing, ornamentation, and adoption of normative spatial rhetoric illustrate these communities’ integration into and the wider construction of White South Africa, and call into question the common assumption of unassimilated immigrant and diaspora communities. Furthermore, the adoption of these techniques reintegrated ideas of diaspora identities and Norwegian or Jewish “tradition” into the wider settler-national narrative.
During the British (1837-1910) and pre-apartheid Union (1910-1948) periods in South Africa, a fe... more During the British (1837-1910) and pre-apartheid Union (1910-1948) periods in South Africa, a few thousand Norwegians migrated to and settled in South Africa, mostly in Natal. This movement included Lutheran missionaries, the founders of the town of Marburg, and economic migrants to the city of Durban. During this time in South Africa, a certain “imperial project” operated within the country. This project comprised the construction of a white, settler society ex nihilo amidst the Christianization and Europeanization of the native population. This project partly relied on white settlement to further these aims.
I argue that Norwegian settlers and migrants, in rhetoric and practice, served the dual aims of the project. Missionaries and settlers sought to act as living models of Christian conduct and thus Christianize the local Zulu – all whilst bringing that people under British and white hegemony. Meanwhile, settlers also identified and integrated with the new European society under construction – and altered their aims to further its dominance ad continuation. In these contexts, settlers became vessels and brokers of European culture, Christian morality, white dominance, and British power. My argument runs counter to a nationalistic and anti-imperial trend common in Norwegian historiography.
A self-published thought piece on the Israel/diaspora distinction
https://medium.com/@jonathanpk... more A self-published thought piece on the Israel/diaspora distinction
I am a regular contributor to New Voices Magazine, writing on topics including diaspora, LGBT Jew... more I am a regular contributor to New Voices Magazine, writing on topics including diaspora, LGBT Jewish issues, and Israel/Palestine.
This work examines a common, heavily racialized discourse of spatial decay circulated among White... more This work examines a common, heavily racialized discourse of spatial decay circulated among White South African emigrants, particularly in electronic newsletters, blogs, and social media. The discourse claims that the condition and comfort of the built environment in post-apartheid South Africa has deteriorated as a consequence of the end of white rule. I examine how this discourse, in reifying a certain type of White South African space assumed to have existed in the past, idealizes the apartheid era and creates a nostalgic, racialized spatial norm for South Africa. Furthermore, I propose that this discourse of decay relies on an idea of the “ruined white space” that sits at the intersection of South African whiteness and nostalgia. This paper is based on a content analysis of fifty-four articles, forum threads, and blog posts from white expatriate media, in which I find two discourses of ruined spaces that achieve the goals above: that of mourning for old white spaces, and that of a precarious future for white middle-class people based on prior spatial decay. After analysing these discourses, I demonstrate how they together build a nostalgia for white life during apartheid South Africa, while simultaneously constructing the spaces of that time as a norm. Furthermore, the proclaimed ruin of these spaces is shown to be used as justification for emigration. This paper is more broadly situated in literatures discussing the ramifications of nostalgia for lost hegemonic spaces globally and whiteness in South Africa.
Dartmouth Quarterly of East Asian Studies 1(1), 2014.
During the British colonial era in Penan... more Dartmouth Quarterly of East Asian Studies 1(1), 2014.
During the British colonial era in Penang, Malaysia and Singapore, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants – laborers and merchants alike – contributed to a vast expansion of both cities’ urban landscape. This influx was such that both cities became dominated by members of the Chinese diaspora.
Part of this domination comprised the housing stock and urban morphology of these colonial entrepôts. Chinese builders developed shop-houses – a distinctive, local type of row-house – with attached “five-foot-way” public arcades. British colonial rulers, in the interest of maintaining dominion, sanitation, and Victorian English ideals of separation between the public and private spheres, strongly regulated Chinese use and construction of shop-houses, “five-foot-ways,” and other architecture. Colonial concern was especially raised by the different spatial practices Chinese migrants used at home and in the city: the “five-foot-ways” acted as liminal public-private extensions of shops and institutions, whilst domestic architecture and back-lanes did not strictly adhere to a public and private dichotomy. These practices were deemed lamentable and as the cause of disease by colonial rulers. The response of migrants was one of adherence to both Chinese and British spatial practice. On the one hand, Chinese builders sought to obey building regulations and integrate ideas of Western practice into the architecture and morphology they built. On the other hand, spatial practices imported from China remained the basic structure, and were integrated into and evolved with the “Westernized,” adjusted shop-houses – thus producing a simultaneously vernacular and colonial architecture. This paper explores the implication of this hybridity not just in terms of the daily lived experience of colonialism, but as part of establishing Penang and Singapore in the wider world of the Chinese diaspora.
In late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Africa, an effort to construct a white natio... more In late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century South Africa, an effort to construct a white nation was undertaken throughout settler society in the country, in political and social spheres alike. One aspect of this construction was the formation of an imagined settler landscape – a space conceived of as the home of the new settler nation in South Africa. Whites sought to identify with this landscape in tangible and intangible manners. The white immigrant communities of Paarl Jewry, in the Cape, and Marburg Norwegians, in Natal, offer two such contemporary examples of these trends in South Africa. This work compares the two communities’ integration into the white settler landscape, and by extension, White South African society in physical and rhetorical terms. Whitewashing, ornamentation, and adoption of normative spatial rhetoric illustrate these communities’ integration into and the wider construction of White South Africa, and call into question the common assumption of unassimilated immigrant and diaspora communities. Furthermore, the adoption of these techniques reintegrated ideas of diaspora identities and Norwegian or Jewish “tradition” into the wider settler-national narrative.
During the British (1837-1910) and pre-apartheid Union (1910-1948) periods in South Africa, a fe... more During the British (1837-1910) and pre-apartheid Union (1910-1948) periods in South Africa, a few thousand Norwegians migrated to and settled in South Africa, mostly in Natal. This movement included Lutheran missionaries, the founders of the town of Marburg, and economic migrants to the city of Durban. During this time in South Africa, a certain “imperial project” operated within the country. This project comprised the construction of a white, settler society ex nihilo amidst the Christianization and Europeanization of the native population. This project partly relied on white settlement to further these aims.
I argue that Norwegian settlers and migrants, in rhetoric and practice, served the dual aims of the project. Missionaries and settlers sought to act as living models of Christian conduct and thus Christianize the local Zulu – all whilst bringing that people under British and white hegemony. Meanwhile, settlers also identified and integrated with the new European society under construction – and altered their aims to further its dominance ad continuation. In these contexts, settlers became vessels and brokers of European culture, Christian morality, white dominance, and British power. My argument runs counter to a nationalistic and anti-imperial trend common in Norwegian historiography.
A self-published thought piece on the Israel/diaspora distinction
https://medium.com/@jonathanpk... more A self-published thought piece on the Israel/diaspora distinction
I am a regular contributor to New Voices Magazine, writing on topics including diaspora, LGBT Jew... more I am a regular contributor to New Voices Magazine, writing on topics including diaspora, LGBT Jewish issues, and Israel/Palestine.
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Papers by Jonathan Katz
During the British colonial era in Penang, Malaysia and Singapore, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants – laborers and merchants alike – contributed to a vast expansion of both cities’ urban landscape. This influx was such that both cities became dominated by members of the Chinese diaspora.
Part of this domination comprised the housing stock and urban morphology of these colonial entrepôts. Chinese builders developed shop-houses – a distinctive, local type of row-house – with attached “five-foot-way” public arcades. British colonial rulers, in the interest of maintaining dominion, sanitation, and Victorian English ideals of separation between the public and private spheres, strongly regulated Chinese use and construction of shop-houses, “five-foot-ways,” and other architecture. Colonial concern was especially raised by the different spatial practices Chinese migrants used at home and in the city: the “five-foot-ways” acted as liminal public-private extensions of shops and institutions, whilst domestic architecture and back-lanes did not strictly adhere to a public and private dichotomy. These practices were deemed lamentable and as the cause of disease by colonial rulers. The response of migrants was one of adherence to both Chinese and British spatial practice. On the one hand, Chinese builders sought to obey building regulations and integrate ideas of Western practice into the architecture and morphology they built. On the other hand, spatial practices imported from China remained the basic structure, and were integrated into and evolved with the “Westernized,” adjusted shop-houses – thus producing a simultaneously vernacular and colonial architecture. This paper explores the implication of this hybridity not just in terms of the daily lived experience of colonialism, but as part of establishing Penang and Singapore in the wider world of the Chinese diaspora.
I argue that Norwegian settlers and migrants, in rhetoric and practice, served the dual aims of the project. Missionaries and settlers sought to act as living models of Christian conduct and thus Christianize the local Zulu – all whilst bringing that people under British and white hegemony. Meanwhile, settlers also identified and integrated with the new European society under construction – and altered their aims to further its dominance ad continuation. In these contexts, settlers became vessels and brokers of European culture, Christian morality, white dominance, and British power. My argument runs counter to a nationalistic and anti-imperial trend common in Norwegian historiography.
Articles in the Jewish Press by Jonathan Katz
https://medium.com/@jonathanpkatz/a-remembered-vilna-israel-as-a-place-of-diaspora-454b72555db8
http://forward.com/authors/jonathan-katz/ (2 articles)
During the British colonial era in Penang, Malaysia and Singapore, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants – laborers and merchants alike – contributed to a vast expansion of both cities’ urban landscape. This influx was such that both cities became dominated by members of the Chinese diaspora.
Part of this domination comprised the housing stock and urban morphology of these colonial entrepôts. Chinese builders developed shop-houses – a distinctive, local type of row-house – with attached “five-foot-way” public arcades. British colonial rulers, in the interest of maintaining dominion, sanitation, and Victorian English ideals of separation between the public and private spheres, strongly regulated Chinese use and construction of shop-houses, “five-foot-ways,” and other architecture. Colonial concern was especially raised by the different spatial practices Chinese migrants used at home and in the city: the “five-foot-ways” acted as liminal public-private extensions of shops and institutions, whilst domestic architecture and back-lanes did not strictly adhere to a public and private dichotomy. These practices were deemed lamentable and as the cause of disease by colonial rulers. The response of migrants was one of adherence to both Chinese and British spatial practice. On the one hand, Chinese builders sought to obey building regulations and integrate ideas of Western practice into the architecture and morphology they built. On the other hand, spatial practices imported from China remained the basic structure, and were integrated into and evolved with the “Westernized,” adjusted shop-houses – thus producing a simultaneously vernacular and colonial architecture. This paper explores the implication of this hybridity not just in terms of the daily lived experience of colonialism, but as part of establishing Penang and Singapore in the wider world of the Chinese diaspora.
I argue that Norwegian settlers and migrants, in rhetoric and practice, served the dual aims of the project. Missionaries and settlers sought to act as living models of Christian conduct and thus Christianize the local Zulu – all whilst bringing that people under British and white hegemony. Meanwhile, settlers also identified and integrated with the new European society under construction – and altered their aims to further its dominance ad continuation. In these contexts, settlers became vessels and brokers of European culture, Christian morality, white dominance, and British power. My argument runs counter to a nationalistic and anti-imperial trend common in Norwegian historiography.
https://medium.com/@jonathanpkatz/a-remembered-vilna-israel-as-a-place-of-diaspora-454b72555db8
http://forward.com/authors/jonathan-katz/ (2 articles)