Anxious Joburg

Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global south city. Global south cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global north’s anxieties about the south: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, intersections, affects and experiences that mark the contemporary urban? Scholars, visual artists and storytellers all look at unexamined aspects of Johannesburg life. From peripheral settlements to the inner city to the affluent northern suburbs, from precarious migrants and domestic workers to upwardly mobile young women and fearful elites, Anxious Joburg presents an absorbing engagement with this frustrating, dangerous, seductive city. It offers a rigorous, critical approach to Johannesburg revealing the way in which anxiety is a vital structuring principle of contemporary life. The approach is strongly interdisciplinary, with contributions from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, urban geography, migration studies and psychology. It will appeal to students and teachers, as well as to academic researchers concerned with Johannesburg, South Africa, cities and the global south. The mix of approaches will also draw a non-academic audience.

"Anxiety might be terrifying, says Kierkegaard, but it speaks to the possibility of possibility. So, too, do the luminous, edgy essays assembled here, that make palpable the abrasive friction, the alchemy of abjection and ebullience, that drives Johannesburg's creativity and its unlikely glamour."--Professor Jean Comaroff, Harvard University, "Falkof and Van Staden have curated a remarkable academic collaboration, able to engage such a turbulent landscape with both intellectual acuity and tenderness."--Professor Abdoumaliq Simone, University of Sheffield, "In this most unequal city, what kind of constraints circumscribe our attempts to live an 'authentic' life? Whether interrogating the Global Citizen festival or traversing the city by taxi while female or just simply riding a bike ... a luta continua!"--Dr Melissa Tandiwe Myambo, editor of Reversing Urban Inequality in Johannesburg

Nicky Falkof is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Cobus van Staden is a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and is affiliated with the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Nicky Falkof is Associate Professor in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Cobus van Staden is a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and is affiliated with the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Derek Hook is an associate professor of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, USA, and a research affiliate in Psychology at the Universities of Pretoria and the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is the author of Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial: The Mind of Apartheid and Steve Biko. B Camminga is a postdoctoral fellow in the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Mingwei Huang is an assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College. Lebohang Masango is a poet, author and UNICEF South Africa advocate for volunteerism. She has a MA in Social Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Joel Cabrita teaches African History in the Department of History at Stanford University. Sabelo Mlangeni is a photographer based in Johannesburg and his work has been widely exhibited locally and internationally. Njogu Morgan is a postdoctoral researcher in the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Aidan Mosselson is an urban geographer and sociologist, and is currently a Newton International Fellow based in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, University of Sheffield. Khangelani Moyo is an associate researcher at the Global Change Institute (GCI), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Renugan Raidoo is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at Harvard University. He holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Antonia Steyn graduated from the University of Cape Town and is a professional photographer. She won the Vuleka Art Award and was selected as one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans in 2011. Baeletsi Tsatsi is a storyteller, writer and facilitator based in Johannesburg. She studied at the Market Theatre Laboratory, the International School of Storytelling and the Centre for Biographical Storytelling. Sisonke Msimang is a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and is the author of Always Another Country (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018). Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies and director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of th