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“Blackboxing Whiteness”: A study of the networked home in middle-class South Africa

A study of the networked home in middle-class South Africa

Jaqui Hiltermann
University of Cape Town
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“Blackboxing Whiteness”: A study of the networked home in middle-class South Africa. (2022). Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa, 37(2), 107-126. https://doi.org/10.36615/jcsa.v37i2.1558
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  • Submited: October 10, 2022
  • Published: October 11, 2022

Abstract

This paper examines the home as networked and relational. These arrangements of space
and place were investigated through a digital ethnography and critical discourse analysis of
domestically focused posts by 50 Facebook users. This data was supplemented by interviews,
and in-situ observations drawn from the broader sample. Facebook has opened up the private
space of the home, allowing domestic space, place, and practice to gain visibility, which, when
analysed in conjunction with Actor-Network Theory (ANT), illustrates the networked and relational
quality of the home. The home, and the relationships between actants, reflects discourses
and hierarchy. Women remain tightly bound to the home, and to postfeminist discourses of
domesticity and domestopia. This paper reveals that whiteness, and in particular madamhood,
is blackboxed within middle-class homes. Domestic workers employed by these households,
on the other hand, were largely absent from such narratives and conversations, and were
marginalised within networks.

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How to Cite
“Blackboxing Whiteness”: A study of the networked home in middle-class South Africa. (2022). Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa, 37(2), 107-126. https://doi.org/10.36615/jcsa.v37i2.1558

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