“Blackboxing Whiteness”

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 draw...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Jaqui Hiltermann
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Johannesburg 2022-10-01
Series:Communicare
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Online Access:https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/jcsa/article/view/1558
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0259-0069
2957-7950