An Article in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology provides context to the DigiSAt project.

Published in 2019 in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, the article explores how townships and prison are linked in South Africa among criminalised populations. While the two are often described – also by residents – as belonging to radically different moral worlds, the article shows how they are entangled in often awkward and difficult, yet necessary ways. The empirical basis of the article is long-term fieldwork in and engagement with Cape Town’s townships and their residents, many of who have experiences with prison as (former) inmates, as family to inmates, or through constant circulation of prison stories. The authors, DigiSAt PI Karen Waltorp and Professor at Aalborg University Steffen Jensen, combine a joint 20 years of research in the Cape Flats area. They pay acute attention to kinship structures and how kin are disavowed, allowed, and sometimes denied as residents find their way to prison and out again. They connect these local dynamics to larger historical and national configurations.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00141844.2017.1321565

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Cite as: Waltorp, Karen & Jensen, Steffen  (2019) Awkward Entanglements: Kinship, Morality and Survival in Cape Town’s Prison–township Circuit, Ethnos 84(1): 41-55. DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2017.1321565