Cultivating Suspicion

At the heart of 21st century discourses are
questions of whose lives may matter more than others. While the debates
themselves are not new, the #hashtags they are linked to and the media
through which concerns around moralities of living together are
expressed allow for debates to reach large numbers of people in
accelerated, individualised and accessible ways. The new media have been
powerful in (re)igniting debates and (re)activating demands for social
change. Yet, the focus of ubiquitous #hashtags on binary positions may
render it easy to neglect their nuances and facets. In recognition of
grey-zones, contradictions and ambiguities, this ethnography focuses on a
suburb of Cape Town, Observatory, and its recently revived
Neighbourhood Watch as an urban renewal project and attempt to decrease
notions of vulnerability to crime and violence.

In Observatory –
considered to be liberal and bohemian by its inhabitants – the framing
of topics within the Neighbourhood Watch group often take on an
abstract, intellectualised form. Nevertheless, the group with its rather
clashing ideals is grounded in and fuelled by recycled crime stories as
well as snapshots of suspected criminals that continue to reappear via
various social media channels. Individual experiences, stories and inner
conflicts of local Neighbourhood Watch members are at the centre of
this exploratory engagement with how fear becomes embodied, everyday
practice and the ways in which desires for relationality and spatial
exclusivity become entangled in a place where every life matters only in
principle.