ABSTRACT
Duncan Village in the coastal South Africa city of East London is a well-worked site of knowledge production in anthropology. In the 1930s, Monica Hunter conducted fieldwork there as part of her classic study Reaction to Conquest. The author suggests that had these scholars been able to extend their fieldwork practice and vision ‘beyond the verandah’, to the spaces of the street, the tearoom, the dance-halls, and to public spaces beyond the location, such as the beach, the station and the sports tournaments, they would have probably ‘read’ local social and cultural dynamics slightly differently. Yet others referred to events on the Reef and the popularity of South African magazines like Drum, Bona and Zonk, which kept location residents abreast of cultural developments in larger cities and abroad. Whatever the reasons, there was consensus that the post-war period signalled ‘a local cultural renaissance’ that raised cosmopolitan influences in location life to new levels.
