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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:A discourse of modernity: the Social and Economic Planning Council's fifth report on regional and town planning, 1944
Author:Wilkinson, PeterISNI
Year:1996
Periodical:African Studies
Volume:55
Issue:2
Pages:141-181
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:physical planning
urban history
External link:https://doi.org/10.1080/00020189608707854
Abstract:The fifth report of South Africa's Social and Economic Planning Council (SEPC), entitled 'Regional and Town Planning', was published by the Government Printer as an official publication in 1944 and is unmistakably a product of its time. The present author argues that it is distinguished by its careful construction of what he has termed a 'discourse of modernity', and that it is embedded in the context of the historical turning point that the 1940s represented in South Africa. The aim of this paper is to unpack some elements of the processes - both material and ideological - through which this modernist discourse was formed. The first part of the paper deals with the first ten years (1942-1952) of the SEPC. The second part sketches the more specific context of the SEPC's formation as an official, though nonstatutory, body and the development of its work programme during the first three years of its existence. The production and the published text of the fifth report are analysed in the third part. The fourth and final part reviews subsequent developments and briefly discusses the report's reception, offering, in passing, a few pointers to areas for further research. Note, ref., sum.
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