Gated communities, heterotopia and a 'rights' of privilege : a 'heterotopology' of the South African security-park ' (in Hetherington's (1997) Keywords: heterotopia, heterotopology, gated community, security-park, discourse, social power, historical structures of privilege. Preamble.This paper is divided into three sections. The first introduces the notion of the 'gated community', of which we consider the South African 'security-park' to be a paradigmatic example. Tying a generic level of discussion (by making references to more global 'gating' phenomena), to the specifics of the South African situation (references in particular to Dainfern Estate -probably the most auspicious example of a South African securitypark), we hope both to critically characterize the security-park, and to inform the analysis to follow. The second section provides what the authors hope will be a qualified, yet informative explication (or even expansion) of Foucault's theoretical concept of the heterotopia. The third part of the paper essentially joins the two foregoing sections by advancing an analysis of Dainfern Estate as heterotopia.