List of Titles

Vulnerability, coping and adaptation within the context of climate change and HIV/AIDS in South Africa: Investigating strategies to strengthen livelihoods and food security and build resilience.

- Ndlovu, Patrick, Luckert, Martin K, Shackleton, Sheona E

Authors: Ndlovu, Patrick , Luckert, Martin K , Shackleton, Sheona E
Date: 2014
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: vital:6622 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016230
Description: [From Introduction] In South Africa, social grants are a central component of government's efforts to alleviate poverty. The number of people receiving social grants has significantly increased in recent years (from about 10.9 million in 2005 to almost 15.7 million in 2013, and an anticipated 16.8 million recipients by 2015).With social grants playing an increasingly important role, a pressing policy issue is whether or not the current social grant schemes are an effective tool for alleviating poverty. Some studies have shown that social grants improve food security (Case and Deaton, 1998; Samson et al., 2008) and in the long run can promote employment through accumulation of human capital and enhancing productivity of poor households (Edmonds et al., 2006; Samson et al., 2008; Surender et al., 2007). However, other studies have reported that social grants have possible disincentive effects on labor market activity, for example, through the relaxing of household budget constraints which may lead to a reduction in labor supply (Bertrand et al., 2003; Ranchorhod, 2006; Klasen and Woolard, 2009). Our study provides new insights by highlighting two key household characteristics, gender and education, in catalyzing or diminishing the effects of grants on household livelihood outcomes. Our analysis mainly focuses on impacts of pensions on household food security and labor supply of household members.
Full Text:
Date Issued: 2014

Quick View

Why care about sharing?: Shared phones and shared netowrks in rural areas: African trends

- Dalvit, Lorenzo

Authors: Dalvit, Lorenzo
Date: 2014
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158639 , vital:40217 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC159490
Description: Tomi Ahonen, credited with introducing the concept of mobile as the seventh mass media, notes that the arrival of the mobile phone was a God-send for advertisers, as it is the only mass medium where the audience can be accurately identified. Conversely, the pervasiveness of location-aware, multi-sensor, permanently on and constantly connected devices raised privacy concerns about carrying "little brother" in your pocket at all times. One of the distinctive characteristics of mobile phones, setting them apart from all previous media, is the fact that they are personal devices: 60% of married users would not let their spouse access their mobile phone and, not surprisingly, teenagers are even less inclined to let their family members have a look at their device. Things have not always been so. In South Africa, research conducted among university students revealed that for many a hand-me-down phone the size of a brick and shared with siblings was their first mobile device.
Full Text:
Date Issued: 2014

Quick View

Writing the violated body : representations of violence against women in Margie Orford’s crime thriller novels

- Naidu, Samantha

Authors: Naidu, Samantha
Date: 2014
Language: English
Type: Article , text
Identifier: vital:26361 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53932 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2014.904396 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
Description: Using the late twentieth-century French feminist notions of écriture féminine and the abject as a starting point, this article considers the various pitfalls, effects and ethical ramifications of representations of violence against the female body in South African crime fiction. How do authors reconcile the entertainment value of such representations with their aims to perform social analysis? This article attempts to answer this question by first describing how violence targeted at the female body is graphically portrayed, and, second, by assessing the effects of these visceral descriptions. Margie Orford’s novels, in particular, the first in the Clare Hart series, Like clockwork (2006), which foregrounds human trafficking, prostitution and gender-based violence, will be examined. In Orford’s Clare Hart series, the female detective figure, the various plots to do with assault, abduction, rape and murder, and the explicit imagery that descriptively conveys such crimes, are narrative techniques employed by Orford to address this scourge, and the patriarchy and sexism of contemporary South African society in general. The article ends by assessing whether a bona fide feminist subgenre of South African crime fiction is being inscribed by Orford
Full Text: false
Date Issued: 2014

Quick View

Xenophobia, sovereign power and the limits of citizenship:

- Idahosa, Grace E, Vincent, Louise

Authors: Idahosa, Grace E , Vincent, Louise
Date: 2014
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141970 , vital:38020 , DOI: 10.1080/09744053.2014.914637
Description: African foreigners in South Africa have frequently been the targets of violent and discriminatory practices, which occur in the enabling context of negative discourses concerning African foreigners that circulate in various spheres of public life. This study is interested in one particular field of interaction between African foreigners and the South African state, namely the public health sector. Discriminatory and, sometimes, violent practices towards African foreigners on the part of South African citizens are widely documented. Less discussed are the ways in which these practices of violence and discrimination are in fact state practices. We show this with reference to the treatment of African foreigners in the public health sector. We refer to this prejudicial treatment as health-care Xenophobia which is made possible by a wider set of discourses related to citizenship and the rights accruing to citizens which suggest the ‘non-rights’ of the non-citizen.
Full Text:
Date Issued: 2014

Quick View

‘Licking the snake’: the i'khothane and contemporary township youth identities in South Africa

- Howell, Simon, Vincent, Louise

Authors: Howell, Simon , Vincent, Louise
Date: 2014
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141645 , vital:37993 , DOI: 10.1080/21528586.2014.917883
Description: The i’khothane youth subculture is a relatively new phenomenon that has emerged in some of South Africa’s townships. Characterised by the rampant consumption of certain goods, such as expensive clothing, the subculture is unique in that it is also defined by the destruction of these goods in performances known as ‘battles’. Demonised by the media, we set out to explore what makes these practices meaningful to the participants themselves. On the basis of in-depth interviews conducted with the members of one group, we bring to the academic literature a scarcely analysed phenomenon that is nevertheless an acknowledged element of popular youth culture in contemporary South Africa. We attempt to place the practice of i’khothane within the context of the patterns of conspicuous consumption that have emerged in (a highly unequal) post-apartheid South Africa. While the practice of burning expensive consumer goods in public may seem alien, especially in contrast to the impoverished surroundings within which the i’khothane live, there are discernable and understandable reasons why the subculture has gained both popularity and notoriety. We show how the practice of i’khothane is a potent means of articulating youth identity in settings seemingly left behind by the ‘new’ South Africa.
Full Text:
Date Issued: 2014

Quick View

‘Unnatural’,‘un-African’and ‘ungodly’: homophobic discourse in democratic South Africa

- Vincent, Louise, Howell, Simon

Authors: Vincent, Louise , Howell, Simon
Date: 2014
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141570 , vital:37986 , DOI: 10.1177/1363460714524766
Description: On 28 November 2006, South Africa’s legislature passed the Civil Union Act (No. 17, 2006), which legalised same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. While South Africa was fifth in the world to recognise the right of people of the same sex to marry, the country is by no means free of homophobic attitudes. However, we argue that an examination of the discourses embedded in the public discussion of gay marriage shows that the post-1994 period has not simply been a case of homophobia as usual. The altered context has given rise to the need for new ways of homophobic discourse to position itself. The rights enshrined in the Constitution represent a powerful set of ideas about the distinction between the democratic state and its apartheid predecessor. These ideas provide the dominant framework for political debate in the current context and it is therefore within this overarching framework that anti-gay sentiments must find a way to express themselves that has legitimacy. Our finding is that the reinscription of homophobia in an era of the ascendancy of human rights discourse has been chiefly in terms of three potent legitimising tropes – homosexuality as ‘unAfrican’, ‘unGodly’, and ‘unnatural’. It is only by deepening our understanding of the terms in which homophobia is being articulated in the current period that we can develop effective counter discourses.
Full Text:
Date Issued: 2014

Quick View

Showing items 241 - 249 of 249