Why we should avoid the use of the term “Post-Abortion Syndrome” : commentary on Boulind and Edwards (2008)
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6277 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008277
- Description: Boulind and Edwards (2008) present a case study of Grace, a women suffering, in their words, from post-abortion syndrome (PAS). In this commentary I argue that while Boulind and Edwards’ (2008) report is useful in terms of documenting the therapeutic processes engaged in, they would have been better served in not hanging the distress experienced by Grace on the diagnostic category of post-abortion syndrome. Reasons for this are that: PAS is not a recognised category of diagnosis, despite having been initially proposed in 1981; applying a PTSD framework to abortion is questionable; PAS focuses attention on the abortion itself in isolation from the fact that abortion occurs in the context of severely problematic pregnancies and other important socio-cultural stressors; PAS, in the very manner in which it is formulated, invokes to a very complex politics of the foetus. Boulind and Edwards (2008) are careful in their documentation of the complexities of the case, and thus their use of PAS is unfortunate.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6277 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008277
- Description: Boulind and Edwards (2008) present a case study of Grace, a women suffering, in their words, from post-abortion syndrome (PAS). In this commentary I argue that while Boulind and Edwards’ (2008) report is useful in terms of documenting the therapeutic processes engaged in, they would have been better served in not hanging the distress experienced by Grace on the diagnostic category of post-abortion syndrome. Reasons for this are that: PAS is not a recognised category of diagnosis, despite having been initially proposed in 1981; applying a PTSD framework to abortion is questionable; PAS focuses attention on the abortion itself in isolation from the fact that abortion occurs in the context of severely problematic pregnancies and other important socio-cultural stressors; PAS, in the very manner in which it is formulated, invokes to a very complex politics of the foetus. Boulind and Edwards (2008) are careful in their documentation of the complexities of the case, and thus their use of PAS is unfortunate.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
Developing principles for research about young women and abortion: a feminist analysis of difficulties in current South African studies
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6292 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014716
- Description: Soon after the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Act of 1996, which legalised abortion for the first time, was passed. Since the introduction of the CTOP, a number of studies have been conducted on abortion in South Africa. Many have taken a health-related focus, but some research on young women and abortion has also been conducted, and it is to this (published) research that this article speaks. Two facts highlight the importance of this kind of research in the context of the abortion debate. Firstly, data from the Department of Health indicate that from 1997 to mid-2006, 12% of women undergoing terminations in the provinces in which age-related data are available were under the age of 18 (Department of Health: 2006). Secondly, the subsection of the Act allowing minors to request abortions without parental consent has caused some controversy. For example, the Christian Lawyers Association filed a suit in the Pretoria High Court in 2003, arguing that the above-mentioned subsection was unconstitutional. Their application was not successful. The research conducted on young women and abortion is etched against a background of change and contradiction in young people’s lives in South Africa. In addition to enabling legislation on termination of pregnancy, which is premised on the rights-based approach of the first democratically elected government of South Africa, various opportunities and challenges define the lives of young women. Specifically in relation to sexual and reproductive health, the Department of Health’s National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Initiative aims to make family planning and other services more accessible and acceptable to young women (Dickson-Tetteh et al., 2001). However,HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” programmes define sex as dangerous and individual young women as responsible for close monitoring of heterosexual spaces. The Child Support Grant, shown to enable functional mothering (Case et al., 2005), has sparked controversy in terms of providing perverse incentives for poor young women to conceive (a claim refuted by the research – Makiwane & Udjo, 2005). Young, black and poor women who conceive are, in particular, stigmatised and teenage pregnancy is in many respects racialised (Macleod & Durrheim, 2002). In this paper I highlight some of the problems in the research conducted on young women and abortion in South Africa since the legalisation of abortion. The specific aim of the paper is, through this analysis, to draw out feminist principles that should be considered in this kind of research. My argument draws on postcolonial feminisms that theorise the multiplicity of oppression along gender and, inter alia, race, class, age and location lines (Macleod, 2006). The paper is premised on the assumption that, in a field as fraught with gendered, race and class politics as abortion, regardless of the method used, researchers need to inspect the ideological implications of their work, and to be vigilant about their scholastic practices, and any claims legitimately made.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6292 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014716
- Description: Soon after the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy (CTOP) Act of 1996, which legalised abortion for the first time, was passed. Since the introduction of the CTOP, a number of studies have been conducted on abortion in South Africa. Many have taken a health-related focus, but some research on young women and abortion has also been conducted, and it is to this (published) research that this article speaks. Two facts highlight the importance of this kind of research in the context of the abortion debate. Firstly, data from the Department of Health indicate that from 1997 to mid-2006, 12% of women undergoing terminations in the provinces in which age-related data are available were under the age of 18 (Department of Health: 2006). Secondly, the subsection of the Act allowing minors to request abortions without parental consent has caused some controversy. For example, the Christian Lawyers Association filed a suit in the Pretoria High Court in 2003, arguing that the above-mentioned subsection was unconstitutional. Their application was not successful. The research conducted on young women and abortion is etched against a background of change and contradiction in young people’s lives in South Africa. In addition to enabling legislation on termination of pregnancy, which is premised on the rights-based approach of the first democratically elected government of South Africa, various opportunities and challenges define the lives of young women. Specifically in relation to sexual and reproductive health, the Department of Health’s National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Initiative aims to make family planning and other services more accessible and acceptable to young women (Dickson-Tetteh et al., 2001). However,HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” programmes define sex as dangerous and individual young women as responsible for close monitoring of heterosexual spaces. The Child Support Grant, shown to enable functional mothering (Case et al., 2005), has sparked controversy in terms of providing perverse incentives for poor young women to conceive (a claim refuted by the research – Makiwane & Udjo, 2005). Young, black and poor women who conceive are, in particular, stigmatised and teenage pregnancy is in many respects racialised (Macleod & Durrheim, 2002). In this paper I highlight some of the problems in the research conducted on young women and abortion in South Africa since the legalisation of abortion. The specific aim of the paper is, through this analysis, to draw out feminist principles that should be considered in this kind of research. My argument draws on postcolonial feminisms that theorise the multiplicity of oppression along gender and, inter alia, race, class, age and location lines (Macleod, 2006). The paper is premised on the assumption that, in a field as fraught with gendered, race and class politics as abortion, regardless of the method used, researchers need to inspect the ideological implications of their work, and to be vigilant about their scholastic practices, and any claims legitimately made.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
‘Who? what?’: an uninducted view of towards a new psychology of women from post-Apartheid South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6251 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007869 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353508092088
- Description: From the text: Towards a New Psychology of Women (TPNW) promises a new psychology of “women”. On the cover of the second edition, the Toronto Globe and Mail is cited as acclaiming the book as “nothing short of revolutionary” as it “set out to recognize, re-define and understand the day-to-day experience of women”. But when we take a closer look at these “women” we discover that they are in fact “white”, (for the most part) middle-class women living in heterosexual relationships in a liberal democracy. This kind of exclusionary inclusion, in which the use of the generic term “woman” disguises the normative assumptions made about the race, class, sexual orientation and location of women, replicates the phallocentrism evidenced in the normalising masculinist terms “mankind” or “Man”. By now, of course, these kinds of critiques of “white” Western feminism by African American writers (e.g. Collins, 1999) postcolonial feminists (e.g. Mohanty, 1991), African feminists (e.g. Ogundipe-Leslie, 1994; Mangena, 2003), and queer theorists (e.g. Jackson, 1999) are well known.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6251 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007869 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353508092088
- Description: From the text: Towards a New Psychology of Women (TPNW) promises a new psychology of “women”. On the cover of the second edition, the Toronto Globe and Mail is cited as acclaiming the book as “nothing short of revolutionary” as it “set out to recognize, re-define and understand the day-to-day experience of women”. But when we take a closer look at these “women” we discover that they are in fact “white”, (for the most part) middle-class women living in heterosexual relationships in a liberal democracy. This kind of exclusionary inclusion, in which the use of the generic term “woman” disguises the normative assumptions made about the race, class, sexual orientation and location of women, replicates the phallocentrism evidenced in the normalising masculinist terms “mankind” or “Man”. By now, of course, these kinds of critiques of “white” Western feminism by African American writers (e.g. Collins, 1999) postcolonial feminists (e.g. Mohanty, 1991), African feminists (e.g. Ogundipe-Leslie, 1994; Mangena, 2003), and queer theorists (e.g. Jackson, 1999) are well known.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
The risk of phallocentrism in masculinities studies: how a revision of the concept of patriarchy might help
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6216 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006268
- Description: In this article I critique South African work on masculinities through a fine grained reading of Morrell’s introductions to three texts. While this work appears, on first reading, to contribute to pro-feminist theorising, I argue that it inadvertently falls into a phallocentric trap. This is achieved in three ways: firstly, and most crudely, through conflating women and men into a singular, universal model that is in reality the masculine appearing as the universal; secondly, and more subtly, through concentrating almost exclusively on men and masculinities, thereby marginalising women (again); and thirdly, through constructing multiplicities of masculinities – this allows men to resist hegemonic masculinity, but never undo masculinity itself. In this way, the possibility of deconstructing the feminine/masculine binary recedes and the concept of patriarchy gets sidelined. I argue for a reinsertion of the notion of patriarchy into our study of gender, but also that the very notion of patriarchy needs revision in order to accommodate the multiple fissures that occur between men.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6216 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006268
- Description: In this article I critique South African work on masculinities through a fine grained reading of Morrell’s introductions to three texts. While this work appears, on first reading, to contribute to pro-feminist theorising, I argue that it inadvertently falls into a phallocentric trap. This is achieved in three ways: firstly, and most crudely, through conflating women and men into a singular, universal model that is in reality the masculine appearing as the universal; secondly, and more subtly, through concentrating almost exclusively on men and masculinities, thereby marginalising women (again); and thirdly, through constructing multiplicities of masculinities – this allows men to resist hegemonic masculinity, but never undo masculinity itself. In this way, the possibility of deconstructing the feminine/masculine binary recedes and the concept of patriarchy gets sidelined. I argue for a reinsertion of the notion of patriarchy into our study of gender, but also that the very notion of patriarchy needs revision in order to accommodate the multiple fissures that occur between men.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
Re-deploying Parker, post-colonially: review essay
- Macleod, Catriona I, Wilbraham, Lindy
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Wilbraham, Lindy
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6275 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008275
- Description: In this paper we review two of Ian Parker’s recent books: Critical discursive psychology and Qualitative psychology: Introducing radical research. Although the books address different audiences (academics versus students) and talk to different problematics (theory versus research), taken together they represent useful resources for those wishing to take a critical stance with regards to the standard fare of psychology, to use critical theory in understanding social and psychological phenomena, and to engage in progressive research. As such, both theory and research methods appear as “tools”, and we suggest reading Parker sideways, shifting his intellectual trajectory into directions that illuminate colonial and post-colonial issues through empirical/textual application to real South African contexts. By way of illustration, we offer a post-colonial reading of Parker’s work on post-modernism. Concluding comments on tactics for a “post-colonial analysis of discourses” are offered.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Wilbraham, Lindy
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6275 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008275
- Description: In this paper we review two of Ian Parker’s recent books: Critical discursive psychology and Qualitative psychology: Introducing radical research. Although the books address different audiences (academics versus students) and talk to different problematics (theory versus research), taken together they represent useful resources for those wishing to take a critical stance with regards to the standard fare of psychology, to use critical theory in understanding social and psychological phenomena, and to engage in progressive research. As such, both theory and research methods appear as “tools”, and we suggest reading Parker sideways, shifting his intellectual trajectory into directions that illuminate colonial and post-colonial issues through empirical/textual application to real South African contexts. By way of illustration, we offer a post-colonial reading of Parker’s work on post-modernism. Concluding comments on tactics for a “post-colonial analysis of discourses” are offered.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
The management of risk: adolescent sexual and reproductive health in South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6302 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015958
- Description: Scientific discourse allows for the calculation of negative outcomes attendant on conception and birth during adolescence, thereby producing a discourse of risk. The management of risk allows for the deployment of governmental apparatuses of security. Security, as outlined by Foucault, is a specific principle of political method and practice aimed at defending and securing a national population. In this paper I analyse how techniques of security are deployed in the interactions between health service providers and young women seeking contraceptive and reproductive assistance at a regional hospital in South Africa, and how racialised and gendered politics are strategically deployed within these techniques. Security combines with various governmental techniques to produce its effects. The techniques used in this instance include pastoral care, liberal humanism, the incitement to governmental self-formation, and, in the last instance, sovereign power.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6302 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015958
- Description: Scientific discourse allows for the calculation of negative outcomes attendant on conception and birth during adolescence, thereby producing a discourse of risk. The management of risk allows for the deployment of governmental apparatuses of security. Security, as outlined by Foucault, is a specific principle of political method and practice aimed at defending and securing a national population. In this paper I analyse how techniques of security are deployed in the interactions between health service providers and young women seeking contraceptive and reproductive assistance at a regional hospital in South Africa, and how racialised and gendered politics are strategically deployed within these techniques. Security combines with various governmental techniques to produce its effects. The techniques used in this instance include pastoral care, liberal humanism, the incitement to governmental self-formation, and, in the last instance, sovereign power.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Psycho-medical expertise: the governmental interstice in the private/public, individual/society divide
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: Book chapter
- Identifier: vital:6297 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014782 , https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=442
- Description: The continued dominance of the individual/society and private/public dualisms in psychological theory and practice has been bemoaned by critical psychologists. What we need to understand, however, is that these dualisms are essential to maintaining psycho-medical expertise in its present position of authority in the power/knowledge nexus of the human condition. Drawing on Derridean and Foucauldian theory, this chapter explicates how psychomedical expertise re-produces these dualisms while at the same time providing the interstice between the individual and the social, the private and the public required for governmental concerns to be installed in the everyday lives of people. The argument is illustrated by examples of expertise surrounding teenage pregnancy. Issues of governmental security translate into the incentive to manage risk at the individual level. For this to occur the individual needs to be rendered as an object of government. Psycho-medical experts achieve this by providing the language needed to describe her/him (in intricate detail), the grids of visibility to bring him/her into the plane of sight, and calibrations of normalisation. This object, finally, is converted into a subject of self-government who monitors and regulates him/herself and renders him/herself true to him/herself in confession to the expert. Psychomedical expertise is as much part of political power as are the formal bureaucratic instruments of government. However, this power is simultaneously masked and made possible by the individual/society and private/public divides. , Full text available on publisher site: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=442
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: Book chapter
- Identifier: vital:6297 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014782 , https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=442
- Description: The continued dominance of the individual/society and private/public dualisms in psychological theory and practice has been bemoaned by critical psychologists. What we need to understand, however, is that these dualisms are essential to maintaining psycho-medical expertise in its present position of authority in the power/knowledge nexus of the human condition. Drawing on Derridean and Foucauldian theory, this chapter explicates how psychomedical expertise re-produces these dualisms while at the same time providing the interstice between the individual and the social, the private and the public required for governmental concerns to be installed in the everyday lives of people. The argument is illustrated by examples of expertise surrounding teenage pregnancy. Issues of governmental security translate into the incentive to manage risk at the individual level. For this to occur the individual needs to be rendered as an object of government. Psycho-medical experts achieve this by providing the language needed to describe her/him (in intricate detail), the grids of visibility to bring him/her into the plane of sight, and calibrations of normalisation. This object, finally, is converted into a subject of self-government who monitors and regulates him/herself and renders him/herself true to him/herself in confession to the expert. Psychomedical expertise is as much part of political power as are the formal bureaucratic instruments of government. However, this power is simultaneously masked and made possible by the individual/society and private/public divides. , Full text available on publisher site: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=442
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2004
Psycho-medical discourse in South African research on teenage pregnancy
- Macleod, Catriona I, Durrheim, Kevin
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6257 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007875
- Description: Catriona Macleod and Kevin Durrheim apply a Foucauldian analysis to the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6257 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007875
- Description: Catriona Macleod and Kevin Durrheim apply a Foucauldian analysis to the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
Teenage pregnancy and the construction of adolescence : scientific literature in South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6258 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007876 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0907568203104003
- Description: The depiction of teenage pregnancy as a social problem relies on the assumption of adolescence as a separable stage of development. Utilising a Derridian framework, I analyse how the dominant construction of adolescence as a transitional stage: (1) acts as an attempt to decide the undecidable (viz. the adolescent who is neither child nor adult, but simultaneously both) – an attempt which collapses in the face of teenage pregnancy; (2) relies on the ideal adult as the endpoint of development, and (3) has effects in terms of gendered and expert/parent/adolescent power relations.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6258 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007876 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0907568203104003
- Description: The depiction of teenage pregnancy as a social problem relies on the assumption of adolescence as a separable stage of development. Utilising a Derridian framework, I analyse how the dominant construction of adolescence as a transitional stage: (1) acts as an attempt to decide the undecidable (viz. the adolescent who is neither child nor adult, but simultaneously both) – an attempt which collapses in the face of teenage pregnancy; (2) relies on the ideal adult as the endpoint of development, and (3) has effects in terms of gendered and expert/parent/adolescent power relations.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
The conjugalisation of reproduction in South African teenage pregnancy literature
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6266 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008265 , https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0992-3525
- Description: The “conjugalisation of reproduction”, in which childbearing is legitimated only within a marital alliance, underlies some of the pathologisation of the single, female-headed household in the pre-democracy South African teenage pregnancy literature. I utilise a poststructural feminist framework that draws on elements of Derrida’s and Foucault’s work to analyse the conjugalisation of reproduction in South African research. The conjugalisation of reproduction relies on (1) the insidious “unwed” signifier which interpenetrates the term “teenage pregnancy”, allowing the scientific censure of non-marital adolescent re-production without the invocation of moralisation, and (2) the fixation of the husband-wife and parents-children axes of alliance as the main elements for the deployment of sexuality and reproduction in the form of the family. Pregnant teenagers are, in Derridean terms, undecidables: they are neither children (owing to their reproductive status) nor adults (owing to their age), but simultaneously both. Marriage is the authority that decides them, allowing them to join the ranks of adult reproductive subjects.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6266 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008265 , https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0992-3525
- Description: The “conjugalisation of reproduction”, in which childbearing is legitimated only within a marital alliance, underlies some of the pathologisation of the single, female-headed household in the pre-democracy South African teenage pregnancy literature. I utilise a poststructural feminist framework that draws on elements of Derrida’s and Foucault’s work to analyse the conjugalisation of reproduction in South African research. The conjugalisation of reproduction relies on (1) the insidious “unwed” signifier which interpenetrates the term “teenage pregnancy”, allowing the scientific censure of non-marital adolescent re-production without the invocation of moralisation, and (2) the fixation of the husband-wife and parents-children axes of alliance as the main elements for the deployment of sexuality and reproduction in the form of the family. Pregnant teenagers are, in Derridean terms, undecidables: they are neither children (owing to their reproductive status) nor adults (owing to their age), but simultaneously both. Marriage is the authority that decides them, allowing them to join the ranks of adult reproductive subjects.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
Waging war : discourses of HIV/AIDS in South African media
- Connelly, Mark, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Connelly, Mark , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6255 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007873
- Description: This paper explores a discourse of war against HIV/AIDS evident in the Daily Dispatch, a South African daily newspaper, from 1985 to 2000, and discusses the implications of this in terms of the way in which HIV/AIDS is constructed. The discursive framework of the war depends, fundamentally, on the personification of HIV/AIDS, in which agency is accorded to the virus, and which allows for its construction as the enemy. The war discourse positions different groups of subjects (the diseased body, the commanders, the experts, the ordinary citizens) in relations of power. The diseased body, which is the point of transmission, the polluter or infector, is cast as the 'Other', as a dark and threatening force. This takes on racialised overtones. The government takes on the role of commander, directing the war through policy and intervention strategies. Opposition to government is couched in a struggle discourse that dove-tails with the overall framework of war. Medical and scientific understandings pre-dominate in the investigative practices and expert commentary on the war, with alternative voices (such as those of people living with HIV/AIDS) being silenced. The ordinary citizen is incited to take on prevention and caring roles with a strong gendered overlay.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: Connelly, Mark , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6255 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007873
- Description: This paper explores a discourse of war against HIV/AIDS evident in the Daily Dispatch, a South African daily newspaper, from 1985 to 2000, and discusses the implications of this in terms of the way in which HIV/AIDS is constructed. The discursive framework of the war depends, fundamentally, on the personification of HIV/AIDS, in which agency is accorded to the virus, and which allows for its construction as the enemy. The war discourse positions different groups of subjects (the diseased body, the commanders, the experts, the ordinary citizens) in relations of power. The diseased body, which is the point of transmission, the polluter or infector, is cast as the 'Other', as a dark and threatening force. This takes on racialised overtones. The government takes on the role of commander, directing the war through policy and intervention strategies. Opposition to government is couched in a struggle discourse that dove-tails with the overall framework of war. Medical and scientific understandings pre-dominate in the investigative practices and expert commentary on the war, with alternative voices (such as those of people living with HIV/AIDS) being silenced. The ordinary citizen is incited to take on prevention and caring roles with a strong gendered overlay.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
Deconstructive discourse analysis: extending the methodological conversation
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6259 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007877 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124630203200103
- Description: Discourse analysis is increasingly becoming a methodology of preference amongst qualitative researchers. There is a danger, however, of it being viewed as a bounded and uncontested domain of research practice. As discourse analysis is inextricably linked with theoretical issues, it is a dynamic practice that is constantly in a process of revision. In this paper I reflect on some of the conceptualisations undergirding the notion of discourse – conceptualisations that have important implications in terms of how the practice of discourse analysis proceeds. I highlight some of the dualisms that may plague discourse analysis, and offer some solutions to these. Finally, I outline the deconstructive discourse analysis that I utilised in my doctoral work. The purpose of the latter is not to provide a recipe of methodology, but to illustrate how elements of various theorists’ work (in this case Foucault, Derrida and Parker) may be profitably drawn together to perform specific discourse analytic work. , Rhodes University
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6259 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007877 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124630203200103
- Description: Discourse analysis is increasingly becoming a methodology of preference amongst qualitative researchers. There is a danger, however, of it being viewed as a bounded and uncontested domain of research practice. As discourse analysis is inextricably linked with theoretical issues, it is a dynamic practice that is constantly in a process of revision. In this paper I reflect on some of the conceptualisations undergirding the notion of discourse – conceptualisations that have important implications in terms of how the practice of discourse analysis proceeds. I highlight some of the dualisms that may plague discourse analysis, and offer some solutions to these. Finally, I outline the deconstructive discourse analysis that I utilised in my doctoral work. The purpose of the latter is not to provide a recipe of methodology, but to illustrate how elements of various theorists’ work (in this case Foucault, Derrida and Parker) may be profitably drawn together to perform specific discourse analytic work. , Rhodes University
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Economic security and the social science literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6253 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007871
- Description: Feminists have argued that the association made between teenage childbearing and long-term lower socioeconomic status hides a multitude of socially constructed inequalities. I extend this position by analysing how the association is linked in the South African literature on teenage pregnancy to economic security. I utilise Foucault’s conceptualization of the method of security. Security refers to institutions and practices that defend and maintain a national population as well as secure the economic, demographic, and social processes of that population. I analyse how the traits of the method of security are deployed with regard to teenage pregnancy; how reproductive adolescents are viewed as disrupting the production of the economic self and fracturing population control, thereby threatening economic security; and how the invocation of economic security allows for the legitimation of various regulatory practices. , Rhodes University
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6253 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007871
- Description: Feminists have argued that the association made between teenage childbearing and long-term lower socioeconomic status hides a multitude of socially constructed inequalities. I extend this position by analysing how the association is linked in the South African literature on teenage pregnancy to economic security. I utilise Foucault’s conceptualization of the method of security. Security refers to institutions and practices that defend and maintain a national population as well as secure the economic, demographic, and social processes of that population. I analyse how the traits of the method of security are deployed with regard to teenage pregnancy; how reproductive adolescents are viewed as disrupting the production of the economic self and fracturing population control, thereby threatening economic security; and how the invocation of economic security allows for the legitimation of various regulatory practices. , Rhodes University
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Foucauldian feminism: the implications of governmentality
- Macleod, Catriona I, Durrheim, Kevin
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6261 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007879
- Description: Foucauldian discourse has been received with varying degrees of enthusiasm within feminist circles. Some authors (e.g. Balbus, 1988; Di Leonardo, 1991; Hartsock, 1990) see a Foucauldian stance as incompatible with feminist theory, while others (e.g. Grimshaw, 1993; Hoy, 1988; McNay, 1992; Sawicki, 1988) advocate a positive relationship between Foucauldian discourse and feminism. And then there are those theorists (e.g. Burman, 1990) who stand between these two positions, stating that while Foucault offers useful insights and methods to feminists, it can also be dangerous.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6261 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007879
- Description: Foucauldian discourse has been received with varying degrees of enthusiasm within feminist circles. Some authors (e.g. Balbus, 1988; Di Leonardo, 1991; Hartsock, 1990) see a Foucauldian stance as incompatible with feminist theory, while others (e.g. Grimshaw, 1993; Hoy, 1988; McNay, 1992; Sawicki, 1988) advocate a positive relationship between Foucauldian discourse and feminism. And then there are those theorists (e.g. Burman, 1990) who stand between these two positions, stating that while Foucault offers useful insights and methods to feminists, it can also be dangerous.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Racializing teenage pregnancy : ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in the South African scientific literature
- Macleod, Catriona I, Durrheim, Kevin
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6260 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007878
- Description: The signifiers, ‘race’, ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’ are utilized in the teenage pregnancy literature (1) to highlight ‘differences’ in adolescent sexual and reproductive behaviour and (2) as explanatory tools. When ‘white’ teenagers are the focus of research, psychological explanations are usually invoked, while for ‘black’ teenagers, explanations are socio-cultural in nature. In this paper, we explore how, through a process of racialization, the psycho-medical literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa contributes to the entrenchment of ‘race’, ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ as fixed, ‘natural’ signifiers. We utilize Derrida’s notion of différance, together with Phoenix and Woollett’s adaptation – ‘normalized absence/pathologized presence’ – to indicate how ‘black’ people are cast as the Other, the pathologized presence which relies on the normalized absent trace, ‘whiteness’, for definition. We analyse how the notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ are deployed to sanitize or disguise the underlying racializing project. ‘Black’ is exoticized and rendered strange and thus open to scrutiny, monitoring and intervention. ‘Culture’ and ‘tradition’ appeal to the myth of origin, thus providing pseudo-historical explanations which essentialize and naturalize racialized collectivities. , Rhodes University
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Racializing teenage pregnancy : ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in the South African scientific literature
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6260 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007878
- Description: The signifiers, ‘race’, ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’ are utilized in the teenage pregnancy literature (1) to highlight ‘differences’ in adolescent sexual and reproductive behaviour and (2) as explanatory tools. When ‘white’ teenagers are the focus of research, psychological explanations are usually invoked, while for ‘black’ teenagers, explanations are socio-cultural in nature. In this paper, we explore how, through a process of racialization, the psycho-medical literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa contributes to the entrenchment of ‘race’, ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ as fixed, ‘natural’ signifiers. We utilize Derrida’s notion of différance, together with Phoenix and Woollett’s adaptation – ‘normalized absence/pathologized presence’ – to indicate how ‘black’ people are cast as the Other, the pathologized presence which relies on the normalized absent trace, ‘whiteness’, for definition. We analyse how the notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ are deployed to sanitize or disguise the underlying racializing project. ‘Black’ is exoticized and rendered strange and thus open to scrutiny, monitoring and intervention. ‘Culture’ and ‘tradition’ appeal to the myth of origin, thus providing pseudo-historical explanations which essentialize and naturalize racialized collectivities. , Rhodes University
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
The new moral order and racism in South Africa post 11 September 2001
- Painter, D, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Painter, D , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6215 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006266
- Description: In this paper we argue that globalisation imposes on ‘developing’ countries more than an economic order; they find themselves with the moral imperative to align themselves with the West against its Others, increasingly portrayed as Islamic fundamentalists. The 11 September terror attacks in the United States of America have pushed this process to a new level, with the attacks represented as no less than a barbaric attack on ‘civilisation’. Through an analysis of a newspaper article reporting on the disciplining of a Muslim woman in for wearing an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt to work in South Africa, we indicate how this moral representation of the 11 September events and the Islamic Other have unique local effects. In South Africa it creates yet more possibilities for racialising practices to continue without being framed in explicitly racial terms. We further reflect on the implications of these events, and the complex interplay of the global and the local they demonstrate, for critical psychology in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Painter, D , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6215 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006266
- Description: In this paper we argue that globalisation imposes on ‘developing’ countries more than an economic order; they find themselves with the moral imperative to align themselves with the West against its Others, increasingly portrayed as Islamic fundamentalists. The 11 September terror attacks in the United States of America have pushed this process to a new level, with the attacks represented as no less than a barbaric attack on ‘civilisation’. Through an analysis of a newspaper article reporting on the disciplining of a Muslim woman in for wearing an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt to work in South Africa, we indicate how this moral representation of the 11 September events and the Islamic Other have unique local effects. In South Africa it creates yet more possibilities for racialising practices to continue without being framed in explicitly racial terms. We further reflect on the implications of these events, and the complex interplay of the global and the local they demonstrate, for critical psychology in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Teenage motherhood and the regulation of mothering in the scientific literature: the South African example
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6256 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007874
- Description: The mainstream literature on teenage pregnancy highlights teenagers' inadequate mothering as an area of disquiet. `Revisionists', such as feminist critics, point out that a confluence of negative social factors is implicated in teenagers' mothering abilities. Whether arguing that teenagers make bad mothers or defending them against this, the literature relies on the `invention of "good" mothering'. In this article I highlight the taken-for-granted assumptions concerning mothering (mothering as an essentialized dyad; mothering as a skill; motherhood as a pathway to adulthood; fathering as the absent trace) appearing in the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa. I indicate how these assumptions are implicated in the regulation of mothering through the positioning of the teenage mother as the pathologized other, the splitting of the public from the private, domestic space of mothering, and the legitimation of the professionalization of mothering. I explore the gendered implications of the representations of mothering in this literature.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6256 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007874
- Description: The mainstream literature on teenage pregnancy highlights teenagers' inadequate mothering as an area of disquiet. `Revisionists', such as feminist critics, point out that a confluence of negative social factors is implicated in teenagers' mothering abilities. Whether arguing that teenagers make bad mothers or defending them against this, the literature relies on the `invention of "good" mothering'. In this article I highlight the taken-for-granted assumptions concerning mothering (mothering as an essentialized dyad; mothering as a skill; motherhood as a pathway to adulthood; fathering as the absent trace) appearing in the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa. I indicate how these assumptions are implicated in the regulation of mothering through the positioning of the teenage mother as the pathologized other, the splitting of the public from the private, domestic space of mothering, and the legitimation of the professionalization of mothering. I explore the gendered implications of the representations of mothering in this literature.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001