Sistering and sexual socialisation: a discursive study of Xhosa women’s sisterly interactions concerning sex and reproduction
- Ndabula, Yanela, Macleod, Catriona I, Young, Lisa S
- Authors: Ndabula, Yanela , Macleod, Catriona I , Young, Lisa S
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/160301 , vital:40432 , DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2020.1785551
- Description: Considerable research has been devoted to understanding and promoting parent-child sexual socialisation. Less attention has been paid to experiences of sibling interactions concerning sex. Drawing on discursive psychology, this study explores how women report interacting about sex and reproduction in their sisterly relationships. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted, using Free Association Narrative Interview technique, with five Black isiXhosa-speaking, middle-aged and working class women in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Ndabula, Yanela , Macleod, Catriona I , Young, Lisa S
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/160301 , vital:40432 , DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2020.1785551
- Description: Considerable research has been devoted to understanding and promoting parent-child sexual socialisation. Less attention has been paid to experiences of sibling interactions concerning sex. Drawing on discursive psychology, this study explores how women report interacting about sex and reproduction in their sisterly relationships. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted, using Free Association Narrative Interview technique, with five Black isiXhosa-speaking, middle-aged and working class women in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Multi-layered risk management in under-resourced antenatal clinics
- Feltham-King, Tracey, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/298561 , vital:57716 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2019.1697432"
- Description: In this article we contribute to critical risk approaches to studying pregnancy and childbirth in the global South. Following Sarah Rudrum’s work, our approach focusses on sociocultural inequalities amid the regulation of individuals. We draw on data from our Foucauldian-inspired ethnography of two antenatal clinics in an under-resourced area of South Africa to illustrate how multi-layered risk management operates in these spaces. These data were collected over a period of six months in the form of semi-structured interviews, observations of consultations and waiting room interactions, documents used in the clinic, and posters appearing on the clinic walls. Our findings show how a scientific-bureaucratic approach to pregnancy risk management, as encoded in international, national and institutional guidelines, is well known, highly visible, and practised through surveillance and reporting mechanisms in clinics. This approach incites healthcare practitioners to achieve particular performance standards and to monitor their professional agency. Managing pregnancy risk thus entails regulating the healthcare practitioners themselves. In implementing approved pregnancy risk management strategies in an over-subscribed and under-resourced public healthcare setting, however, healthcare practitioners face potential risk to their professional reputation and integrity. In managing this risk, they resist the scientific-bureaucratic approach through: depicting themselves as victims of unfair institutional arrangements or unreasonable patients; instituting street-level bureaucracy to control access to the clinics; and controlling patients’ actions in authoritarian ways. Our research shows that without engagement with the on-the-ground realities of the antenatal clinic in resource-poor environments, a scientific-bureaucratic approach to pregnancy risk management is inevitably limited in its effectiveness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Feltham-King, Tracey , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/298561 , vital:57716 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2019.1697432"
- Description: In this article we contribute to critical risk approaches to studying pregnancy and childbirth in the global South. Following Sarah Rudrum’s work, our approach focusses on sociocultural inequalities amid the regulation of individuals. We draw on data from our Foucauldian-inspired ethnography of two antenatal clinics in an under-resourced area of South Africa to illustrate how multi-layered risk management operates in these spaces. These data were collected over a period of six months in the form of semi-structured interviews, observations of consultations and waiting room interactions, documents used in the clinic, and posters appearing on the clinic walls. Our findings show how a scientific-bureaucratic approach to pregnancy risk management, as encoded in international, national and institutional guidelines, is well known, highly visible, and practised through surveillance and reporting mechanisms in clinics. This approach incites healthcare practitioners to achieve particular performance standards and to monitor their professional agency. Managing pregnancy risk thus entails regulating the healthcare practitioners themselves. In implementing approved pregnancy risk management strategies in an over-subscribed and under-resourced public healthcare setting, however, healthcare practitioners face potential risk to their professional reputation and integrity. In managing this risk, they resist the scientific-bureaucratic approach through: depicting themselves as victims of unfair institutional arrangements or unreasonable patients; instituting street-level bureaucracy to control access to the clinics; and controlling patients’ actions in authoritarian ways. Our research shows that without engagement with the on-the-ground realities of the antenatal clinic in resource-poor environments, a scientific-bureaucratic approach to pregnancy risk management is inevitably limited in its effectiveness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Young pregnant women and public health
- Macleod, Catriona I, Feltham-King, Tracey
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/298572 , vital:57717 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2019.1573313"
- Description: In this paper, we outline a critical reparative justice/care approach to adolescent reproductive health as an alternative to the standard public health response to ‘teenage pregnancy’. Joining an increasing body of critical scholarship that calls for nuance in understanding reproduction amongst young people, we draw, in this paper, on data generated from an ethnographic study conducted in antenatal care units in an Eastern Cape township in South Africa. To illustrate the approach we propose, we home in on five case studies that highlight the variability of young women’s lives, the multiple injustices they experience, and the agency they demonstrate in negotiating their way through pregnancy and birth. Injustices evident in these cases centre on sexual violence, rape myths, education system failures, health system failures, shaming and stigmatising practices, socio-economic precariousness, absent male partners, and denial of services. We outline how the reparative justice approach that highlights repair and support for social and health injustices at the individual and collective level as well as at the material and symbolic level may be taken up to ensure reproductive justice for young pregnant women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Feltham-King, Tracey
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/298572 , vital:57717 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2019.1573313"
- Description: In this paper, we outline a critical reparative justice/care approach to adolescent reproductive health as an alternative to the standard public health response to ‘teenage pregnancy’. Joining an increasing body of critical scholarship that calls for nuance in understanding reproduction amongst young people, we draw, in this paper, on data generated from an ethnographic study conducted in antenatal care units in an Eastern Cape township in South Africa. To illustrate the approach we propose, we home in on five case studies that highlight the variability of young women’s lives, the multiple injustices they experience, and the agency they demonstrate in negotiating their way through pregnancy and birth. Injustices evident in these cases centre on sexual violence, rape myths, education system failures, health system failures, shaming and stigmatising practices, socio-economic precariousness, absent male partners, and denial of services. We outline how the reparative justice approach that highlights repair and support for social and health injustices at the individual and collective level as well as at the material and symbolic level may be taken up to ensure reproductive justice for young pregnant women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Abortion in legal, social, and healthcare contexts
- Marecek, Jeanne, Macleod, Catriona I, Hoggart, Lesley
- Authors: Marecek, Jeanne , Macleod, Catriona I , Hoggart, Lesley
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68478 , vital:29262 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353516689521
- Description: Publisher version , From Introduction: The subject of abortion is both timely and of high relevance to feminists. In the past few months, women’s access to abortion has been contested in various parts of the world. In many countries in Latin America, the Zika outbreak raised the demand for abortions among pregnant women who had contracted (or feared contracting) the virus, with its risk of severe foetal abnormalities. In Poland, mass demonstrations by women succeeded in turning back proposed legislation prohibiting abortions. The outcome of the U.S. elections in late 2016 raised grave concerns about the future of American women’s access to abortion, which was already limited by stringent regulations and funding restrictions. We chose the title ‘‘Abortion in Context’’ to signal that we sought to publish work that moved beyond examining abortion as a ‘‘stress experience’’ encountered by individual women or as a possible precursor of mental illness. Our goal was to assemble a set of articles that would prompt readers to think critically about practices and discourses surrounding abortion. We further hoped to include work that would address the meanings and practices of abortion in the global South and among minoritized groups in the global North. We were pleased by the enthusiastic response to our Call for Papers. We note that Eklund and Purewal (2017, this issue) address abortion in China and India. Thoradeniya’s (2017, this issue) review of Abortion in Asia (Whittaker, 2010) provides a glimpse of the complex and varied practices, policies, and experiences of abortion in parts of South and Southeast Asia. Chiweshe, Mavuso, and Macleod (whose work will appear in Part 2 of the Special Issue) take up abortion in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Le Grice and Braun (whose work will also appear in Part 2), examine Maori perspectives on abortion. In this Part 1 of the Special Issue, we present work that locates abortion practices and policies in legal, social, and healthcare contexts. Women’s efforts to exercise agency with regard to bodily integrity in the context of pregnancy are shaped most obviously by the legal regulations in the jurisdictions where they live, but they are also shaped by social and cultural issues, biotechnological advances, and healthcare systems. The articles offer detailed examinations of some of these complex contextual framings of abortion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Marecek, Jeanne , Macleod, Catriona I , Hoggart, Lesley
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68478 , vital:29262 , https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353516689521
- Description: Publisher version , From Introduction: The subject of abortion is both timely and of high relevance to feminists. In the past few months, women’s access to abortion has been contested in various parts of the world. In many countries in Latin America, the Zika outbreak raised the demand for abortions among pregnant women who had contracted (or feared contracting) the virus, with its risk of severe foetal abnormalities. In Poland, mass demonstrations by women succeeded in turning back proposed legislation prohibiting abortions. The outcome of the U.S. elections in late 2016 raised grave concerns about the future of American women’s access to abortion, which was already limited by stringent regulations and funding restrictions. We chose the title ‘‘Abortion in Context’’ to signal that we sought to publish work that moved beyond examining abortion as a ‘‘stress experience’’ encountered by individual women or as a possible precursor of mental illness. Our goal was to assemble a set of articles that would prompt readers to think critically about practices and discourses surrounding abortion. We further hoped to include work that would address the meanings and practices of abortion in the global South and among minoritized groups in the global North. We were pleased by the enthusiastic response to our Call for Papers. We note that Eklund and Purewal (2017, this issue) address abortion in China and India. Thoradeniya’s (2017, this issue) review of Abortion in Asia (Whittaker, 2010) provides a glimpse of the complex and varied practices, policies, and experiences of abortion in parts of South and Southeast Asia. Chiweshe, Mavuso, and Macleod (whose work will appear in Part 2 of the Special Issue) take up abortion in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Le Grice and Braun (whose work will also appear in Part 2), examine Maori perspectives on abortion. In this Part 1 of the Special Issue, we present work that locates abortion practices and policies in legal, social, and healthcare contexts. Women’s efforts to exercise agency with regard to bodily integrity in the context of pregnancy are shaped most obviously by the legal regulations in the jurisdictions where they live, but they are also shaped by social and cultural issues, biotechnological advances, and healthcare systems. The articles offer detailed examinations of some of these complex contextual framings of abortion.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
"The man can use that power", "she got courage" and "inimba": discursive resources in counsellors' talk of intimate partner violence: implications for practice
- Fleischack, Annie, Macleod, Catriona I, Böhmke, Werner
- Authors: Fleischack, Annie , Macleod, Catriona I , Böhmke, Werner
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67498 , vital:29103 , http://dx.doi.org/10.15270/52-2-550
- Description: Publisher version , Given the high rate of intimate partner violence (IPV), understanding how counsellors talk about IPV and their interventions is important. The authors conducted narrative interviews with eight counsellors from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with IPV. Using narrative-discursive methodology, this qualitative study paid attention to the discursive resources that the participants drew upon. Two broad clusters of discursive resources and one contradictory (‘nurturing femininity’) discourse emerged. The first cluster engenders a sense of helplessness in the face of overwhelming power relations; the second enables the counsellors to foresee positive outcomes for their counselling. Implications for counselling include emphasising enabling discourses, highlighting multiplicities of gender, and wider-scale interventions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Fleischack, Annie , Macleod, Catriona I , Böhmke, Werner
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67498 , vital:29103 , http://dx.doi.org/10.15270/52-2-550
- Description: Publisher version , Given the high rate of intimate partner violence (IPV), understanding how counsellors talk about IPV and their interventions is important. The authors conducted narrative interviews with eight counsellors from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with IPV. Using narrative-discursive methodology, this qualitative study paid attention to the discursive resources that the participants drew upon. Two broad clusters of discursive resources and one contradictory (‘nurturing femininity’) discourse emerged. The first cluster engenders a sense of helplessness in the face of overwhelming power relations; the second enables the counsellors to foresee positive outcomes for their counselling. Implications for counselling include emphasising enabling discourses, highlighting multiplicities of gender, and wider-scale interventions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Public reproductive health and ‘unintended’ pregnancies: introducing the construct ‘supportability’
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6313 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019881 , https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Description: In this Perspectives paper, I outline the limitations of the concept of ‘intentionality’ in public reproductive health understandings of pregnancy. ‘Intentionality’, ‘plannedness’, ‘wantedness’ and ‘timing’ place individual cognitions, psychology and/or behaviors at the center of public health conceptualizations of pregnancies, thereby leaving the underlying social and structural dynamics under-examined. I propose a model that places ‘supportability’ at the center of thinking about pregnancies and that allows for an analysis of the intersection of individual cognitions, emotions and behavior with micro-level interactive spaces and macro-level issues. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6313 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019881 , https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Description: In this Perspectives paper, I outline the limitations of the concept of ‘intentionality’ in public reproductive health understandings of pregnancy. ‘Intentionality’, ‘plannedness’, ‘wantedness’ and ‘timing’ place individual cognitions, psychology and/or behaviors at the center of public health conceptualizations of pregnancies, thereby leaving the underlying social and structural dynamics under-examined. I propose a model that places ‘supportability’ at the center of thinking about pregnancies and that allows for an analysis of the intersection of individual cognitions, emotions and behavior with micro-level interactive spaces and macro-level issues. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
The intersection of culture and gender in constructions of ukuzila’ (spousal mourning) among AmaXhosa in the Eastern Cape:
- Ngqangweni, Hlonelwa, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Ngqangweni, Hlonelwa , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143615 , vital:38267 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Mourning is a universal and culturally specific practice following the death of a significant other. The Xhosa equivalent of the mourning process is ukuzila. Very little has been written on the subject of ukuzila in spite of the detrimental effects of the practice on the widows’ health and safety, as well as the discriminatory nature of the practice. This paper presents the findings of a discourse analytic qualitative study conducted among isiXhosa speaking men and women in South Africa. The study revealed ukuzila as a practice put in place to show respect to the deceased. However, the showing of respect revealed a historically gendered cultural practice, imbued with power relations and centred on ‘visibility’. In light of this finding, the authors propose further research which includes exploring people’s willingness to change to a non-gendered practice of ukuzila, and alternate expressions of ukuzila that suit women rather than ‘culture’ and society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Ngqangweni, Hlonelwa , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143615 , vital:38267 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Mourning is a universal and culturally specific practice following the death of a significant other. The Xhosa equivalent of the mourning process is ukuzila. Very little has been written on the subject of ukuzila in spite of the detrimental effects of the practice on the widows’ health and safety, as well as the discriminatory nature of the practice. This paper presents the findings of a discourse analytic qualitative study conducted among isiXhosa speaking men and women in South Africa. The study revealed ukuzila as a practice put in place to show respect to the deceased. However, the showing of respect revealed a historically gendered cultural practice, imbued with power relations and centred on ‘visibility’. In light of this finding, the authors propose further research which includes exploring people’s willingness to change to a non-gendered practice of ukuzila, and alternate expressions of ukuzila that suit women rather than ‘culture’ and society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
‘… a huge monster that should be feared and not done’: lessons learned in sexuality education classes in South Africa
- Shefer, Tamara, Kruger, Lou-Marie, Macleod, Catriona I, Baxen, Jean, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Kruger, Lou-Marie , Macleod, Catriona I , Baxen, Jean , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020933 , http://www.mrc.ac.za/crime/aspj/2015/AhugeMonster.pdf
- Description: Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductive health, gender and sexual norms and relations. Yet, research has illustrated that such work may not only be failing to impact on more equitable sexual practices between young men and women, but may also serve to reproduce the very discourses and practices that the work aims to challenge. Cultures of violence in youth sexuality are closely connected to prevailing gender norms and practices which, for example, render women as passive victims who are incapable of exercising sexual agency and men as inherently sexually predatory. This paper analyses the talk of Grade 10 learners in nine diverse schools in two South African provinces, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, to highlight what ‘lessons’ these young people seem to be learning about sexuality in Life Orientation classes. We find that these lessons foreground cautionary, negative and punitive messages, which reinforce, rather than challenge, normative gender roles. ‘Scare’ messages of danger, damage and disease give rise to presumptions of gendered responsibility for risk and the requirement of female restraint in the face of the assertion of masculine desire and predation. We conclude that the role which sexuality education could play in enabling young women in particular to more successfully negotiate their sexual relationships to serve their own needs, reproductive health and safety, is undermined by regulatory messages directed at controlling young people, and young women in particular – and that instead, young people’s sexual agency has to be acknowledged in any processes of change aimed at gender equality, anti-violence, health and well-being.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Kruger, Lou-Marie , Macleod, Catriona I , Baxen, Jean , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020933 , http://www.mrc.ac.za/crime/aspj/2015/AhugeMonster.pdf
- Description: Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductive health, gender and sexual norms and relations. Yet, research has illustrated that such work may not only be failing to impact on more equitable sexual practices between young men and women, but may also serve to reproduce the very discourses and practices that the work aims to challenge. Cultures of violence in youth sexuality are closely connected to prevailing gender norms and practices which, for example, render women as passive victims who are incapable of exercising sexual agency and men as inherently sexually predatory. This paper analyses the talk of Grade 10 learners in nine diverse schools in two South African provinces, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, to highlight what ‘lessons’ these young people seem to be learning about sexuality in Life Orientation classes. We find that these lessons foreground cautionary, negative and punitive messages, which reinforce, rather than challenge, normative gender roles. ‘Scare’ messages of danger, damage and disease give rise to presumptions of gendered responsibility for risk and the requirement of female restraint in the face of the assertion of masculine desire and predation. We conclude that the role which sexuality education could play in enabling young women in particular to more successfully negotiate their sexual relationships to serve their own needs, reproductive health and safety, is undermined by regulatory messages directed at controlling young people, and young women in particular – and that instead, young people’s sexual agency has to be acknowledged in any processes of change aimed at gender equality, anti-violence, health and well-being.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Women’s micro-narratives of the process of abortion decision-making: justifying the decision to have an abortion
- Mavuso, Jabulile, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Mavuso, Jabulile , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143893 , vital:38292 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: What is missing from abortion research is research that explores women’s narratives of the processes of abortion decision-making in a way that acknowledges the constraints placed on ‘choice’. This study sought to explore, using Foucauldian feminist post-structuralism and a narrative-discursive approach, women’s micro-narratives of the abortion decision-making process. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a total of 25 participants from three abortion facilities in the Eastern Cape. Participants were unmarried ‘Black’ women between the ages of 19 and 35, and were mostly unemployed. Narrative interviews were done with the women. Analysis revealed an over-arching narrative in which women described the abortion decision as something that they were ‘forced’ into by their circumstances. To construct this narrative, women justified the decision to have an abortion by drawing on discourses that normalise certain practices located within the husband-wife and parent-child axes and make the pregnancy a problematic, unsupported and unsupportable one. Gendered and generational power relations reinforced this and contributed to the obstruction of reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Mavuso, Jabulile , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143893 , vital:38292 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: What is missing from abortion research is research that explores women’s narratives of the processes of abortion decision-making in a way that acknowledges the constraints placed on ‘choice’. This study sought to explore, using Foucauldian feminist post-structuralism and a narrative-discursive approach, women’s micro-narratives of the abortion decision-making process. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a total of 25 participants from three abortion facilities in the Eastern Cape. Participants were unmarried ‘Black’ women between the ages of 19 and 35, and were mostly unemployed. Narrative interviews were done with the women. Analysis revealed an over-arching narrative in which women described the abortion decision as something that they were ‘forced’ into by their circumstances. To construct this narrative, women justified the decision to have an abortion by drawing on discourses that normalise certain practices located within the husband-wife and parent-child axes and make the pregnancy a problematic, unsupported and unsupportable one. Gendered and generational power relations reinforced this and contributed to the obstruction of reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision making in Zimbabwe:
- Chiweshe, Malvern T, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143882 , vital:38291 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The available research on abortion-decision-making tends to focus on the ‘factors’ or ‘influences’ that are seen to affect abortion decision-making. This approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpin the ‘process’ of abortion decision-making. Data reported on in this paper were collected from three sites in Zimbabwe. Narrative interviews were conducted with 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers. The women employed discursive resources around stigma, religion, health and culture in telling stories around abortion shame, abortion as justified and the fearful, secretive act of abortion. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the availability and embeddedness of social discourses and power relations that work to enable/constrain reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143882 , vital:38291 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The available research on abortion-decision-making tends to focus on the ‘factors’ or ‘influences’ that are seen to affect abortion decision-making. This approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpin the ‘process’ of abortion decision-making. Data reported on in this paper were collected from three sites in Zimbabwe. Narrative interviews were conducted with 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers. The women employed discursive resources around stigma, religion, health and culture in telling stories around abortion shame, abortion as justified and the fearful, secretive act of abortion. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the availability and embeddedness of social discourses and power relations that work to enable/constrain reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Reconsidering research ethics in ethnographic research: bearing witness to ‘irreparable harm’
- Barker, Kim, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Barker, Kim , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143805 , vital:38284 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Research with persons who have experienced trauma requires careful consideration. In preparing the ethics protocol for an ethnographic study of an anti-rape protest, we thought carefully about how the first author would manage ethical decisions in accordance with the University ethics code. However, this process did not prepare us for the dynamic and reciprocal positioning the first author encountered in the field. Nor was she prepared for her sense of the ethical duty of response when entrusted with the narratives of women who had suffered ‘irredeemable harm’. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and examples from the research, we show how ethical decision-making in ethnographic research is always relational and dialogical; extending beyond our direct interactions with participants to the ways in which we approach our ‘data’. We argue that ethics cannot be reduced to a cognitive-rational process and propose ways to acknowledge and draw on the ‘affective’ and ‘transcendent’ in our ethical decision-making.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Barker, Kim , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143805 , vital:38284 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Research with persons who have experienced trauma requires careful consideration. In preparing the ethics protocol for an ethnographic study of an anti-rape protest, we thought carefully about how the first author would manage ethical decisions in accordance with the University ethics code. However, this process did not prepare us for the dynamic and reciprocal positioning the first author encountered in the field. Nor was she prepared for her sense of the ethical duty of response when entrusted with the narratives of women who had suffered ‘irredeemable harm’. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and examples from the research, we show how ethical decision-making in ethnographic research is always relational and dialogical; extending beyond our direct interactions with participants to the ways in which we approach our ‘data’. We argue that ethics cannot be reduced to a cognitive-rational process and propose ways to acknowledge and draw on the ‘affective’ and ‘transcendent’ in our ethical decision-making.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Deconstructing developmental psychology twenty years on : reflections, implications and empirical work
- Callaghan, Jane, Andenæs, Agnes, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Callaghan, Jane , Andenæs, Agnes , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6315 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020934 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353515583702
- Description: Editorial
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Callaghan, Jane , Andenæs, Agnes , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6315 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020934 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353515583702
- Description: Editorial
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
‘Victim’ or ‘survivor’?: language, identity and ethics revisited
- Barker, Kim, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Barker, Kim , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143738 , vital:38278 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Initially in feminist circles, and subsequently in more common usage, the term ‘survivor’ came to signify those who have been (sexually) violated and live on, and even thrive. The passivity implied by the term ‘victim’ therefore gave way to the more agentic connotations of ‘survivor’. However, neither term adequately captures the complexity and fluidity of subject positions taken up by and ascribed to women who have been subjected to sexual violence. The selection of an inadequate word is not neutral: each identifier calls forth particular identity constructions which have real effects. Reducing women’s experiences to one pole of this simple binary can diminish and totalise those experiences. In this paper we re-consider the use of these terms with reference to research conducted with protestors participating in an annual anti-rape protest held at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. We focus on the perspectives of women who are ‘survivors’ of sexual violence.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Barker, Kim , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143738 , vital:38278 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Initially in feminist circles, and subsequently in more common usage, the term ‘survivor’ came to signify those who have been (sexually) violated and live on, and even thrive. The passivity implied by the term ‘victim’ therefore gave way to the more agentic connotations of ‘survivor’. However, neither term adequately captures the complexity and fluidity of subject positions taken up by and ascribed to women who have been subjected to sexual violence. The selection of an inadequate word is not neutral: each identifier calls forth particular identity constructions which have real effects. Reducing women’s experiences to one pole of this simple binary can diminish and totalise those experiences. In this paper we re-consider the use of these terms with reference to research conducted with protestors participating in an annual anti-rape protest held at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. We focus on the perspectives of women who are ‘survivors’ of sexual violence.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Exploring the emancipatory potential of nursing practice in relation to sexuality: a systematic literature review of nursing research 2009-2014
- Nhamo-Murire, Mercy, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Nhamo-Murire, Mercy , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143650 , vital:38270 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Nurses play an important role in disseminating health information and in the provision of counselling concerning sexuality healthcare settings. There is some evidence, however, that nurses do not always consider issues relating to sexualities in their general practice, and when they do, may feel some discomfort in addressing sexuality. In this paper we report on a systematic review of research on nursing practice in relation to sexualities that appeared in nursing journals in the Web of Science database from 2009-2014. Thirty nine articles, which were published in English and reported on nursing practice in relation to sexualities, were thematically analysed. We focus on what research has been done and how this research may be used in the development of emancipatory nursing practice in relation to sexualities. Despite increasing attention being paid to social justice issues in nursing, the implications of this for nursing practice needs further exploration.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Nhamo-Murire, Mercy , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143650 , vital:38270 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Nurses play an important role in disseminating health information and in the provision of counselling concerning sexuality healthcare settings. There is some evidence, however, that nurses do not always consider issues relating to sexualities in their general practice, and when they do, may feel some discomfort in addressing sexuality. In this paper we report on a systematic review of research on nursing practice in relation to sexualities that appeared in nursing journals in the Web of Science database from 2009-2014. Thirty nine articles, which were published in English and reported on nursing practice in relation to sexualities, were thematically analysed. We focus on what research has been done and how this research may be used in the development of emancipatory nursing practice in relation to sexualities. Despite increasing attention being paid to social justice issues in nursing, the implications of this for nursing practice needs further exploration.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Sexual socialisation in Life Orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity
- Macleod, Catriona I, Moodley, Dale, Saville Young, Lisa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Moodley, Dale , Saville Young, Lisa
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6309 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018866
- Description: This paper compares two forms of sexual socialisation to which learners are exposed: the sexuality education components of the Life Orientation (LO) manuals and the lyrical content and videos of popular songs. We performed a textual analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in, first, the LO manuals used in Grade 10 classes and, second, the two songs voted most popular by the Grade 10 learners of two diverse schools in the Eastern Cape. Of interest in this paper is whether and how these two forms of sexual socialisation – one representing state-sanctioned sexual socialisation and the other learners’ chosen cultural expression that represents informal sexual socialisation – dovetail or diverge. Against a backdrop of heterosexuality and an assumption of the ‘adolescent-in-transition’ discourse, the main sexual subject positions featured in the LO manuals are the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim. A number of sexualised subject positions are portrayed in the songs, with these subject positions depicting sex as a site of pleasure, tension and complexity. Although these two modes of sexual socialisation use different genres of communication, we argue that learners’ choice of songs that depict fluid sexual subject positions can help to inform LO sexuality education in ways that takes learners’ preferred cultural expression seriously and that moves away from the imperative of responsibilisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Moodley, Dale , Saville Young, Lisa
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6309 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018866
- Description: This paper compares two forms of sexual socialisation to which learners are exposed: the sexuality education components of the Life Orientation (LO) manuals and the lyrical content and videos of popular songs. We performed a textual analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in, first, the LO manuals used in Grade 10 classes and, second, the two songs voted most popular by the Grade 10 learners of two diverse schools in the Eastern Cape. Of interest in this paper is whether and how these two forms of sexual socialisation – one representing state-sanctioned sexual socialisation and the other learners’ chosen cultural expression that represents informal sexual socialisation – dovetail or diverge. Against a backdrop of heterosexuality and an assumption of the ‘adolescent-in-transition’ discourse, the main sexual subject positions featured in the LO manuals are the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim. A number of sexualised subject positions are portrayed in the songs, with these subject positions depicting sex as a site of pleasure, tension and complexity. Although these two modes of sexual socialisation use different genres of communication, we argue that learners’ choice of songs that depict fluid sexual subject positions can help to inform LO sexuality education in ways that takes learners’ preferred cultural expression seriously and that moves away from the imperative of responsibilisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Pecha Kucha 1: Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143915 , vital:38294 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite enabling legislation and policies in the areas of sexualities and reproduction in South Africa, multiple challenges persist, including: forced sexual debut, sexual coercion and violence; HIV infection; hate crimes against lesbian women and gay men; unwanted and unsupportable pregnancies. While it is acknowledged that interventions (e.g., sexuality education programmes, the promotion of antenatal care use and the promotion of non-discrimination) have the potential to improve men’s and women’s sexual and reproductive lives. There are also multiple ways in which such programmes and the surrounding public discourses concerning sexuality and reproduction can serve in often unintended and unwitting ways to perpetuate oppressive heteronormative, gendered, racialised and class-based power relations. The Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme focuses on how particular discourses, narratives, and practices promote inclusion or exclusion, belonging or marginalisation, equity or inequity, justice or injustice, access to, or denial of, sexual and reproductive rights.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143915 , vital:38294 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite enabling legislation and policies in the areas of sexualities and reproduction in South Africa, multiple challenges persist, including: forced sexual debut, sexual coercion and violence; HIV infection; hate crimes against lesbian women and gay men; unwanted and unsupportable pregnancies. While it is acknowledged that interventions (e.g., sexuality education programmes, the promotion of antenatal care use and the promotion of non-discrimination) have the potential to improve men’s and women’s sexual and reproductive lives. There are also multiple ways in which such programmes and the surrounding public discourses concerning sexuality and reproduction can serve in often unintended and unwitting ways to perpetuate oppressive heteronormative, gendered, racialised and class-based power relations. The Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme focuses on how particular discourses, narratives, and practices promote inclusion or exclusion, belonging or marginalisation, equity or inequity, justice or injustice, access to, or denial of, sexual and reproductive rights.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
When is it legitimate to use images in moral arguments? The use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns as an exemplar of an illegitimate instance of a legitimate practice
- Kelland, Lindsay, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Kelland, Lindsay , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6305 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016146
- Description: We aim to interrogate when the use of images in moral persuasion is legitimate. First, we put forward a number of accounts which purport to show that we can use tools other than logical argumentation to convince others, that such tools evoke affective responses and that these responses have authority in the moral domain. Second, we turn to Sarah McGrath’s account, which focuses on the use of imagery as a means to morally persuade. McGrath discusses 4 objections to the use of imagery, and outlines responses that may be used to legitimate the use of imagery in moral arguments. Assuming that we accept her account and that the invocation of affect has authority in the moral domain, we, using McGrath’s responses, examine whether the use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns is a legitimate instance of this practice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Kelland, Lindsay , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6305 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016146
- Description: We aim to interrogate when the use of images in moral persuasion is legitimate. First, we put forward a number of accounts which purport to show that we can use tools other than logical argumentation to convince others, that such tools evoke affective responses and that these responses have authority in the moral domain. Second, we turn to Sarah McGrath’s account, which focuses on the use of imagery as a means to morally persuade. McGrath discusses 4 objections to the use of imagery, and outlines responses that may be used to legitimate the use of imagery in moral arguments. Assuming that we accept her account and that the invocation of affect has authority in the moral domain, we, using McGrath’s responses, examine whether the use of foetal imagery in anti-abortion campaigns is a legitimate instance of this practice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Life orientation sexuality education in South Africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation
- Shefer, Tamara, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6310 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018868
- Description: [From introduction] Research on sexual practices among young South Africans has proliferated in light of the national imperatives to challenge the spread of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted early pregnancies. It has been widely acknowledged that, in order to respond to these social problems, we need to understand the enmeshment of gender, class, age and other forms of social inequality, and how these are played out in ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education programmes have been viewed as key locations for incorporating education to challenge negative assumptions in respect of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy and to promote safer, equitable and non-violent sexual practices. There is a paucity of work that interrogates the LO sexuality education programme in terms of gender norms, gender justice and gender transformation. In the handful of studies conducted on school-based sexuality education in South Africa, researchers have foregrounded a number of challenges, including the dominance of a guiding metaphor of danger and disease in the sexuality education component of LO manuals (Macleod, 2009); educators using a transmission mode of teaching to the exclusion of participation and experiential modes of learning (Rooth, 2005); educators understanding sexuality education as chiefly addressing the provision of information concerning, and prevention of, HIV/AIDS (Francis, 2011); teachers’ preference for abstinence-only education taught by means of a series of moral injunctions (Francis, 2011); and the avoidance of discussions of sexual diversity, and the endorsement of compulsory heterosexuality when same-sex relationships are mentioned (Francis, 2012). Recent research has also highlighted the variation in how teachers approach sexuality education. Francis and DePalma (2014) indicate that, while teachers may promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people, they also recognise the value of teaching relationships and safe sex (aspects associated with comprehensive sexuality education). In their study, Helleve et al. (2009) report that Grades 8 and 9 LO teachers felt confident in teaching HIV and sexuality. This special issue of Perspectives in Education builds on this research by drawing together several papers that examine how LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes challenge and/or reproduce normative constructions of gender and gendered power relations. All the papers use qualitative research to locate these programmes within the complex contexts of their enactment, drawing attention to the multiple possibilities and limitations of such programmes. In the next section, we summarise the key problematics addressed in each of the papers. What curiosities drove the studies conducted by these researchers interested in gender dynamics in schools and LO or Life Skills sexuality education? Why are these curiosities important? We then highlight the key findings that emerged from these curiosities and the nuanced data collected. Finally, and most importantly in terms of the aims of this special issue, we address the ways in which a critical gender lens that facilitates gender transformation and gender justice could possibly be incorporated into LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6310 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018868
- Description: [From introduction] Research on sexual practices among young South Africans has proliferated in light of the national imperatives to challenge the spread of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted early pregnancies. It has been widely acknowledged that, in order to respond to these social problems, we need to understand the enmeshment of gender, class, age and other forms of social inequality, and how these are played out in ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education programmes have been viewed as key locations for incorporating education to challenge negative assumptions in respect of HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy and to promote safer, equitable and non-violent sexual practices. There is a paucity of work that interrogates the LO sexuality education programme in terms of gender norms, gender justice and gender transformation. In the handful of studies conducted on school-based sexuality education in South Africa, researchers have foregrounded a number of challenges, including the dominance of a guiding metaphor of danger and disease in the sexuality education component of LO manuals (Macleod, 2009); educators using a transmission mode of teaching to the exclusion of participation and experiential modes of learning (Rooth, 2005); educators understanding sexuality education as chiefly addressing the provision of information concerning, and prevention of, HIV/AIDS (Francis, 2011); teachers’ preference for abstinence-only education taught by means of a series of moral injunctions (Francis, 2011); and the avoidance of discussions of sexual diversity, and the endorsement of compulsory heterosexuality when same-sex relationships are mentioned (Francis, 2012). Recent research has also highlighted the variation in how teachers approach sexuality education. Francis and DePalma (2014) indicate that, while teachers may promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people, they also recognise the value of teaching relationships and safe sex (aspects associated with comprehensive sexuality education). In their study, Helleve et al. (2009) report that Grades 8 and 9 LO teachers felt confident in teaching HIV and sexuality. This special issue of Perspectives in Education builds on this research by drawing together several papers that examine how LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes challenge and/or reproduce normative constructions of gender and gendered power relations. All the papers use qualitative research to locate these programmes within the complex contexts of their enactment, drawing attention to the multiple possibilities and limitations of such programmes. In the next section, we summarise the key problematics addressed in each of the papers. What curiosities drove the studies conducted by these researchers interested in gender dynamics in schools and LO or Life Skills sexuality education? Why are these curiosities important? We then highlight the key findings that emerged from these curiosities and the nuanced data collected. Finally, and most importantly in terms of the aims of this special issue, we address the ways in which a critical gender lens that facilitates gender transformation and gender justice could possibly be incorporated into LO or Life Skills sexuality programmes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Young people’s use of ‘peer pressure/normalization’ as discursive resources to justify gendered youth sexualities: implications for Life Orientation sexuality education programmes
- Jearey-Graham, Nicola, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Jearey-Graham, Nicola , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143749 , vital:38279 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: ‘Peer pressure’ has been associated in the scientific literature with a range of risky sexual behaviors, thereby undermining safe sex messages delivered in Life Orientation (LO) classes. LO texts warn against peer pressure. Taking a discursive psychology perspective, we show how young people, in contrast, use the discourses of ‘peer pressure to have sex’ and ‘peer normalization of sex’ to justify youth sexual activity. Using data from focus group discussions about youth sexualities with students at a Further Education and Training College in South Africa, we show how participants outlined a need for young people to be socially recognizable through engaging in, and being able to talk about sex, and how they implicated peer norms in governing individual sexual behavior. Both discourses pointed to a gendering of sexual norms. The deployment of these discourses by young people themselves has implications for Life Orientation programmes. Nuanced engagement with ‘peer group’ narratives is indicated.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Jearey-Graham, Nicola , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143749 , vital:38279 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: ‘Peer pressure’ has been associated in the scientific literature with a range of risky sexual behaviors, thereby undermining safe sex messages delivered in Life Orientation (LO) classes. LO texts warn against peer pressure. Taking a discursive psychology perspective, we show how young people, in contrast, use the discourses of ‘peer pressure to have sex’ and ‘peer normalization of sex’ to justify youth sexual activity. Using data from focus group discussions about youth sexualities with students at a Further Education and Training College in South Africa, we show how participants outlined a need for young people to be socially recognizable through engaging in, and being able to talk about sex, and how they implicated peer norms in governing individual sexual behavior. Both discourses pointed to a gendering of sexual norms. The deployment of these discourses by young people themselves has implications for Life Orientation programmes. Nuanced engagement with ‘peer group’ narratives is indicated.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Precocious little monsters and the birth of puberty science: tracing early puberty as a health matter
- Pinto, Pedro, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Pinto, Pedro , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143626 , vital:38268 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Over the last two decades, early puberty has been increasingly portrayed in scientific and popular arenas as an alarming health issue. Changes in pubertal timing are frequently accorded a range of medical and moral dangers, suggesting individual degeneracy and social crisis. In our presentation – the first output of a Foucauldian genealogical investigation on pubertal knowledge in medical journals – we show that today’s problematisations of early puberty are rooted in the figure of the child monster, as produced in early nineteenth century medical discourse. Drawing on doctors’ clinical encounters with the pubescent body as represented in medical journals during that period, we argue that puberty, understood as a scientific construct, has been ‘praecox’ since the beginning. From this genealogical viewpoint, we explore the ways in which our present ‘pubertal complex’ talks to an old medical dilemma: the confusion of maturity and immaturity within the young body.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Pinto, Pedro , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143626 , vital:38268 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Over the last two decades, early puberty has been increasingly portrayed in scientific and popular arenas as an alarming health issue. Changes in pubertal timing are frequently accorded a range of medical and moral dangers, suggesting individual degeneracy and social crisis. In our presentation – the first output of a Foucauldian genealogical investigation on pubertal knowledge in medical journals – we show that today’s problematisations of early puberty are rooted in the figure of the child monster, as produced in early nineteenth century medical discourse. Drawing on doctors’ clinical encounters with the pubescent body as represented in medical journals during that period, we argue that puberty, understood as a scientific construct, has been ‘praecox’ since the beginning. From this genealogical viewpoint, we explore the ways in which our present ‘pubertal complex’ talks to an old medical dilemma: the confusion of maturity and immaturity within the young body.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015