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The‘person without the person’ in the early work of Paul Emmanuel:

  • Authors: Bronner, Irene
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147737 , vital:38666 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00043389.2012.11877161
  • Description: Paul Emmanuel’s early prints and incised drawings represent the human body as a presence that either is not easily seen, actively disappears or erases itself, or is entirely absent. In doing so, these still life and landscape works metaphorically explore inner, psychological ‘landscapes’, both conscious and unconscious. By drawing deliberate attention to his oblique and deceptive surfaces, Emmanuel’s process, medium and subject matter may be said to express subjectivity as a process of materialisation, as formed through the contingencies and inconsistencies of vision, experience and memory. To ‘see’ this process, and to understand what Emmanuel means by ‘seeing and not seeing’, I consider two strategies that Emmanuel arguably employs to disrupt viewing: partial, fragmented and multiple perspectives and empty clothing abandoned in landscapes.
  • Full Text:
  • Date Issued: 2017

Thiazole derivatives as potential hiv-1 protease inhibitors

  • Authors: Hlongwe, Zola
  • Date: 2021-04
  • Subjects: Gqeberha (South Africa) , Eastern Cape (South Africa) , Enzyme kinetics
  • Language: English
  • Type: Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/52116 , vital:43427
  • Description: Series of compounds were screened using Schrodinger suite (Maestro). The DFT calculations were used for geometry optimization of the ligands using the B3YLYP functional and 6-31G basis set, and these structures were used for docking studies. Maestro was used to predict the activity of thiazole derivatives against HIV-1 protease. The range of estimated inhibition constants for these thiazole derivatives (65 nM-5 μM) indicate moderate to weak activity against HIV-1 protease, given that the activity of current protease inhibitors is typically found have experimental inhibition constants around 0.1-2.0 nM. Twenty compounds were selected based on the docking results and they were synthesized and characterized by NMR, FT-IR and elemental analysis. The cytotoxicity studies were done at two different concentrations (100 μM and 10 μM), using the brine shrimp bioassay. All compounds were highly toxic at 100 μM, with the percentage mortality between 20 to 75%. Eight compounds were selected for the enzyme bioassay based on the results obtained from lower concentration (10 μM). In the enzyme inhibition studies, the profile of HIV-1 activity was done at different inhibitor concentrations (800 μM – 10 μM) by measuring the cleavage of the synthetic substrate (Abz-Thr-lle-PNO2Phe=Gln-Arg-NH2) at excitation wavelength of 345/490 nm using fluorescence. Ligands 5 (unsubstituted derivative), 7 (4-nitro derivative) and 16 (4-methoxy derivative) gave percentage inhibition of 39, 45 and 42%, and this activity was very low compared to the activity of the positive control ritonavir (85% enzyme inhibition). Ligands 8 (4-methoxy derivative) and 12 (4-methoxy derivative) gave enzyme inhibition of 70% and 75%. These results suggest that the presence of the methoxy substituents ii increases activity of these compounds against HIV-1 protease. Most of the compounds gave good IC50 values between 12.5-42.7 nM. The bromo-substituted ligand 7 gave the lowest IC50 (12.5 nM). Ligand 11 also gave a good IC50 value of 14.86 nM. The bromo-substituted derivatives showed to be very active compared to other types of thiazole derivatives. Enzyme kinetics were carried out to compare the inhibition constants obtained via computational modelling. Ligand 7 (4-methoxy derivatives) binds better in the active site of HIV-1 protease than other compounds in Class B, with Ki = 50 nM, Km = 23.8 Nm and Vmax = 83.3 nM/min. The unsubstituted (L5), 4-bromo (L7) and 4-nitro (L8) substituted compounds gave inhibition constants of 100 to 112 nM. The in vitro testing yielded higher activity than that determined in silico. , Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, School of Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences, 2021
  • Full Text: false
  • Date Issued: 2021-04

Thicket expansion in a vachellia karroo-dominated landscape and its effect on herbaceous communities

  • Authors: Khoza, Marina Rindzani
  • Date: 2022-04-06
  • Subjects: Savanna ecology South Africa , Forbs South Africa , Grasslands South Africa , Herbaceous plants South Africa , Vegetation dynamics South Africa , Forest canopies South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/291015 , vital:56808
  • Description: Grass and forb species found in savannas are highly diverse, contributing to the structure and function of the savanna system. Where mean annual rainfall is seasonal and high enough to support closed canopy vegetation such as forests or thickets, savannas can exist as an alternative stable state maintained by disturbances such as fire and browsing. Biotic and abiotic processes act on savanna and forest (or thicket) systems maintaining both their tree and herbaceous cover at levels that ensure their persistence in those states. Studies have shown that many semi-arid rangelands in South Africa have undergone a rapid increase in tree cover (of both native and non-native species) over the past several decades. This process of increasing tree cover in semi-arid savannas, termed bush encroachment, results in a biome shift, changing landscapes that were once grasslands with few trees to ones dominated by broad-leaved trees with fewer sun-adapted forbs and grasses. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of changing woody cover and its associated changes in tree composition, tree canopy structure, light dynamics in the understory and herbaceous community composition on Endwell farm in the Eastern Cape. Canopy cover changes between the years 1949 and 2019 were analysed at 51 sites on the farm and related to historical rainfall patterns. There had been a general increase in tree cover over the past several decades on the farm, and many sites showed a change from open (0-15%) in 1949 to low (1635%), moderate (36-50%) and high (51-100%) canopy cover in 2019. In earlier years most sites had a canopy cover below 50%, and the higher canopy cover values (>65%) occurred in more recent decades. Canopy cover of ~ 50% was found to be rare in each decade. This suggests that ~50% canopy cover maybe a transient, unstable state. The period with the highest rate of canopy cover increase was 2002-2013, and this increase coincided with a high mean annual rainfall 10 years prior to 2002 and a high mean annual rainfall in most years between the 20022013 period. The period between 2002 and 2013 also had the highest number of sites transitioning from lower to higher tree canopy cover classes, indicating that rainfall may have been a factor driving bush encroachment during the past several decades. An increase in canopy cover (a decrease in light transmittance) was accompanied by changes in woody species composition during thicket formation. The low canopy cover (high light transmittance) sites were dominated by Vachellia karroo and Scutia myrtina trees, while high tree cover sites had fewer V. karroo and S. myrtina trees and were rather characterised by an abundance of thicket tree species. Species proportion, NMDS and dendrogram plots indicated that sites with a light transmittance range between 50-100% had similar tree species compositions, different from sites with light transmittances <50%. An increase in tree density was strongly correlated to an increase in canopy cover (from 2019 satellite imagery), density of trees > 3m, maximum height reached by trees, diversity of trees, total canopy volume, total canopy area and leaf area index (LAI), and a decrease in light transmittance. A structural equation model (SEM) was used to explore the relationships between canopy characteristics (maximum canopy area, canopy volume, tree diversity, density of trees, density of trees >3m, individual trees and maximum canopy height), aerial canopy cover in 2019, and light transmittance. The model explained 73% of the variation in light transmittance, mostly via the direct effect of canopy characteristics. Canopy characteristics had a strong influence on both aerial cover in 2019 and directly on light transmittance, but canopy cover in 2019 had a weak influence on light transmittance. The herbaceous layer was rich and dominated by C4 grasses such as Eragrostis plana, Sporobolus fimbriatus, Themeda triandra and Digitaria eriantha) and forbs including Hibiscus aethiopicus, Helichrysum dregeanum, Helichrysum nudifolium and Gerbera viridifolia at low canopy cover sites with high light transmittance. In contrast, high tree cover sites had fewer herbaceous species in general. Grass and forb species characteristic of these sites high canopy cover sites were Panicum maximum, Loudetia flavida, Pellaea viridis and Cyperus spp. Different sites with low light transmittance (<50%) had similar herbaceous species composition. Basal cover, richness, abundance and diversity of herbaceous plants decreased significantly with an increase in tree density, density of trees >3 m, canopy volume, canopy area, canopy cover, LAI, and increased significantly with increasing light transmittance. Most grasses had their highest densities at LAI <0.5, which was estimated to correspond to ~75% light transmittance and ~38% canopy cover and then started to decline thereafter. Herbaceous species basal cover was also highest at LAI <0.5. An SEM model indicated that herbaceous diversity, basal cover and richness responded both to light availability and to the structure of the woody vegetation directly (R2 = 0.53). While the effect of light transmittance on herbaceous communities was strong (0.41), there was little difference between the effect of light transmittance and canopy characteristics (-0.35) on herbaceous communities. Two possible threshold points, relating to two types of transitions in vegetation structure, could be deduced from this study. The first threshold occurred at canopy cover ~ 40% (LAI < ~ 0.5, light transmittance ~ 75%), at which point many of the common herbaceous species, including the dominant C4 grasses, began to decline in abundance while the composition remained characteristic of the savanna state. A canopy cover of less than ~ 40% at a site provides a suitable state for a high abundance of grass and forb species which help maintain an open system by facilitating fires. The second threshold marked a compositional shift between savanna and closed-canopy vegetation states. Savanna species (trees, grasses and forbs) dominated at high light transmittances (>50%) and were significantly reduced at low light transmittances (< 50%), indicating a possible species composition threshold at ~50% light transmittance at which a savanna state switches to a thicket (LAI ~ 1 and canopy cover ~70%). This point indicated the point where there was a significant difference in both tree and herbaceous plant compositions, with a marked reduction in the occurrence of C4 grasses at light transmittance <50%. Fire is supressed when the C4 grass layer is lost, and further thicket encroachment will take place causing complete canopy closure. Land managers in this system should start becoming concerned about a reduction in grass biomass when canopy cover reaches about 40% and would have to reduce tree cover before the threshold of 50% light transmittance (70% canopy cover from aerial photos) is reached to maintain a savanna system. , Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, Botany, 2022
  • Full Text:
  • Date Issued: 2022-04-06

Thien-2-yl substituted chlorins as photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy and photodynamic antimicrobial chemotherapy

  • Authors: Babu, Balaji , Sindelo, Azole , Mack, John , Nyokong, Tebello
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190578 , vital:45007 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dyepig.2020.108886"
  • Description: The synthesis and characterization of meso-tetra(thien-2-yl)chlorin (1) and meso-tetra(5-bromothien-2-yl)chlorin (2) is reported. These dyes have red-shifted absorption maxima compared to those of the analogous meso-tetraphenylchlorin (3). 1 and 2 have Q bands at 660 and 664 nm, respectively, singlet oxygen quantum yields of 0.60 and 0.64 and exhibit good photostability. The triplet states were found to have lifetimes of 8.6 μs in N2 purged DMF. Time-dependent cellular uptake of chlorins reached a maximum in MCF-7 cancer cells after 12 h. Upon irradiation with a Thorlabs M660L3 LED (280 mW cm−2), 2 exhibited better photocytotoxicity with an IC50 value of 2.7 μM against MCF-7 cells. The 2ʹ,7ʹ-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (DCFDA) assay provided evidence for intracellular generation of reactive oxygen species. Photodynamic inactivation of bacteria by the chlorins was also studied. 2 exhibits better activity with log reduction values of 7.42 and 8.34 towards Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, respectively, under illumination for 60 min at 660 nm with a Thorlabs M660L3 LED (280 mW cm−2). These results demonstrate that 2 is a promising candidate for future in vivo experiments and merits further in-depth investigation.
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  • Date Issued: 2021

Things are changing

Things are gonna be okay

Think Piece : an opening dialogue with Think Pieces and feature articles on learning in a changing world in this journal

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2007
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59602 , vital:27630 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122734
  • Description: From Conclusion:This opening Think Piece invites you into such a dialogue, with this journal, its words and flows of meaning, and with the World Environmental Education Congress, its words and flows of meaning. Dialogue, as explained by Bohm, and as illustrated in the thought experiments in this paper, is a process of creatively and experimentally seeking out meaning and coherence through listening, and through deeper explorations of the tacit, implicate order. It is also a free process, where you as individual are invited to seek out the relations between your thoughts and the collective. Welcome to the process.
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  • Date Issued: 2007

Think Piece : conceptions of quality and ‘Learning as Connection’: teaching for relevance

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2013
  • Subjects: Teachers -- Quality -- South Africa , Quality assurance -- South Africa , Effective teaching , Relevance , SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59635 , vital:27633 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122256
  • Description: This think piece captures some of the thinking that emerged in and through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Environmental Education Programme research programme. This research programme emerged over a five-year period (2008–2012) and involved ten southern African teacher education institutions from eight countries (see ‘Acknowledgements’). The research programme sought to understand what contributions environment and sustainability education could make to debates on educational quality and relevance. Issues of educational quality are high on the national agendas of governments in southern Africa, as it is now well known that providing access to schooling is not a sufficient condition for achieving educational quality. Educational quality is intimately linked to the processes of teaching and learning, but the concept of educational quality is not unproblematic in and of itself. It is, as Noel Gough (2005) noted many years ago, an ‘order word’ that shapes the way people think and practise. Our enquiries during this research programme involved a number of case studies (that were reported on in the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) in 2008, and are again reported on in this edition of the SAJEE), but the programme also involved theoretical engagement with the concept of educational quality and relevance. This think piece helps to make some of this thinking and theoretical deliberation visible. The author of this think piece was also the leader of the regional research programme and was tasked with synthesising the theoretical deliberations that emerged from the research design which were found to be useful for guiding interpretations and deliberation on more detailed case studies undertaken at country level.
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  • Date Issued: 2013

Think Piece on Amanzi for Food. Working with Critical Realism to Inform a Situated Learning Framework for Climate Change Education

  • Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388136 , vital:68309 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/172215"
  • Description: This study is developed as a think piece which deliberates the problem of transformative human agency in a curriculum setting. Using a critical realism perspective and schematic tools it examines the deliberative framing of an Amanzi for Food teaching garden as an education process for mediating the learning of rainwater harvesting. Working with Bhaskar’s Transformational Model of Social Activity and using expansions of his ‘four-planar social being’ schema and its resolution in his ‘social cube’ model, the study contemplates the framing for a curriculum for the mediation of co-engaged social learning in the contexts of practical work in an agricultural college curriculum setting. In this way the research process is developed as an under-labouring review of the emerging curriculum in search of theory to inform pedagogy for mediating situated processes of transformative social learning.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Think Piece, Naked Science-Avoiding Methodolatry in an Environmental Education Context

  • Authors: Price, Leigh
  • Date: 2013
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387264 , vital:68220 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122255"
  • Description: Research methodology is significantly political and in this think piece I try to better understand the effect of this politicisation in the production of science. The main focus of the think piece is to identify the dominant methodological discourses and analyse them using techniques borrowed from post-structuralism. From this analysis, I suggest that methodological discourses are reproduced and normalised in much the same way as discourses of, for example, sexuality, and I give examples of this from my experience as a PhD student of environmental education. I also suggest that some transgressive methodologies, such as those associated with postmodernism or participatory research, despite purporting to empower, at times also disempower. Furthermore, all of the methodologies that I analyse are, in one way or another, ‘loaded’; they cloak their agendas. From this analysis, I move towards suggesting an alternative critical realist methodology for environmental education which is naked; its agendas are clearly stated, not least because this epistemology does not lend itself to deception. An important part of this critical realist conception of methodology is the idea of ‘meta-reflexivity’ in which truth is not vulgarly pragmatic or fideistic.
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  • Date Issued: 2013

Think Piece. Conceptions of Quality and ‘Learning as Connection’: Teaching for Relevance

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2013
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/387159 , vital:68211 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/122256"
  • Description: This think piece captures some of the thinking that emerged in and through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Environmental Education Programme research programme. This research programme emerged over a five-year period (2008–2012) and involved ten southern African teacher education institutions from eight countries (see ‘Acknowledgements’). The research programme sought to understand what contributions environment and sustainability education could make to debates on educational quality and relevance. Issues of educational quality are high on the national agendas of governments in southern Africa, as it is now well known that providing access to schooling is not a sufficient condition for achieving educational quality. Educational quality is intimately linked to the processes of teaching and learning, but the concept of educational quality is not unproblematic in and of itself. It is, as Noel Gough (2005) noted many years ago, an ‘order word’ that shapes the way people think and practise. Our enquiries during this research programme involved a number of case studies (that were reported on in the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) in 2008, and are again reported on in this edition of the SAJEE), but the programme also involved theoretical engagement with the concept of educational quality and relevance.
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  • Date Issued: 2013

Think Piece. Intersectional Resonance and the Multiplicity of Being in a Polarised World

  • Authors: Kulundu, Injairu
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388037 , vital:68301 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/172212"
  • Description: Understandings of collective learning and change agency often conjure up an image of a particular group or community identifying important concerns and finding the momentum to learn together to address them. In reality, gaining consensus around what issues need to be addressed is a complex process in polarised societies. It requires an attentiveness to different standpoints and experiences of the social dynamics at play, and the ways in which ecological, political, socio-economic and psychic experiences manifest themselves within different contexts, generating disparate and connected views on what is missing and what is needed to create a more just society. This paper asks questions about what it means to learn in-between and through complex and interrelated societal dynamics amongst a community of change drivers. By highlighting the individual, communal and collective learning of a diverse group of change drivers in a very polarised South Africa, we can begin to ask questions about the following: 1) how different embodied experiences or ‘a multiplicity of being’, as referred to in this paper, are essential in the pursuit of a sustainable society; and 2) why we need to learn in ways that can foster a sense of ‘intersectional resonance’ between and amongst change drivers in a polarised world.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Think Piece. Situating Education for Sustainable Development in southern African philosophy and contexts of social-ecological change to enhance curriculum relevance and the common good

  • Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona V , O'Donoghue, Rob B , Shava, Soul
  • Date: 2019
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388105 , vital:68307 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/187217"
  • Description: The study opens with a brief review of how education in colonial southern Africa was steered by a succession of externally framed abstractions that have been implemented within the prevailing hegemony of western modernisation that dominated and marginalised indigenous cultures. It probes how, within an expanding functionalist framework, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been similarly constituted as a proposition for implementation. Here the supposition is that implementing ESD as an intervention will transform education into an inclusive and collaborative pedagogy that will shape competences for participants to transform society towards a sustainable future. In an effort to explore the possibility of making a break from a succession of education imperatives functioning as ‘salvation narratives’ to put things right in Africa, the study explores ESD from a more situated and emergent vantage point within African landscapes, philosophy and cultural practices. This requires a shift from a view of ESD as a perspective to be brought in and enacted to foster change, to ESD as a situated engagement in education as a process where relevance is deliberated and brought out in quality education with high order skills. This perspective exemplifies working with a more fully situated framing of deliberative social learning for the common good. It is explored here to contemplate how socio-cultural processes of deliberative ethics and co-engaged reflexive processes of learning-led change might emerge. Here, also, using a capabilities approach might provide useful starting points for ESD as an expansive process of transformative social learning.
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  • Date Issued: 2019

Think Piece. Working for Living: Popular Education as/at Work for Social-ecological Justice

  • Authors: Burt, Jane C , James, Anna , Walters, Shirley , Von Kotze, Astrid
  • Date: 2020
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/388150 , vital:68310 , xlink:href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/165826"
  • Description: Drawing on the working lives of popular educators who are striving for socioeconomic and socio-ecological justice, we demonstrate how popular education is a form of care work which is feminised, often undervalued and unrecognised as highly skilled work. It is relational work that aims to forge solidarity with communities and the environment. Given the state of the planet, the radical transformations that are needed, and the future projection of ‘work’ as including the care economy in large measure, we argue that popular education is a generative site for further exploration of research into work and learning. However, to move popular education as work from the margins means to rethink the current economic system of value. Addressing the contradiction that undervalues work for life/living, popular education engages transformative action motivated by a deep sense of solidarity and a focus on imagining alternatives as an act of hope.
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  • Date Issued: 2020

Think Piece: Learning, Living and Leading into Transgression–A reflection on decolonial praxis in a neoliberal world

  • Authors: Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu M , McGarry, Dylan K , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2020
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182406 , vital:43827 , xlink:href="10.4314/sajee.v36i1.14"
  • Description: Three scholar activists from South Africa reflect on what it means to transgress the limits of a neoliberal world and its crisis times, particularly considering transgressions in the service of a decolonial future. The authors explore three questions: i) What kind of learning can help us transgress the status quo? ii) How do we extend this learning into a commitment to actively living in transgressive ways? iii) What does it mean to lead in ways that re-generate a transgressive ethic in a neoliberal world? In a dialogical conversation format, the authors outline nine different but interconnected perspectives on learning, living and leading into transgression, with the aim of concurrently revealing the multiple layers of work that a decolonial future depends on, while demonstrating the ambitions of a pluriversal decolonial future through their writing. The intertwined narrative is not conclusive, as the processes marked out in brief are experiences that still need to be fully practised in new relations in times to come within academia-in-society-and-the-world with human and more-than-human actors. However, they do offer a generative set of questions, concepts and metaphors to give courage to boundary-dwelling scholar activists attempting transgressive research. These reflections seek to regenerate the transgressive ‘decolonial gestures’ (decolonialfutures.net) that we can undertake in a neo-liberal world, as an important part of environment and sustainability education practices. It draws out what an embodied practice of transgressive learning can entail when we become discerning of hegemonic discourses that reproduce the status quo. We pay homage to those decolonial scholars in the field of environment and sustainability education as we traverse this terrain, recognising their imagination and the transgressive movement that has come before us, but importantly we seek to also open pathways for those yet to come.
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  • Date Issued: 2020

Think Piece: Pioneers as relational subjects? Probing relationality as phenomenon shaping collective learning and change agency formation

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2018
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/182787 , vital:43874 , xlink:href="DOI 10.4314/sajee.v34i1.5"
  • Description: This paper deliberates on how relationality is framed in collective learning and change agency formation processes, with an emphasis on green economy and renewable energy learning contexts. The paper is not focused on empirical analysis of relationality in collective learning, but rather probes the phenomenon in order to provide more carefully constituted theoretical and analytical tools for further empirical research. The paper uses references to South African and Danish cases (albeit in slightly different ways), and, through this, it sets out to provide tools for generative insights and research into a recent international policy and strategy process which is bringing national-level Green Economy Learning Assessments (GELA) into being, including one in South Africa. Central to these GELAs is the notion of participatory or relational competence, which appears to be a central feature of collective learning, although this is not empirically analysed in this paper. In case study work undertaken for the GELA in South Africa that focused on South Africa’s major renewable energy development, and in the Samsø Island renewable energy transition case in Denmark, this competence appeared to come into focus in praxis. Interestingly, however, it appeared to come into focus colloquially as a discourse on ‘pioneers’ or ‘champions’, a phenomenon noticed in both the South African and Danish contexts. This paper probes this phenomenon further, especially since it initially appears to be contradictory to the emphasis on participatory and relational competence in the GELA study framework. This is because the concept of ‘pioneer/champion’ appears to highlight individual capabilities rather than collective, relational competences. Yet, on closer inspection, it is indeed the relational competences of the pioneer/champion, who is constituted as a ‘relational subject’ with a key role to play in producing shared relational goods, that appears to be significant to the collective learning and action process. This, as argued in the paper, requires a differentiation of relationism and relational realism. This Think Piece, which thinks with both theory and praxis, therefore offers a possible framework for more detailed empirical studies on relationality in collective learning and change agency formation.
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  • Date Issued: 2018

Think: A Review of International Struggles

Think: A Review of International Struggles

Thinking about fear and freedom:

  • Authors: Garman, Anthea
  • Date: 2006
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158794 , vital:40229 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC146175
  • Description: Some convictions have chrystalised for me in the process of putting together this new edition of Rhodes Journalism Review.
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  • Date Issued: 2006

Thinking about South African tabloid newspapers:

  • Authors: Strelitz, Larry N , Steenveld, Lynette N
  • Date: 2010
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159825 , vital:40347 , DOI: 10.1080/02560054.2005.9653337
  • Description: A popular view of tabloids is that they pander to the lowest common denominator of public taste, they simplify complex issues, and they generally fail to provide information that citizens need in order to make informed political judgments - the latter being the raison d’etre of serious newspapers. In summary, tabloids “lower the standards of public discourse” (Ornerbring and Jonson, 2004:283).
  • Full Text:
  • Date Issued: 2010
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