‘It's just taking our souls back’: discourses of apartheid and race
- Authors: Bock, Zannie , Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124888 , vital:35707 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1056196
- Description: Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data include four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other as historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of discursive strategies so as to resist being positioned in the historical positions of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Our paper reflects on these findings as well as what they offer us as we attempt to chart new discourses of the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Bock, Zannie , Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124888 , vital:35707 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1056196
- Description: Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data include four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other as historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of discursive strategies so as to resist being positioned in the historical positions of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Our paper reflects on these findings as well as what they offer us as we attempt to chart new discourses of the future.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Transformation, job creation and subsidies to creative industries: the case of South Africa’s film and television sector
- Collins, Alan, Snowball, Jeanette D
- Authors: Collins, Alan , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67433 , vital:29087 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2013.874418
- Description: Pre-print , Many governments have tried to stimulate economic growth via policy on the creative industries. South Africa is no different but additionally has an overarching aim of achieving social and labour market ‘transformation’ to move away from the legacy of the apartheid era. The effectiveness of incentives provided to the film and television sector in South Africa are considered in terms of their stated objectives of job creation, skills and knowledge transfer and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Informed by empirical analysis of incentive scheme data and supplemented by elite interviews with key informants, some specific policy revisions are proposed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Collins, Alan , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67433 , vital:29087 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2013.874418
- Description: Pre-print , Many governments have tried to stimulate economic growth via policy on the creative industries. South Africa is no different but additionally has an overarching aim of achieving social and labour market ‘transformation’ to move away from the legacy of the apartheid era. The effectiveness of incentives provided to the film and television sector in South Africa are considered in terms of their stated objectives of job creation, skills and knowledge transfer and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Informed by empirical analysis of incentive scheme data and supplemented by elite interviews with key informants, some specific policy revisions are proposed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Secrets, lies and redemption:
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143381 , vital:38241 , DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2017.1285671
- Description: Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143381 , vital:38241 , DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2017.1285671
- Description: Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Representations of gender and agency in the Harry Potter series:
- Authors: Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139269 , vital:37721 , ISBN 978-1-137-43173-8 , https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431738_13
- Description: Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendered discourses in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, focussing on patterns around grammatical agency in the books.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139269 , vital:37721 , ISBN 978-1-137-43173-8 , https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431738_13
- Description: Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendered discourses in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, focussing on patterns around grammatical agency in the books.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Preparation and use of maize tassels’ activated carbon for the adsorption of phenolic compounds in environmental waste water samples
- Olorundare, O F, Msagati, T A M, Okonkwo, J O, Krause, Rui W M, Mamba, Bhekie B
- Authors: Olorundare, O F , Msagati, T A M , Okonkwo, J O , Krause, Rui W M , Mamba, Bhekie B
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/125331 , vital:35773 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3742-6
- Description: The determination and remediation of three phenolic compounds bisphenol A (BPA), ortho-nitrophenol (o-NTP), parachlorophenol (PCP) in wastewater is reported. The analysis of these molecules in wastewater was done using gas chromatography (GC) × GC time-of-flight mass spectrometry while activated carbon derived from maize tassel was used as an adsorbent. During the experimental procedures, the effect of various parameters such as initial concentration, pH of sample solution, eluent volume, and sample volume on the removal efficiency with respect to the three phenolic compounds was studied. The results showed that maize tassel produced activated carbon (MTAC) cartridge packed solid-phase extraction (SPE) system was able to remove the phenolic compounds effectively (90.84–98.49 %, 80.75–97.11 %, and 78.27–97.08 % for BPA, o-NTP, and PCP, respectively) . The MTAC cartridge packed SPE sorbent performance was compared to commercially produced C18 SPE cartridges and found to be comparable. All the parameters investigated were found to have a notable influence on the adsorption efficiency of the phenolic compounds from wastewaters at different magnitudes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Olorundare, O F , Msagati, T A M , Okonkwo, J O , Krause, Rui W M , Mamba, Bhekie B
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/125331 , vital:35773 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3742-6
- Description: The determination and remediation of three phenolic compounds bisphenol A (BPA), ortho-nitrophenol (o-NTP), parachlorophenol (PCP) in wastewater is reported. The analysis of these molecules in wastewater was done using gas chromatography (GC) × GC time-of-flight mass spectrometry while activated carbon derived from maize tassel was used as an adsorbent. During the experimental procedures, the effect of various parameters such as initial concentration, pH of sample solution, eluent volume, and sample volume on the removal efficiency with respect to the three phenolic compounds was studied. The results showed that maize tassel produced activated carbon (MTAC) cartridge packed solid-phase extraction (SPE) system was able to remove the phenolic compounds effectively (90.84–98.49 %, 80.75–97.11 %, and 78.27–97.08 % for BPA, o-NTP, and PCP, respectively) . The MTAC cartridge packed SPE sorbent performance was compared to commercially produced C18 SPE cartridges and found to be comparable. All the parameters investigated were found to have a notable influence on the adsorption efficiency of the phenolic compounds from wastewaters at different magnitudes.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Informed Interdependence: A model for collaboration in fostering communicative competencies in a Commerce curriculum
- Siebörger, Ian, van der Merwe, Kristin, Adendorff, Ralph D
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian , van der Merwe, Kristin , Adendorff, Ralph D
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124822 , vital:35700 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1023502
- Description: The current orthodoxy among academics in higher education studies is that content and language learning should be integrated in order to facilitate communicative competencies in degrees seeking to prepare students for business and professions such as accounting, engineering and pharmacy. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been well-theorised and its goals are laudable; however, we contend that a one-size-fits-all solution of complete integration is not the most practicable or pedagogically-sound option in all contexts. Instead, we argue that establishing relationships of Informed Interdependence between content and language courses may offer greater benefits in specific contexts. This argument may appear counterintuitive, but we believe it has significant insights to add to the continuing dialogue around the use of CLIL. Accordingly, we describe a Professional Communication course at Rhodes University and then outline how we have responded to changes in our context through a process of engagement which led to a new course, namely, Professional Communication for Accountants, and recurriculation of the original Professional Communication course. In reporting on this process we foreground the importance of suitable boundary objects and discursive spaces around which interdisciplinary collaboration can occur. We provide staff and student reactions to a pilot project designed to test the curricular innovations made thus far, and conclude by reflecting on the efficacy of an Informed Interdependence model in our context.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian , van der Merwe, Kristin , Adendorff, Ralph D
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124822 , vital:35700 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1023502
- Description: The current orthodoxy among academics in higher education studies is that content and language learning should be integrated in order to facilitate communicative competencies in degrees seeking to prepare students for business and professions such as accounting, engineering and pharmacy. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been well-theorised and its goals are laudable; however, we contend that a one-size-fits-all solution of complete integration is not the most practicable or pedagogically-sound option in all contexts. Instead, we argue that establishing relationships of Informed Interdependence between content and language courses may offer greater benefits in specific contexts. This argument may appear counterintuitive, but we believe it has significant insights to add to the continuing dialogue around the use of CLIL. Accordingly, we describe a Professional Communication course at Rhodes University and then outline how we have responded to changes in our context through a process of engagement which led to a new course, namely, Professional Communication for Accountants, and recurriculation of the original Professional Communication course. In reporting on this process we foreground the importance of suitable boundary objects and discursive spaces around which interdisciplinary collaboration can occur. We provide staff and student reactions to a pilot project designed to test the curricular innovations made thus far, and conclude by reflecting on the efficacy of an Informed Interdependence model in our context.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Determinants of student satisfaction with campus residence life at a South African university
- Botha, Ferdi, Snowball, Jeanette D, De Klerk, Vivian A, Radloff, Sarah E
- Authors: Botha, Ferdi , Snowball, Jeanette D , De Klerk, Vivian A , Radloff, Sarah E
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69277 , vital:29475 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15904-1_2
- Description: Factors outside the classroom can contribute to academic success as well as the achievement of important outcomes such as the appreciation of human diversity. Striving towards equality of residence life satisfaction is thus important for academic outcomes and for the development of well-functioning citizens. This study is based on the 2011 Quality of Residence Life (QoRL) Survey, conducted at a South African university, comprising roughly 2,000 respondents. The study investigates the association between satisfaction with QoRL and (i) residence milieu and characteristics, (ii) direct and indirect discrimination, (iii) perceptions of drug and alcohol issues in residence, (iv) safety, and (v) individual student characteristics. One main finding is that there are no significant differences in satisfaction with QoRL across racial and gender groups; suggesting significant progress in university transformation and equity goals. The general atmosphere and characteristics of residences are also important predictors of QoRL satisfaction.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Botha, Ferdi , Snowball, Jeanette D , De Klerk, Vivian A , Radloff, Sarah E
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69277 , vital:29475 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15904-1_2
- Description: Factors outside the classroom can contribute to academic success as well as the achievement of important outcomes such as the appreciation of human diversity. Striving towards equality of residence life satisfaction is thus important for academic outcomes and for the development of well-functioning citizens. This study is based on the 2011 Quality of Residence Life (QoRL) Survey, conducted at a South African university, comprising roughly 2,000 respondents. The study investigates the association between satisfaction with QoRL and (i) residence milieu and characteristics, (ii) direct and indirect discrimination, (iii) perceptions of drug and alcohol issues in residence, (iv) safety, and (v) individual student characteristics. One main finding is that there are no significant differences in satisfaction with QoRL across racial and gender groups; suggesting significant progress in university transformation and equity goals. The general atmosphere and characteristics of residences are also important predictors of QoRL satisfaction.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
Change in Roviana Lagoon Coral Reef ethnobiology:
- Aswani, Shankar, Albert, Simon
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar , Albert, Simon
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145460 , vital:38440 , ISBN 9783319237633 , DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-23763-3_10
- Description: Coral reefs are iconic for their beauty and biodiversity, and are of great socioeconomic and cultural importance for many coastal communities across the tropics. However, little is known about people’s local classification and their social and ecological relationship with these habitats. This chapter describes Roviana people’s changing ecological and social relationship with their coral reefs, which are increasingly being damaged by humans. First, we combined ecological and social data to describe people’s classification of local coral reefs in tandem with the productive practices conducted in these habitats. Second, we examined local perceptions and recognized effects of environmental and climatic changes on reefs over the last two decades. Finally, we measured changes in fishing activities and in the taxonomic systems (between 1995 and 2011) to evaluate if recent social and economic change has led to the erosion of marine indigenous ecological knowledge and associated practices. Studying people’s changing perceptions of their coral reefs is crucial to understand their ability to identify and adapt to environmental transformations. Simply, the way local people perceive the state of the environment is not only important in terms of changes in local epistemology but also has important implications for how resources are used and managed, and this information can be coupled with scientific one for a broader management strategy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Aswani, Shankar , Albert, Simon
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145460 , vital:38440 , ISBN 9783319237633 , DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-23763-3_10
- Description: Coral reefs are iconic for their beauty and biodiversity, and are of great socioeconomic and cultural importance for many coastal communities across the tropics. However, little is known about people’s local classification and their social and ecological relationship with these habitats. This chapter describes Roviana people’s changing ecological and social relationship with their coral reefs, which are increasingly being damaged by humans. First, we combined ecological and social data to describe people’s classification of local coral reefs in tandem with the productive practices conducted in these habitats. Second, we examined local perceptions and recognized effects of environmental and climatic changes on reefs over the last two decades. Finally, we measured changes in fishing activities and in the taxonomic systems (between 1995 and 2011) to evaluate if recent social and economic change has led to the erosion of marine indigenous ecological knowledge and associated practices. Studying people’s changing perceptions of their coral reefs is crucial to understand their ability to identify and adapt to environmental transformations. Simply, the way local people perceive the state of the environment is not only important in terms of changes in local epistemology but also has important implications for how resources are used and managed, and this information can be coupled with scientific one for a broader management strategy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
A discourse of disconnect : young people from the Eastern Cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions
- Jearey-Graham, Nicola, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Jearey-Graham, Nicola , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6308 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018864 , http://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC171669
- Description: Face-to-face adult communication with young people about sexuality is, for the most part, assigned to two main groups of people: educators tasked with teaching schoolbased sexuality education that is provided as part of the compulsory Life Orientation (LO) learning area, and parents. In this paper, we report on a study conducted with Further Education and Training College students in an Eastern Cape town. Using a discursive psychology lens, we analysed data from, first, a written question on what participants remember being taught about sexuality in LO classes and, second, focus group discussions held with mixed and same-sex groups. Discussions were structured around the sexualities of high school learners and the LO sexuality education that participants received at high school. We highlight participants’ common deployment of a ‘discourse of disconnect’ in their talk. In this discourse, the messages of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ contained in adult face-to-face communications, by both parents and LO teachers, are depicted as being delivered through inadequate or nonrelational styles of communication, and as largely irrelevant to participants’ lives. Neither of these sources of communication was seen as understanding the realities of youth sexualities or as creating habitable or performable sexual subject positions. The dominance of this ‘discourse of disconnect’ has implications for how sexuality education and parent communication interventions are conducted.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Jearey-Graham, Nicola , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6308 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018864 , http://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC171669
- Description: Face-to-face adult communication with young people about sexuality is, for the most part, assigned to two main groups of people: educators tasked with teaching schoolbased sexuality education that is provided as part of the compulsory Life Orientation (LO) learning area, and parents. In this paper, we report on a study conducted with Further Education and Training College students in an Eastern Cape town. Using a discursive psychology lens, we analysed data from, first, a written question on what participants remember being taught about sexuality in LO classes and, second, focus group discussions held with mixed and same-sex groups. Discussions were structured around the sexualities of high school learners and the LO sexuality education that participants received at high school. We highlight participants’ common deployment of a ‘discourse of disconnect’ in their talk. In this discourse, the messages of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ contained in adult face-to-face communications, by both parents and LO teachers, are depicted as being delivered through inadequate or nonrelational styles of communication, and as largely irrelevant to participants’ lives. Neither of these sources of communication was seen as understanding the realities of youth sexualities or as creating habitable or performable sexual subject positions. The dominance of this ‘discourse of disconnect’ has implications for how sexuality education and parent communication interventions are conducted.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
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