Racializing teenage pregnancy : ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in the South African scientific literature

Macleod, Catriona I; Durrheim, Kevin

Title: Racializing teenage pregnancy : ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in the South African scientific literature
Creator: Macleod, Catriona I
Creator: Durrheim, Kevin
Date Issued: 2002
Date: 2002
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:6260
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007878
Description: The signifiers, ‘race’, ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’ are utilized in the teenage pregnancy literature (1) to highlight ‘differences’ in adolescent sexual and reproductive behaviour and (2) as explanatory tools. When ‘white’ teenagers are the focus of research, psychological explanations are usually invoked, while for ‘black’ teenagers, explanations are socio-cultural in nature. In this paper, we explore how, through a process of racialization, the psycho-medical literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa contributes to the entrenchment of ‘race’, ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ as fixed, ‘natural’ signifiers. We utilize Derrida’s notion of différance, together with Phoenix and Woollett’s adaptation – ‘normalized absence/pathologized presence’ – to indicate how ‘black’ people are cast as the Other, the pathologized presence which relies on the normalized absent trace, ‘whiteness’, for definition. We analyse how the notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ are deployed to sanitize or disguise the underlying racializing project. ‘Black’ is exoticized and rendered strange and thus open to scrutiny, monitoring and intervention. ‘Culture’ and ‘tradition’ appeal to the myth of origin, thus providing pseudo-historical explanations which essentialize and naturalize racialized collectivities.
Description: Rhodes University
Format: 27 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Language: English
Relation: Macleod, C. and Durrheim, K. (2002) Racializing teenage pregnancy: ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ in the South African scientific literature. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25 (5). pp. 778-801. ISSN 0141-9870 (print) 1466-4356 (online)Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0141987022000000268
Rights: This is an electronic version of an article that was published in Ethnic and Racial Studies © 2002 Copyright; Taylor & Francis. Ethnic and Racial Studies is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0141987022000000268

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RU Department of Psychology

Macleod, Catriona Ida (Distinguished Professor)

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