Browsing by Author "Daitz, Emma"

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    "Getting to the roots" : a critical examination into the social construction of hair amongst Coloured women living in Cape Town.
    (2013) Richardson, Denisha; Pande, Amrita; Daitz, Emma
    The purpose of this study is to explore how the social construction of head-hair impacts the lived experiences of a small group of 'Coloured' women living in Cape Town. In the first part, the dissertation argues that colonialism stigmatized the bodies of 'non-whites' as inferior; establishing racist, sexist, and classist perceptions of the human body in comparison to a 'white' imagery. The Apartheid regime in South Africa, in part, heightened these beliefs through social and structural means. All though not static, the influences of these racist ideologies remain prevalent in 21st century South African society and are prevailing in perceptions of hair. The thesis then reviews literature from a Euro-American context –concentrating on the 'black' American experience; to display the ways, in which straight and coarse hair textures are imbued with racist, sexist, and classist perceptions and meanings.
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    In whose name? a case study of how a small group of gender variant men and women based in Cape Town understand and relate to the terms transgender and transsexual
    (2013) Daitz, Emma; Posel, Deborah
    Using a phenomenological approach and the technique of in-depth interviews, this dissertation investigates how a small sample of gender variant men and women understand, experience, and relate to the terms used to designate them in academic literature and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender/Transsexual (LGBT) activism – namely, ‘transgender’ and ‘transsexual.’ The relevance of such an investigation lies in, amongst other things, the fact that the corpus of theory – queer - that is most frequently applied to in order to theorize the lives of such men and women does not pay adequate attention to the empirical data on their lived experiences.