OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Kessi, Shose"

Browsing by Author "Kessi, Shose"

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Open Access
An Exploratory Study on the Experiences of Emerging Academics at the University of Cape Town (UCT)
(2021) Odiase, Osareme Nathan; Kessi, Shose; Malinga, Mandisa
The quest for institutional transformation has created a need to continually challenge traditional notions of what an academic is and should be. While several studies have explored academics' experiences to engender transformation systems, few studies have focused strictly on emerging academics (permanently working scholars within the first five years of academic careers). These early-career academics are faced with the challenge of adapting to the institutional culture and meeting disciplinary standards of performance. Their novelty in the system makes them more vulnerable to the effect of these challenges. This study aimed to identify how they navigate these challenges, what defines them as academics, what impacts their academic freedoms, how they challenge disciplinary standards of performance, and the extent to which institutional culture affects their experiences. Through a purposive and snowball sampling strategy, 20 academics were selected from the University of Cape Town (UCT) to study. They were interviewed using a semi-structured approach and were asked openended questions with an interview guide. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data as it utilized an ideographic approach in providing insights into the participants' lived experiences. This methodological approach also helped prioritize how the study is carried out and explore participants' meaning-making processes. The participants perceived being an academic as an opportunity for subjective self-expression and a character-building process. They conceded that being an academic required genuine intellectual curiosity and a platform to engender innovation. The study also uncovered the effects of UCT's institutional and transformative plan on assimilating into the academic space. Academics perceived the performance appraising structure as too prescriptive and affirmed their desire to harness their positions to build strong interpersonal relations with students. The study recommends a more comprehensive and longitudinal approach to studying academic experiences focusing on the psycho-social factors influencing these experiences. The research further suggests a streamlined and faculty-based approach to further strengthening educational support systems at UCT.
Open Access
Black students' experiences of transformation at UCT : a photovoice study
(2015) Cornell, Josephine Ruth; Kessi, Shose
South African higher education has faced much structural transformation since the end of apartheid, and yet remains a racialised space. It is clear that despite a stated commitment to transformation in university policy nationally, in reality there is much ambivalence around transformation. In debates around transformation, black students are frequently represented in stigmatising ways. These negative representations are part of a discourse that holds the increasing numbers of black students responsible for lowering university standards. When black students encounter these discourses it can affect their self-esteem and academic performance. This study thus explores black students’ experiences of transformation at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Over six months, 10 black African and coloured UCT students participated in a photovoice research project. They participated in focus groups and produced personal reflections, photographs and written stories representing their experiences and perspectives on transformation in higher education in a previously white University. This data was analysed using thematic analysis, within a critical psychological framework, specifically decolonising psychologies. The participants’ everyday experiences of UCT were explored, and four themes were evident: the narrowness of UCT’s transformation focus; the prevalence of racial stereotypes on campus; the Eurocentric focus of the university; and the racialisation of space on campus. Ultimately, it appears that whiteness is dominant at UCT. This detrimentally affects many black students who are required to learn within this often unwelcoming white space, and who internalise the negative stereotypes they encounter. Nevertheless, many black students succeed. The participants in this study employed a variety of coping mechanisms to help them navigate through life at UCT. They were also able to employ strategies to resist the dominant discourse of black inferiority, and to re-present themselves and transformation on their own terms.
Open Access
"But sex work is good but I don't want to do it": Black men's narrative of selling sex
(2016) Peters, Simone; Kessi, Shose; Boonzaier, Floretta
Sex work within the South African context has become a much contested issue; with different perspectives emerging on the topic from various stakeholders. Sex work in South Africa, takes place in a complex context of poverty and lack of jobs, which plays a part in men's entry into the profession. While much research has been done on sex work, it has tended to focus on female sex workers, to the detriment of male sex workers. Male sex workers have been made invisible in the literature on sex work and their experiences are thus not adequately presented. This research however hopes to gain insight into Black men's experiences of sex work in Cape Town. Narrative interviews were used to investigate the experiences of 16 black male sex workers, from SWEAT, a Cape Town based NGO. All the interviews were analysed using a combination of an intersectional and narrative approach, to best understand the complexities and different factors that shape their lived experiences. Through this analysis, many complexities and tensions within male sex workers' experiences were found. Their experiences of entry and exit from sex work have and continue to be shaped by their race, age, socio economic status and gender. As men in this profession, they encounter many challenges and judgement, however being a man has also provided them with advantages not afforded to female sex workers. These findings are then discussed in relation to the existing literature and recommendations for future research and interventions are offered.
Open Access
Dynamics of identity and space in higher education: an institutional ethnographic case study of a transforming university
(2021) Cornell, Josephine; Kessi, Shose; Ratele, Kopano
Higher education globally is characterised by persistent inequality, which is particularly acute in South Africa. Due to the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid, students from certain categories of identity are marginalised, whereas others are privileged. An essential element of these dynamics of power is space. Intersections of identity such as race, class, ability and gender are axes of power in differential experiences of space. Despite this, space is often neglected in research into higher education transformation in South Africa. Through an institutional ethnography, this study examines the dynamics of space and identity at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The study involved a photovoice project, roving interviews and surveys with students; the collection of multimodal data in which space is documented; campus observations; and semi-structured interviews with staff and policymakers. The first analysis chapter involves a multimodal discourse analysis of the identity discourses produced for the Jameson Plaza by the students in the study, specifically as a place of belonging and connection and a place of alienation and discomfort. The second analysis chapter examines the institutional power geometries at play at the UCT across three specific dimensions: 1) spatial memory and material familiarity; 2) material campus symbolism; and 3) spatialised social practices and relations. The findings illustrate how space and power across these dimensions engender experiences of spatialised belonging or spatialised alienation on campus. The affective potentialities of campus, in turn, influence the types of identities students construct for themselves across campus space. Emerging from these considerations, the final analysis chapter explores what student do across, within and through campus spaces. The chapter focuses on everyday use of space by students at the individual level, and specifically spatial coping strategies students use to negotiate and manage their daily lives on campus.
Open Access
Identifying 'everyday' challenges faced by former South African street-based prostituted women using photovoice and the risks for re-entry
(2014) Oosthuyzen, Tanya Nadine; Learmonth, Despina; Kessi, Shose
Prostitution in South Africa takes place within a unique context as it is set within a culture of violence, poverty and gender discrimination. For those women wanting to exit, this causes a multitude of barriers, with often a resultant entry-exit-re-entry cycle being seen. While much research has been done on their lives while still working and during the actual exiting process, insight into the challenges faced by these women within their unique context and daily lives once they have exited, is lacking. This can provide vital information regarding the possible risk factors present for re-entry, while having vast practical relevance for intervention programs. Eight former street-based prostituted women, currently within an exit cycle and members of a leadership program, were recruited to take part in this study. Using the Photovoice method, participants were asked to take photographs and develop a story of the challenges they faced within their daily lives. These photo stories, in conjunction with focus group discussions, were then analysed using thematic analysis, so as to develop an understanding of the most salient challenges faced by these women, and how they might serve as potential barriers to a sustained and successful exit from prostitution.
Open Access
Pandemic racism: describing and delegitimising discursive necropolitics on Africa in Danish mainstream media during COVID-19
(2023) Ravn, Amalie; Kessi, Shose; Boonzaier Floretta
This is an interdisciplinary study that combines critical psychology with necropolitics, feminist, queer and crip theory, as well as linguistics through discourse theory and media studies through analysis of news articles to examine how everyday discourse contributes to practices of violence that continue to make race real. Its framework The theoretical framework of the study is necropolitics at large, Achille Mbembe's original necropolitical framework reworked through decolonial, queer and feminist critiques to create an eclectic necropolitical lens that is calibrated for the analysis of pandemic discourse. The main argument is discussed through the critical discourse analysis of Danish mainstream media's production of African figures in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The study shows that necropolitical discourse of the black and African body and nation act as a constitutive supplement to the configuration and mapping of white bodies, white supremacy and national identity. These configurations are characterised by productions of ‘Africa' as a death world, marked by suffering, unsafety and disease, which are produced and made comprehensible within white, nationalist formations of Denmark as a world of life marked by health, security and supremacy. This study concludes that the discursive creation of ‘Africa' is co-constructed and intertwined with the creation of Denmark, suggesting that distinctions between mechanisms of exclusion and mechanisms of inclusion dissolve in ways that disrupt key epistemic assumptions of normative psychology.
Open Access
Reclaiming the spatial imaginary: a photovoice study of resistance to displacement in Woodstock, Cape Town
(2019) Urson, Ruth; Kessi, Shose; Daya, Shari
Present-day South Africa is still characterised by colonial- and apartheid-era patterns of urban displacement that are exacerbated by gentrification. Low-income tenants’ and evictees’ experiences of displacement and its resistance have social, spatial, psychological, and political components. Examining these components can contribute to understanding the processes and impacts of gentrification. Reclaim the City (RTC) is a young grassroots campaign that resists evictions and demands well-located affordable housing in Cape Town through protest, education, and occupation. This study investigated how RTC activists experience and resist their displacement from the gentrifying suburb of Woodstock in Cape Town. Using a critical psychological framework, data from photovoice, participant observation, and key informant interviews were collected in 2018, triangulated, and analysed using thematic analysis. This study found that participants’ experiences of displacement were characterised by being “thingified” as black low-income tenants through mistreatment by landlords, displacement from centres to peripheries, becoming invisible residents, and internalisation. This was compounded for those with intersectional vulnerabilities, such as women and African migrants. Such experiences uphold rather than contradict an apartheid spatial imaginary, encompassing the continuation of apartheid-era norms relating to psychological, spatial, and social elements of displacement into the present. While sometimes delegitimised for their illegal activities, this study illustrates how RTC activists combined strategies of building new identities, organising legal and illegal resistance to displacement, and making meaning of their occupation of a vacant building in Woodstock, to pave the way for new spatial imaginaries. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Open Access
Researching Race, Space and Masculinities in Bishop Lavis: A Critical Ethnographic Study
(2021) Peters, Simone Maxine; Kessi, Shose; Boonzaier, Floretta
Research done on ‘coloured' men and communities have problematized ‘coloured' masculinities and communities. Studies showed ‘coloured' men to be the most likely to perpetrate violence and rape. These studies further suggest that violence, drug abuse, gangsterism and alcoholism are a prominent feature of ‘coloured' communities, one such community being Bishop Lavis. Such narratives have led to this complex group of people and their communities being reduced to negative stereotypes. This research aimed to showcase more holistic and alternative narratives on Bishop Lavis, its community and ‘coloured' identities through a critical ethnographic methodology. Multiple methods to collect the data was utilised, namely narrative interviews with eight community stakeholders and six older men (aged 35 and above). Additionally, a Photovoice method was used with six men (aged 18 to 34), where a focus group, individual narrative interviews, and visual (photographs) and narrative data were collected. The data was analysed using multiple theoretical frameworks and data analysis tools to highlight the complexities of the participant's lived experiences. The results found that participants used their talk to challenge dominant narratives that exist on ‘coloured' men and communities and confirm and reproduce stigmatised narratives . Furthermore, it was found that race, location, gender, class and other identities intersected to produce particular experiences for the participants.
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Transforming historically white universities: students and the politics of racial representation
(2013) Kessi, Shose
Africa's institutions of higher education are interrogating the practices that promote effective transformation in order to redress the inequalities of the past. In historically white universities, these debates include important issues such as admissions policies and academic support programmes, which represent significant responses to the disparate experiences and lived realities of students in South Africa today.

Browsing by Author "Kessi, Shose"

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