Browsing by Author "Seekings, Jeremy"
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- ItemOpen AccessThe 2003 Cape Area Study (CAS 3): A User's Guide(2004) Seekings, Jeremy; Alexander, Karin; Jooste, Tracy; Matzner, IsaacThe Cape Area Study (CAS) comprises an ongoing series of surveys conducted in Cape Town.?The surveys have covered and will continue to cover a wide range of topics.?Over time, however, CAS will have a quality that is unique in South Africa (and perhaps Africa as a whole), in that there will be an accumulation of data on a focused social setting across a span of time, such that the value of the 'whole' is substantially greater than the 'sum of the parts'. CAS is modelled on the Detroit Area Study, conducted annually since 1951 by the University of Michigan.
- ItemOpen AccessAccess to housing in Cape Town : do young people move smoothly from parental housing to independent living arrangements?(2010) Chisonga, Nixon; Seekings, JeremyMost international and local (South African) research on housing examine housing tenure in terms of static categories, - i.e. does someone own or rent their accommodation - without capturing either the dynamics of how people occupy housing or the complexities that arise when, for example, someone might rent accommodation while owning a house elsewhere. Most censuses and surveys simply ask whether the household living in a sampled house (or apartment, etc) currently rents or owns that house. I find access to housing to be a better analytical category than tenure arguing that renting and owner occupier housing are not exclusive categories, and can co-exist, and that additional categories should be identified.
- ItemMetadata onlyActivist networks and political protest in the Free State, 1983-1990(SADET and UNISA Press, 2010) Twala, Chitja; Seekings, JeremyChapter 14, Jeremy Seekings collaborates with Chitja Twala to examine activist networks and political protest in the Free State. The authors explain that although no regional UDF structure was ever formally launched in the area there were protests in the townships of Tumahole, Thabong (Welkom) and Mangaung (Bloemfontein); these later spread as far afield as Bethlehem and Harrismith.
- ItemOpen Access‘Affordability’ and the political economy of social protection in contemporary Africa(2016-12) Seekings, JeremyThe ‘affordability’ of new or expanded social protection programmes depends on more than an assessment of the fiscal costs or the poverty-reducing or developmental benefits. Diverse international organisations have showed that programmes costing less than or about 1 percent of GDP have substantial benefits, and most low-income countries have the ‘fiscal space’ for such programmes (including through increased taxation). These international organisations have generally failed to convince national policy-making elites to raise and to allocate scarce domestic resources to social protection programmes. The result is an ‘affordability gap’ between what is advocated for African countries and what those countries’ governments are willing to spend. This paper examines four cases of contestation over the ‘affordability’ of social protection reforms in Africa: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and the semi- autonomous territory of Zanzibar. In all four cases political elites resisted or rejected proposals for expensive reforms. In practice, the most expensive reforms that were approved were ones costing only 0.4 to 0.5 percent of GDP. The governments of Zambia and Botswana generally resisted even expenditures of this magnitude. The cost ceiling for reforms is far below the estimates of international organisations, reflecting political, normative and ideological factors.
- ItemOpen AccessAn assessment of how well social movement theory explains the emergence and development of Rape Crisis Cape Town(2005) Cook, Alison; Seekings, JeremyThis thesis uses three social movement theories to analyse the growth and development of Rape Crisis Cape Town (Rape Crisis). Rape Crisis provides counselling to rape victims, education and advocacy. The thesis also uses Rape Crisis to assess the analytic power of these theories, which were developed in the USA and Europe, in South Africa. This thesis seeks answers to several key questions about Rape Crisis's history. It emerged in 1976 at a time when there was relatively little self-conscious feminist activity in South Africa. How was Rape Crisis able to emerge and grow despite hostility from authorities and other left wing organisations; why Rape Crisis went from a modified collective to a collective when feminist organisations usually follow the opposite path; why Rape Crisis maintained its collective structure for much longer than most feminist organisations; why Rape Crisis changed dramatically in terms of structure and organisational culture after 1992? This work uses interviews, documentary evidence, and secondary sources to build a picture of Rape Crisis's development and the issues it confronted. The thesis covers the period 1976 to 2000. The main chapters consider a phase of Rape Crisis's development using the three social movement theories under consideration: resource mobilisation theory, political process theory and generational theory. The analytical power of each theory is considered. The thesis concludes that the theories considered offer a cogent analysis of Rape Crisis and combining the theories creates a strong analysis. The theories were able to provide answers to the key questions outlined above. The shortfalls identified in the theories were not caused because the theories were unsuitable for examining an organisation in South Africa. The problems stemmed from the failure of the theories to consider the impact of emotion on organisations. Thus, the criticism is applicable to these theories whenever they are dealing with social movement organisations that engage in emotional work. The key emotions for the purposes of this thesis were stress and those associated with trauma. These emotions impacted on decision-making, organisational structure and collective identity. However, the thesis concludes that the existing theories can be adapted to consider the impact of emotion. Rape Crisis's ability to emerge and grow without a sponsor organisation challenges the theories' arguments about the importance of social movement organisations being based in organisationally rich social sectors.
- ItemRestrictedBeyond 'fluidity': kinship and households as social projects(2008) Seekings, JeremyUrban and rural households in South Africa are fluid (in that individuals move between households) and porous (in that individuals may be members of more than one 'household' at the same time). One important consequence of this fluidity and porosity is that the effects of AIDS-related disability and death may be mitigated, as households are reconstituted to provide care as well as to protect the welfare of dependents. This paper argues that our understanding of household dynamics needs to go beyond asserting the fact of fluidity (or porosity). Precisely how fluid and porous are households, and (in particular) how 'extended' are families in terms of the obligations and claims that kin can make on each other? Are there moral or normative constraints on the decisions made by individuals with respect to householding and kinship? The paper reviews the extant literatures on these questions in South Africa as a basis for further empirical research. Whilst inconclusive, the secondary literatures suggest that the claims entailed in kinship are more and more often evaded, especially by men (and paternal kin), and that responsibilies and obligations are increasingly conditional. Children - including, but not only, orphans - are readily accommodated by kin. South Africa's social assistance system means that the elderly are financial breadwinners rather than dependents, helping to perpetuate the practice of extended family-households. Perhaps the most striking shift in household and kinship has been the decline of marriage and the crisis of patrilinearity. There is indirect evidence that people not only prioritise the claims of children but also see the elderly and sick as more deserving than able-bodied adults of working age. Overall, 'fluidity' and the claims made in the name of kinship have clear limits. The paper concludes with the suggestion that further empirical research be informed by the methodologies used in studies of kinship in the UK and USA, notwithstanding the substantive differences between householding and kinship in different settings.
- ItemRestrictedBeyond heroes and villains: the rediscovery of the ordinary in the study of childhood and adolescence in South Africa(Taylor & Francis, 2006) Seekings, JeremyWriting about young people - or the 'youth' - in South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s was dominated by representations of them as either the 'heroes' or 'villains' of political struggle. During the political transition, young people attracted a rush of attention as the source of a series of supposed social 'problems'. In much of the rest of Africa, also, scholars and the public alike have focused on the participation of children in civil war - as child-soldiers - or in other activities that are deemed subversive of social order. In South Africa, moral panics over the youth did not persist after the early 1990s, as public concern focused on more general social and economic problems. Ironically, perhaps, this has opened space for researchers to study the everyday worlds of ordinary young people. But the turn to the 'ordinary' in the study of childhood and adolescence certainly does not mean any neglect of processes of change. In South Africa, as in other parts of Africa, children are growing up in a period of rapid social and economic change, amidst continuing urbanization, deagrarianisation and educational expansion, changing households and kin relationships, new economic opportunities and prospects, and cultural globalization.
- ItemRestrictedThe broader importance of welfare reform in South Africa(Taylor & Francis, 2002) Seekings, JeremyOn the agenda for welfare reform in South Africa are proposals to expand the public provision of welfare in radical new ways. Not only does this contrast with the prevailing global trend of retrenchment in public welfare systems, but the proposed ‘basic income grant’ in South Africa is an innovation that remains a fringe idea even in the established welfare states of the North. The very unusual agenda for welfare reform in South Africa is based on the fact that the country already has a welfare system that is exceptional in the world, including especially a non‐contributory old‐age pension that provides a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly, and financial assistance to poor parents with children and to the disabled. The basic income grant has been proposed, most recently in 2002 by the Taylor Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa, in order to fill the gap caused by high unemployment in South Africa's existing welfare system, which is otherwise already generous and redistributive. Whilst the proposed basic income grant is the key item on South Africa's innovative reform agenda, the country is also making important contributions to broader debates over welfare through its mix of familial, state and private responsibilities. DOI:10.1080/02533950208458731
- ItemOpen AccessBuilding a conservative welfare state in Botswana(2016-12) Seekings, JeremyBotswana’s welfare state is both a parsimonious laggard in comparison with some other middle-income countries in Africa (such as Mauritius and South Africa) and extensive (in comparison with its low-income neighbours to the north and east). Coverage is broad but cash transfers are modest. This reflects distinctively conservative features – including especially preferences for workfare and for minimal benefits paid in kind (food) rather than cash – combined with parsimonious cash transfers for select categories of deserving poor (the elderly and orphans), administered through the Department of Local Government, not a dedicated welfare department. This is a very different model of welfare-state- building – and, more generally, social contract – to those of its neighbours in Southern Africa. It is the result of the specific character of poverty in Botswana, the enduring but not unchallenged political dominance of the conservatively paternalist Botswana Democratic Party, and the predominant values and beliefs in the society.
- ItemRestrictedThe Carnegie Commission and the Backlash Against Welfare State-Building in South Africa, 1931-1937(Taylor & Francis, 2006) Seekings, JeremyBy the late 1930s, South Africa had developed a welfare state that was remarkable in terms of both the range of risks against which it provided and its coverage of the poor – although only for poor white and coloured people. The Carnegie Commission of Inquiry into the Poor White Problem in South Africa is often credited with the major role in prompting this welfare statebuilding. This is, at most, only partly true. Firstly, key aspects of the welfare state, most notably old-age pensions, predated the Commission. Secondly, as I show in this article, the Commission’s recommendations with regard to most areas of social policy (excepting education) were hostile to programmatic state-building and sought to return discretionary power to the church through indoor (and perhaps also outdoor) poor relief. Some members of the Commission might have employed ‘modern’ social science research methods, and some may have favoured the expansion of professional social work, but its reports generally gave expression to a backlash against the prior, nascent growth of South Africa’s welfare state. In general, the Commission’s recommendations entailed a reversal to the kind of ‘scientific charity’ that characterised the United States in the late nineteenth century, not the more professional social work of the United States in the 1920s and certainly not the social policies of the New Deal. The Commission gave rise to a period of struggle over the appropriate roles of church, state and professional social workers. Although the church-centric ambitions of most of the Carnegie commissioners were ultimately frustrated, their efforts contributed to the making of a somewhat bifurcated welfare state in which the expansion of welfare programmes was retarded.
- ItemOpen AccessClaims on and obligations to kin in Cape Town, South Africa(2010) Harper, Sarah; Seekings, JeremyQualitative and quantitative research has shown that non-nuclear family households remain common in post-apartheid South Africa whilst suggesting also that families are less extended than in the past. Most of this research focuses on who lives with whom. This paper goes beyond this by examining the claims that young people anticipate might be made on them, and the obligations they can envisage making on others. Data from the fourth wave of the Cape Area Panel Study, conducted in 2006, show that most young people report being able to make claims on only a narrow range of close kin. The range of kin on whom young black adults report being able to make claims is only marginally wider than for young white and coloured adults, and is heavily concentrated on the maternal side. This suggests that there has been some shrinkage in the extent of kinship ties among young black people, and a dramatic shrinkage on the paternal side. Unlike their coloured and white peers, young black adults report many prospective obligations to diverse kin, including more distant kin, although again almost entirely on the maternal side. Multivariate analysis suggests that 'race' - presumably as a proxy for cultural factors - is not important in shaping the claims that someone feels able to make, but remains important in shaping the obligations that someone anticipates having to make, after controlling for other variables. These patterns did not differ by gender. We find some evidence that claims and obligations entail reciprocal relationships, especially among less close kin. Overall, we find that relationships with more distant kin are largely limited to black South Africans, are highly conditional, exist predominantly with maternal kin and more frequently entail feelings of responsibility toward kin than reliance upon kin .
- ItemOpen AccessThe Colour of Desert: Race, Class and Distributive Justice in Post-Apartheid South Africa(2005) Seekings, JeremyThis paper examines how racial differences affect perceptions of distributive justice in post-apartheid South Africa. In ‘divided’ societies, citizens might be expected to discriminate on the basis of race or culture in assessing the justice of other citizens’ claims. South Africa is a prime example of a ‘divided’ society whereby, in the past, legislation and racial elite culture combined in pervasive discrimination. Given the continued importance of race in daily life in South Africa, we might expect that attitudes about distributive justice would continue to be racialised, with people considering members of the same ‘racial group’ as themselves as being more deserving than members of other groups. But evidence from both national data-sets and a new data-set for Cape Town in particular suggests that race has complex and often counter-intuitive effects on perceptions of distributive justice. By some criteria, and some analytic techniques, people do not discriminate on the basis of race when assessing desert; by other criteria, and other analytic techniques, desert appears still to be somewhat coloured in post-apartheid South Africa. Overall, however, the evidence suggests that the effects of race are either weak or work in counterintuitive directions. Rich, white Capetonians are certainly more generous in their views on redistribution than is generally assumed.
- ItemOpen Access(Con)Formations of inequality in the emergent non-racial democracy of South Africa : the relationship between economic well-being and attitude to race(2006) Berk, Anita; Seekings, JeremyThis research investigates the relationship between economic well-being and attitudes to race amongst its respondents who took part in a survey known as the Cape Area Study (CAS) in 2005. In this inquiry, economic well-being is measured in two ways, by (household) income level and living conditions, the latter by means of a Living Coalitions Index (LCI), created by the author. The degree to which these two measures are able to explain variability in attitudes to race in the respondent sample is investigated. The specific aspect of attitude to race focused upon in this investigation is amenability to racial integration, and is measured by means of the Amenability to Racial Integration Index (ARII), also constructed by the author. Aside from the chief explanatory element of economic well-being, the degree of influence of other factors on attitude to race such as gender, age, education and employment status are also explored.
- ItemOpen AccessConceptions of disability and desert in the South African welfare state: The case of disability grant assessment(2016) Kelly, Gabrielle Gita; Seekings, Jeremy; Nattrass, NicoliDisability is a universally difficult concept to define and assess for social assistance and social insurance purposes. The ways in which access to disability welfare rights are defined and allocated remain especially neglected in the Global South. This thesis examines the administration of the disability grant (DG) in South Africa, where unusually generous disability benefits exist alongside very high levels of unemployment and poverty. It focuses on the role of doctors, who must confirm that applicants for the DG are disabled, serving as gatekeepers, and thus as 'street level bureaucrats' within the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA). Observations of doctor-claimant interactions in clinics and hospitals showed that disability assessments are sites of contestation between doctors, claimants and the state over how social security rights should be allocated. Doctors struggled to balance their roles and obligations as medical professionals, gatekeepers and moral agents, in a context where issues of employability and disability are hard to separate. In the face of heavy workloads and significant pressure from claimants to recommend grants, doctors employed coping strategies that distanced and objectified patients. Despite efforts by SASSA to curb their discretion, doctors inserted their own subjective understandings of disability and deservingness into the assessment process as they interpreted and applied DG policy in their interactions with claimants - bending the rules for people they thought were 'deserving' and rigidly applying the rules in 'undeserving' cases. Variation in doctors' decision-making reflects different ways of framing disability cases. The interpretive schemas that doctors used to organise and make sense of cases were shaped by their social background and dispositions, work environment, professional and personal norms and values, and ideas about distributive justice. Framing is also an interactive process and was influenced by claimants, who brought their own agency to bear on the assessment. The concept of framing contributes to street-level bureaucracy theory by capturing the pluralism of norms and ideas that ground street-level actions, whilst allowing us to observe and explain patterns emerging in street-level decisions. It is also useful in examining the relationship and potential conflicts between professional expertise, social norms and values, and bureaucratic rules. The study also shows the need for scholars of street-level bureaucracy to consider the influence of citizen agency on policy implementation. The challenges and pressures doctors faced in categorising disability, combined with patients' misunderstanding of and resistance to these categories and related demands to be included in the system, demonstrate significant gaps in the design and application of social security and poverty alleviation policy in South Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessThe continuing politics of basic income in South Africa(2010) Seekings, Jeremy; Matisonn, HeidiSouth African government ministers routinely profess their commitment to mitigating poverty and inequality, including - if necessary - through broad and expensive welfare programs. The South African state redistributes approximately 3.5% of GDP through non-contributory social assistance programs, paying out more than 13 million grants every month, in a country whose total population is less than 50 million. No other country in the global South spends as much on social assistance or reaches as high a proportion of the population. ?Yet many poor people remain beyond the reach of the public welfare system, and many of these poor people vote for the governing party, the African National Congress (ANC). This would seem to be fertile ground for the introduction of a basic income grant (BIG) reaching all citizens (and voters). Indeed, in 2002, a government-appointed committee of enquiry recommended (albeit tentatively) the introduction of a BIG.
- ItemRestrictedThe continuing salience of race: Discrimination and diversity in South Africa(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Seekings, JeremyThe end of apartheid has brought a resurgence of research into racial identities, attitudes and behaviour in South Africa. The legacy of systematic racial ordering and discrimination under apartheid is that South Africa remains deeply racialised, in cultural and social terms, as well as deeply unequal, in terms of the distribution of income and opportunities. South Africans continue to see themselves in the racial categories of the apartheid era, in part because these categories have become the basis for post-apartheid ‘redress’, in part because they retain cultural meaning in everyday life. South Africans continue to inhabit social worlds that are largely defined by race, and many express negative views of other racial groups. There has been little racial integration in residential areas, although schools provide an important opportunity for inter-racial interaction for middleclass children. Experimental and survey research provide little evidence of racism, however. Few people complain about racial discrimination, although many report everyday experiences that might be understood as discriminatory. Racial discrimination per se seems to be of minor importance in shaping opportunities in post-apartheid South Africa. Far more important are the disadvantages of class, exacerbated by neighbourhood effects: poor schooling, a lack of footholds in the labour market, a lack of financial capital. The relationship between race and class is now very much weaker than in the past. Overall, race remains very important in cultural and social terms, but no longer structures economic advantage and disadvantage.
- ItemOpen AccessContinuity and Change in the South African Class Structure Since the End of Apartheid(2015) Seekings, JeremyThe overall shape of the class structure in South Africa changed little after 1994. The upper and middle classes have grown and prospered, and poverty has probably declined somewhat among the lower classes, but the basic shape remained unchanged. Evidence from survey data is consistent with data from other sources. The racial composition of some classes has changed, however, with steady upward mobility by black people into the upper classes. The class structure continues to entail three broad strata: affluent and increasingly deracialised upper classes, the lower middle and working classes which have enjoyed some improvements in their living conditions, and the lower classes of working poor and the underclass, for whom political change has brought fewest economic benefits. In contrast to Marxist analyses that see lower middle, working and lower classes as parts of the same class, this paper argues that these classes are best understood as two strata.
- ItemRestrictedA cut above the rest: Traditional Male Circumcision and HIV Risk Among Xhosa men in Cape Town, South Africa(Lippincot Williams and Wilkins, 2011) Maughan-Brown, Brendan; Venkataramani, Atheendar S; Nattrass, Nicoli; Seekings, Jeremy; Whiteside, Alan WRandomized clinical trials have shown that medical male circumcision substantially reduces the risk of contracting HIV. However, relatively little is known about the relationship between traditional male circumcision and HIV risk. This article examines variations in traditional circumcision practices and their relationship to HIV status. We used data from the fifth wave of the Cape Area Panel Study (n = 473) of young adults in Cape Town, South Africa, to determine attitudes towards circumcision, whether men were circumcised, at what age, and whether their foreskin had been fully or partially removed. Probit models were estimated to determine the association between extent and age of circumcision and HIV status. RESULTS: There was strong support for traditional male circumcision. 92.5% of the men reported being circumcised, with 10.5% partially circumcised. Partially circumcised men had a 7% point greater risk of being HIV positive than fully circumcised men (P < 0.05) and equal risk compared with uncircumcised men. Most (91%) men were circumcised between the ages of 17 and 22 years (mean 19.2 years), and HIV risk increased with age of circumcision (P < 0.10). CONCLUSIONS: Efforts should be made to encourage earlier circumcisions and to work with traditional surgeons to reduce the number of partial circumcisions. Data on the extent and age of circumcision are necessary for meaningful conclusions to be drawn from survey data about the relationship between circumcision and HIV status.
- ItemRestrictedDemocracy and distribution in highly unequal economies: the case of South Africa(Cambridge University Press, 2001) Nattrass, Nicoli; Seekings, JeremyGiven that incomes in South Africa are distributed very unequally, it might be expected that the establishment of representative democracy would result in the adoption of redistributive policies. Yet overall inequality has not declined since I994. The electoral and party system provides uneven pressure for redistribution. The fact that poor South Africans have the vote ensures that some areas of public policy do help the poor. The post-apartheid government not only inherited a surprisingly redistributive set of social poli- cies (welfare, education and health care), but has made changes that entail even more redistribution. But these policies do little to help a core section of the poor in South Africa: the unemployed, and especially households in which no one is working. Other public policies serve to disadvantage this marginalised constituency: labour market and other economic policies serve to steer the economy down a growth path that shuts out many of the un- skilled and unemployed. The workings of these policies remain opaque, making it unlikely that poor citizens will use their vote to effect necessary policy reforms.
- ItemOpen AccessDemocracy, poverty and inclusive growth in South Africa since 1994(2013) Seekings, JeremyThe formal establishment of representative democracy in South Africa provided a weak impetus to effective pro-poor policy-making. Poverty and inequality (of both opportunities and outcomes) have persisted. Political parties want to be seen as being pro-poor, but there is insufficient competition within the electoral system to ensure that the governing party adopts or implements many effective pro-poor policies. The poor have been unable to use their votes to counter the powerful vested interests of the new black elite and middle classes, organised labour, and (unevenly) capital. Progressive technocrats and bureaucrats have implemented a variety of pro-poor reforms - including especially the expansion of social grants - in the face of skepticism among some senior ANC leaders. But many other reforms have been blocked by powerful vested interests (including, in many cases, organized labour). Direct action and social movement organisations have achieved limited pro-poor gains in the delivery of some services, but have had not changed the underlying patterns of distribution and redistribution.