Browsing by Subject "Gender Studies"
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- ItemOpen Access"All the world's a stage": 'gendered performativities of 'transitional' masculinities within a South Africa female-to-male (FTM) transsexual context(2009) Kinoti, Patricia; Bennett, JaneThe theoretical framework for this research was designed through contemporary work, both international and South Africa, on questions of gender, performativity, and masculinities. In addition, questions of social justice for those marginalized by gender conventions created the context for a qualitative research process in which transgender men's experiences of their subjectivities as 'men' served as a route through which to explore questions of gender surveillance in a post-democratice South Africa...The research contributes significantly to knowledge on often silenced and marginalized communities within African societies, where the majority of alternative sexualities and gender identities are often regarded as 'un-African'. The research concludes that the Trans men's masculinities play a pivital role in the deconstruction of the gender institution as 'natural' by presenting alternatives states of being as viable options within seemingly static boundaries.
- ItemOpen AccessBlack feminist intellectual activism: a transformative pedagogy at a South African university(2016) Hames, Mary Margaret Philome; Bennett, JaneThis dissertation engages with critical pedagogic theories and activism from a black feminist perspective. The central argument is that education is not only confined to the formal classroom but also takes place in the most unlikely places outside the classroom. This work is premised on the educational philosophies of liberation, embodiment and freedom of the oppressed and the marginalised. The qualitative research is largely presented as ethnographical research, with the researcher located as both participant in the evolvement of the two educational programmes and as writer of this dissertation. Both educational programmes deal with performance and performativity and aim to give voice to the marginalised bodies and lives in the university environment. The research demonstrates how two marginalised groups claim space on campus through performativity involving the body and voice. In the Edudrama, Reclaiming the P…Word, young black women, via representation of word and body, transform the performance space into one in which the misogynistic and racist gaze is transformed. This feminist theatre is intrinsically related to the feminist political work of reclamation of the black female body, which became invisible and objectified for abuse under colonialism, apartheid and patriarchy. The various feminist elements and processes involved in creating feminist text and theatre are discussed. The praxis involved in these processes is then theorised in terms of critical pedagogy as black feminist intellectual activism. In the case of the lesbian, gay and transgender programme, Loud Enuf, the bodies and voices are used differently in the public campus domain to challenge homophobia. This programme is used to raise awareness about sex, sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity. This programme is intensely political and challenges ambiguous understandings regarding the notion of equality in South Africa post-1994.
- ItemOpen AccessBodies across borders : embodiment and experiences of migration for southern African international students at the University of Cape Town(2010) Moll, Tessa; Bennett, JaneIn context of increasing global migration and its correlation to heightened tensions around the meaning of a "foreign" body, this research questions the experiences of bodies crossing borders into the social and historical space of Cape Town, South Africa. Grounded in theories of surveillance, embodiment, and feminist geography of fear of crime, the study employed a feminist methodology using qualitative group interviews with international students from the Southern African Development Community at the University of Cape Town. The transcribed data was analysed through the participants' use of discourses and their descriptions of experiences. Questions arose around the meaning of surveillance and notions of respectability in transition. Furthermore, participants navigate amid new spaces of fear and insecurity in relation to their subjectivities, particularly as "foreigners". The research suggests that fear becomes a fundamental attribute of bodies in migration through which individuals mitigate through "passing" subverting expressions of embodied nationalities, knowledge gathering of the local terrain, among others. The challenges and techniques to overcome these fears become part of a process to re-establish the "self" in a foreign context.
- ItemOpen AccessBody politics: an illumination of the landscape of sexuality and nationhood? Re-seeing Zimbabwe through elderly women's representations of their sexual and gendered lives(2013) Batisai, Kezia; Bennett, JaneIncludes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.
- ItemOpen AccessConstructing rape, imagining self : discourses of rape and gender subjectivity in South Africa(2007) Dosekun, SimideleThis thesis explores the meanings and impact of rape in South Africa for fifteen women located at the University of Cape Town (UCT) who claim to have never experienced rape. Drawing upon feminist post-structuralist theories of subjectivity and taking a discursive analytic approach, the thesis explores how these women construct the phenomenon of rape in their society and thereby imagine themselves. It is based upon empirical data collected through qualitative interviews. Analysis of this data shows that the women discursively construct rape as highly prevalent in South Africa but ordinarily distant from their personal lives, concerning then 'the Other.' However, it is argued that the women also construct themselves as gendered and embodied subjects inherently vulnerable to male violence such as rape. This means that the fear and imagination of rape are not absent from their daily lives, but rather shape their sense of safety, agency, sexuality and citizenship in South Africa. Because these fifteen women deny personal experiences of rape, the thesis shows that they draw on public discourses and their subjective imaginations to theorise rape and rape crisis in post-apartheid South Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessDancing with dangerous desires : the performance of femininity and experiences of pleasure and danger by young black women within club spaces(2007) McLaren, Mary Gugu Tizita; Salo, ElaineThis research was carried out in Langa Township, Cape Town and worked with 7 young black women, between the ages of 19 and 26 years old. The aim was to explore the fluidity of identity, in particular gender identity, by exploring the performance of 'normative' femininity and 'hidden/subversive' femininity performed in different spaces. The focus was on 'hidden/subversive' femininity and the experiences of pleasure and danger in clubs spaces in Cape Town. It was found that these experiences centre on appearance, use of alcohol and dancing and expose the way in which young women negotiate between the pleasurable and dangerous that, consciously or unconsciously, push the boundaries of entrenched gender norms. In addition, owing 10 the nature of the research, constructions of masculinity were also explored and discovered to have a profound impact on young women's experiences within club spaces and in their everyday lives, relating to sexual relationships. This study aims to reveal the power and agency of young women, as well as the struggles and restrictions.
- ItemOpen AccessDiscourses of gendered vulnerability in the context of HIV/AIDS: An analysis of the 16 Days of Activism Against Women Abuse Campaign 2007 in Khayelitsha, South Africa(2009) Monte, Loredana; Bennett, Jane; Salo, ElaineThis thesis explores discourses on gender and gender based violence produced in the 16 Days of Activism Against Women Abuse campaign 2007 in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The public awareness campaign united a number of local, community based organisations that work in the overlapping fields of HIV/AIDS and gender based violence. For the purpose of this study, three of the most vocal organisations in this campaign were chosen as research participants; The local branch of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) Khayelitsha, the Rape Survivors Centre Simelela, and the youth drama group Masibambisane. Assuming that discourses are embedded in unequal relations of power, this study adopts a discourse analytical approach to the 'gendering' of HI VIA IDS to reveal how knowledge and meanings are produced, reproduced and contested between more powerful institutions and a marginalised community. The thesis first explores dominant discourses on HIV/AIDS and gender in development discourse and social and biomedical research, and uncovers how HIV/AIDS risks are mostly related to women's lack of power and inherent vulnerability to violence. Such hegemonic discourses are then also found in international and national guidelines and policy frameworks that address the 'gendered' risks of HIV and AIDS, while at the same time these frameworks also promote approaches to HIV/AIDS that acknowledge contextual and societal factors that shape vulnerability. Eventually, a review of international and national frameworks that address the 'dual epidemics' shows how the so called 'community sector' is often highlighted as a crucial partner in multi-sectoral approaches to HIV/AIDS. The empirical study then aims at locating such discourses in a localised, South African context, and explores the ways in which dominant discourses are reproduced, contested, and redefined by community activists. Empirical data is collected through participant observation with the organisations coordinating the campaign, recording of speeches delivered during the public events, and semi-structured, qualitative interviews with five key members of the organisations. A discursive analysis of the data reveals that femininity and masculinity are mainly constructed in rather conservative ways, portraying women as inherently vulnerable and men as either perpetrators of violence, or protectors of women and children. These constructions of gender are based in a patriarchal, hegemonic notion of masculinity as powerful and responsible for the suffering or salvation of weak and vulnerable women. However, within these hegemonic gender notions, women speakers simultaneously contest their victimhood status by claiming their rights as citizens of South Africa, by relocating power in their collective struggle, and by reframing their vulnerabilities as embedded in intersecting inequalities of gender, class and race, and as members of a community largely marginalised by the state. The multitude of discourses at play in the public campaign point at the necessity for a re-reading of the intersections of HIV/AIDS, gender inequality and gender based violence beyond victim-agent dualisms.
- ItemOpen AccessEmpowering women activists : creating a monster : the contentious politics of gender within social justice activism(2007) Eriksson, Asa; Bennett, JaneThis Master's Research Project has sought to investigate the discursive space for 'gender struggles' within contemporary South African class based social justice activism. It has done so in the form of a qualitative case study, analysing particular 'gender' interventions designed by a left-wing popular education organisation during 2006, and how these are theorized and contextualised against this specific moment in time in post-apartheid South Africa. The research has looked at how and why the organisation is presently trying to challenge gendered power inequalities in its internal and external work, strengthening women activists in the Community-based organisations and Social Movements which it targets, and contribute to putting women's strategic gender interests on the agenda of these movements, while simultaneously seeking to theorize the meaning of 'political' gender work in relation to its dominant perspective of class justice. The researcher has followed a specific empowerment initiative targeting women activists during the year, and has also engaged closely with the institutional dynamics in the organisation under study. The data has been gathered through interviews with staff members and women activists, and through participatory observation in educational events and office meetings. The theoretical framework for the study was designed in relation to Shireen Hassim's investigations of the "discursive space" for South African feminist groups to articulate their demands while continuing to work within the dominant, male-led resistance movements (Hassim, 2006:14-19), and to Amanda Gouws' theorizing of citizenship as including 'embodied' participation in political processes and activism (Gouws, 2005:1-16,71-87). It furthermore builds on contemporary theories on social movements and grassroots mobilisation in South Africa (recaptured by Ballard et. aI., 2006:3-19), on feminist consciousness-raising (Kaplan, 1997) and on organisational change for gender equality (Rao and Kelleher, 2003). Some of the suggestions made, while analysing the data against this theoretical framework, include; That the conflict which has emerged in the organisation under study in relation to the new 'gender programme' is indeed a contestation over the meaning of 'political' gender work, and over who can be a legitimate 'political actor' (Hassim, 2006: 17); simultaneously and contradictive, there is an awareness in the organisations that the nature of the 'working class' is shifting in pace with neo-liberal globalisation processes, and that rank-and-file members in working class organisations are now the unemployed or the casual workers, a majority of them being women (although leadership structures largely remain male territory), which theoretically should also prompt a shift in the focal organisations approach to 'political' gender work, but in practice, this is still a struggle; the empowerment programme which the research has followed closely throughout the year has led to women participants being ostracised, after surfacing issues of sexual harassment in the movements, but the rational/intellectual, spiritual and emotional learning which has happened in the group is analyzed as having been empowering on both an individual and collective level, inspiring new women's network to develop within movements of both men and women. The study suggests that engaging 'gender' and expanding the notion of 'political work' and who can be a 'political actor' is crucial if left-wing education and support organisations seek to remain relevant within a rapidly changing context.
- ItemOpen AccessAn exploration of the experiences of Zimbabwean women informal cross-border traders at the Zimbabwean/South African BeitBridge border post(2014) Garatidye, Serita; Bennett, JaneMuch research on economically-enforced migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa locates women as partners of men, rather than as economic agents in their own terms. Research on cross-border trade, however, has theorized that gender dynamics may empower women traders as they learn to negotiate new business networks and as they develop economic independence; a different perspective on gender dynamics suggests that far from empowerment, women cross border-traders face particular abuse and harassment. This research worked with eleven Zimbabwean cross border traders to explore the theoretical tensions between notions of ‘empowerment’ and notions of ‘disadvantage’ arising from the traders’ experiences. The study concentrated in particular on the traders’ representation of their experiences at the Zimbabwe/South Africa Beitbridge border post crossing point. Analysing the material qualitatively, the dissertation argues that while gender dynamics can be seen to afford the traders both opportunities and great challenges, the traders’ representations of the interplay of official corruption and the impact of economic pressure on all border-players reveal the border-post itself as a complex site of micro-negotiations whereby survival becomes the ‘business’ itself.
- ItemOpen AccessExploring gender dynamics in sexuality education in Uganda's secondary schools(2005) Muhanguzi, Florence Kyoheirwe; Bennett, JaneWithin international theory of gender and education, sexuality is implicated as one of the major factors responsible for the differential participation of boys and girls in schooling and the persistent gender inequalities in education in Sub-Saharan African countries and Uganda in particular. In spite of multiple interventions to address the inequalities, gender disparities remain apparent and such disparities continue to entail increased vulnerability to sexual abuse, HIV transmission, unwanted teenage pregnancies, sexual exploitation and the overall silence about sexual experience, for those gendered as girls and women. Comprehensive gendered sexuality education is widely seen as a valuable site of intervention for addressing these problems, thereby facilitating the process of attaining gender equality and equity in society. The relationship between sexuality education and gender dynamics remain, however, complex at multiple levels of the educational process. The main objective of this study is to explore the operation of gender dynamics in school sexuality education. The research interrogates the interactions between contemporary curriculum based ideas of sexuality education in Uganda and the gendered realities of key participants in the pedagogic process. The substantive focus of my study is on secondary school students' and teachers' experiences and interactions with formal school sexuality curriculum. Under the notion that the community of pedagogy for students comprises parents, the research includes an exploration of parents' engagement with the school-based sexuality education. My study draws on qualitative data obtained through qualitative methods namely observation, in- depth and key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Template and thematic analysis was used. The study theorises that the current sexuality education being conducted in Uganda's secondary schools is deficient in terms of content and approach and is based on gender biased materials and textbooks. Overall the education offered is inadequate, largely prescriptive and feminized, generally divorced from students' personal experiences, and sometimes even contradictory. The study reveals complex gendered sexual experiences of students that position boys and girls differently often causing gender inequalities in sexuality education classrooms. The study illuminates the need for a rigorous re-examination of the current curriculum learning resources and advocates an empowerment approach that integrates considerations of gender dynamics throughout the approach to formal sexuality education in a bid to challenge gendered discrimination.
- ItemOpen AccessFootball, Femininity and Muscle: An exploration of Heteronormative and Athletic Discources in the lives of elite-level women footballers in South Africa(2010) Engh, Mari Haugaa; Bennett, JaneNormalised constructions of masculinity and femininity within a heteronormative social structure have shaped beliefs about women's capacities, characteristics and bodies, and have constructed a hegemonic feminine ideal that has historically excluded the possibility of being simultaneously feminine and athletic. However, following developments in Europe and North America (such as Title IV and WIS) and the increased production and consumption of globalised sports, new and more athletic feminine ideals have emerged and opened spaces for women to form sporting and athletic subjectivities. As a part of this process, women's football, across the world, has grown exponentially, in popular support and participation rates, since the first World Cup was organised in China in 1991 (Hong, 2004; Cox and Thompson, 2000). In South Africa, the development of structures for women's football was late, and women's football is not yet fully professional. In South Africa football is viewed as a game for men, and it remains a flagship masculine sport that serves to maintain and support masculine domination (Pelak, 2005). Because women's participation in a sport like football is considered a transgression, there is a heightened need to mark women's bodies as feminine, so as to reinforce the heteronormative and dichotomous constructions of male/female and masculine/feminine. This thesis presents an exploration of the ambivalent relationship between empowerment and surveillance as it presents itself in the lives of elite level women footballers in South Africa. It discusses empowerment and surveillance as they appear at the most intimate levels of women's sporting experience, and impact on the ways in which women footballers discipline and regulate their bodies within the expectations of heteronormativity, femininity and athleticism. The discussion is based on qualitative, informal interviews with 18 elite level women footballers in South Africa, 12 of which are currently members of the 5 senior women's national football team, Banyana Banyana. The remaining 6 participants are members of one of Cape Town's oldest and most successful women's football teams. The interviews took place at a national team camp in Pretoria in October 2008, and in Cape Town between August and November 2008. Utilising discourse analysis and postmodern feminist standpoint theory this thesis concludes that the empowerment and transformation sport has the potential to offer women should not be assumed to follow directly from participation. Women's access to sports participation and sporting subjectivities is stratified, and a complex and ambivalent relationship exists between empowerment and surveillance. This tense relationship between is particularly evident in analyses of gender/race/class intersections, heteronormativity and through examining women's participation at a professional level. Although the neo-liberal feminine athletic validates sporting subjectivities and offers women in elite-level South African football an arena for physical expression and freedom, this empowerment is deeply embedded within the regulatory schemes produced through constructions of a heteronormative feminine aesthetic.
- ItemOpen AccessGhanaian men and the performance of masculinity: negotiating gender-based violence in postcolonial Ghana(2018) Dery, Isaac; Bennett, JaneWithin contemporary scholarship on formations of gender and their connections to violences, important questions concerning the politics of masculinities arise. Leading scholars, such as Kopano Ratele, argue for African contexts to be theorized beyond frameworks developed by scholars such as Connell, Kimmel, and Messerschmidt, whose research is grounded in work outside the continent's histories. At the same time, many scholars and policy-makers share the recommendation that global goals for a sustainable world-order demand the reduction of violence, especially violence against women and girls. Masculinities scholarship has, overall, explored the meaning of violence against women for diverse masculine constituencies in much less depth than it has engaged questions of the constructions of hegemonies, the experiences of violence within men's own lives, and the impact of changing economic and political orders on constructions of masculinity. This thesis seeks to address the gap between theorization on masculinity which respects diversity and complexity and theorization on violence against women, particular intimate partner violence within marriage, which tends to imagine a homogenous perpetrator: husband. It is vitally important to investigate and contextualize the discourses of people gendered as 'men', within very specific contexts, to explore the connections made between 'becoming men' and the meaning of domestic violence in their own spaces. Of particular focus in this thesis is an interrogation of the place of domestic violence in men's social worlds. The thesis contributes to knowledge on masculinities by offering an unusually detailed set of culturally sensitive and contextual insights into the social world that is iteratively navigated by married men in a manner to gain recognition as credible, a world in which previous research has already revealed to include women's experiences of abuse, discrimination, and stigma from their husbands. The thesis uses qualitative methods to generate material from men in north-western Ghana through in-depth interviews and focus group sessions. The work takes as a useful entry point the lived experiences, language, and vernacular understandings of people who are, in twenty-first century Ghana, legally criminalized for domestic violence. While such criminalization is welcome, from diverse points of view, the research undertakes a complex qualitative search into how possible 'perpetrators' themselves construct the connection between masculinity, the contemporary socio-economic order, and violence against women, especially wives. The material is analyzed intensively through thematic discourse analysis, and the argument overall is that that violence against wives is discursively connected to how the 'states' and 'citizens' discursively construct masculinity, femininity, and the credibility of violence within a larger gender-nation battle. The analysis simultaneously reveals a dramatic distinction between the construction of violence against wives as legitimate 'correction' (something far from a criminal court) and its construction as 'abusive,' and thus potentially actionable. This distinction alone deepens an understanding of the difficulty of implementing any Domestic Violence Acts, and also leads to questions about the construction of homosociality as a zone of safety and status, one threatened by behaviour from twenty-first century wives. This thesis both confirms earlier research on masculinities and domestic violence in its clear revelation of discursive collusion between men on the appropriate forms of disciplining intimate partners, and also suggests some debate in this collusion. The overarching contribution of the research comes in its argument that the possibility of domestic violence is embedded within contemporary meanings for masculinity, wifehood, marriage and the nation.
- ItemOpen AccessGugule-tois, it's the place to be! : on bodies, sex respectability and social reproduction : women' s experiences of youth on Cape Town's periphery(2007) Mupotsa, Danai S; Salo, ElaineInitiating this research project I reflected on the subject of popular and youth culture, gender and sexuality; which then drove me to consider an analysis of dress codes and fashion in regards to notions of female respectability. Through my research process, I have often thought that I had digressed considerably; yet as I begin to narrate this story I am both surprised and amazed to find that this is in fact what I have done and thankfully, I believe I have done more. This "full circle," in thinking, doing and now presenting new knowledge was initiated in part due to a personal interest in the gendered socio-political, economic and historical meanings attached to the body surface as a whole, which I soon changed to a consideration of both the bodily surface and its interior. As stated in my research proposal, it was my contention that the female body, as opposed to the normative (or rather socially normalized) male body, has been discursively constructed as defiled, unclean and as reeking with sickness according to dominant paradigms of knowledge and social practice. Through the processes of conquest, colonialism, imperialism, racism and apartheid; black people and especially black women's bodies have suffered this violence. I have an interest in dissecting the manner by which such discourses then translate into common-sense understandings about how we both dress and perform our bodies in various social spaces; about how we begin to construct the discourse of "our culture," of good girls and social misfits, who wear the labels of "prostitute," "lesbian," or "rural," (despite their true actions or conditions) within urban spaces in contemporary Southern Africa; considering the impact of the history of a geographical apartheid, a migrant labour system, the production and re/production of notions of femininity closely associated with domesticity and the very dominant narrative of female respectability.
- ItemOpen Access“Half a man?” Still a human: Narratives on the impact of a spinal cord injury on coloured men living with paraplegia(2019) Louw, Helenard Kingsley Madiba; Chadwick, Rachelle; Nomdo, GideonThere is an overwhelming body of research in the Global North that focuses on the narratives of the impact of a spinal cord injury on men living with paraplegia, while existing research in South Africa and the Global South lacks knowledge on these narratives. This study explored the narratives on the impact of a spinal cord injury on fifteen coloured men living with paraplegia on the Cape Flats. This study adopted a life story approach, as a primary research methodology, and examined how these men constructed and told their life stories, how meanings and experiences of living with paraplegia were conveyed, and how they negotiated the intersection of disability, masculinity, race, class and sexuality in their lives. A participatory action research (PAR) methodology, photo-voice, was used as a complimentary methodology which depicted how these men visually represented the way they think main-stream society sees them and the way they see themselves. Drawing on Frank’s (1995) work on narratives and illness, this study used two life stories and theoretically shows how life stories with a central focus on paraplegia as a spinal cord injury are constructed and narrated. Through a narrative thematic analysis, themes and sub-themes highlighted the complexities and tensions in the construction and performance of masculinities after the injury. The following themes emerged from the narratives: feelings of shame and infantilization, a loss of independency, dehumanizing social perceptions of being a man living with a disability, vulnerability to violence, and challenges in sexual intercourse and intimacy. The narratives also show that a man in this context can develop a positive sense of self through learning to live independently, strategies to prevent violence, redefining sex, and redefining what it means to be a man and ‘disabled’.
- ItemOpen AccessHuman rights for whom? : sexual refugee applications in the 'gay capital' of Africa(2017) Fernandes, André Prado; Bennet, JaneThis research paper aims at analysing the evidentiary hurdles of sexuality-based refugee applications in Cape Town, the so-called gay capital of Africa. Amidst authorities' fear of bogus applicants, asylum-seekers fleeing homophobic persecution in their country of origin have to navigate the burden of proving to the South African state that they are 'truly' gay, despite sexuality's arguably elusive and intangible nature. Drawing from a literature review from fields as diverse as international human rights, queer and critical race theory, postcolonial feminism, and migration studies I start from a macro perspective by analysing the evolution of refugee studies and the emergence of the 'sexual refugee' within the human rights system, going on to explore the implications of such emergence for sexual minorities from the Global South. The study then brings its focus to the regional/local in order to look at the relationship between South Africa and the rest of the continent in terms of LGBT and refugee protection, at which point I trace the directions and encounters of my brief empirical research, dwell on issues of research reflexivity and positionality, and present the data collected through semi-structured interviews with three gay men from Uganda and Zimbabwe who sought asylum in Cape Town.
- ItemOpen AccessJust a piece of paper? : lesbian experiences of marriage through the Civil Union Act in South Africa(2010) Scott, Jessica; Bennett, JaneThis research explores the meanings of marriage for South African lesbian women who have accessed marriage as a legal right through the Civil Union Act since its inception in 2006. As a researcher coming from the United States, where same-sex marriage is not nationally available, to South Africa, where same-sex marriage is a constitutionally recognised legal right, my research began with the question, "What has changed?" Because same -sex marriage is highly contested in disparate global spaces, an understanding of how the legislation is being used by those accessing it has the potential to contribute to a body of knowledge encouraging more inclusive legal relationship recognition in spaces where same-sex marriage is not yet legally available. The research makes use of semi-structured in depth interviews with 15 South African lesbian women who have married through the Civil Union Act. The women come from diverse "racial", religious and socio-economic backgrounds. Calling on feminist frameworks theorising marriage as an institution which has historically restricted women's social, political and economic autonomy, in addition to literature framing marriage as a contemporary "battle ground" for human rights, the research attempts to conceptualise the relationship of married lesbian women to their citizenship through their experiences of accessing a legal right embedded in specific cultural, social and religious meanings. The research concludes that while a right critical to the experience of citizenship is being exercised by lesbian women in South Africa, the richer experience theorized as "belonging" has not been fully inscribed in their lived realities. For the lesbian women represented in this research, marriage involves a re- examination of their partnerships as a precondition for the "traditional" celebratory involvement of family and community. Therefore, while marriage has been understood to embody both legal and symbolic meanings, viewing marriage as a human rights issue reveals a fracture between the legal aspects of the institution and the socio-religious contexts that lend it its authority. The research attempts to identify alternative ways of viewing marriage and family constructions by privileging the experience of lesbian women who have accessed marriage from their diverse social and cultural "sites". The research suggests that theorizing marriage from the site of the partners' happiness or fulfilment is a powerful lens with which to destabilise the dominant discourses of respectability most commonly invoked as a point of departure for discussions around same-sex marriage.
- ItemOpen AccessLiving with Mount Mabo: povoados, land, and nature conservation in contemporary Mozambique(2021) Matusse, Anselmo; Green, Lesley; Matose FrankBased on ethnographic fieldwork in the povoados of Nvava and Nangaze, in the district of Lugela, Zambézia Province, central Mozambique, consisted of field visits that started in June 2016 and ended in April 2018, this thesis is an ethnography of the relationships between people, spirits, animals and landscapes. It examines the cultural, scientific, ethical, and economic stakes of local modes of relating to Mount Mabo, the River Múgue and Mount Muriba that both abide by and surpass the exclusionary forms of science, nature conservation and governance that dominate environmentalism in Mozambique. Focusing on narratives and practices, the study explores concepts such as person, nature and time as mobilized by the state, conservationists and local residents, and describe the respective emerging worlds and their messy interconnections, namely, the conservationists' "Google Forest" premised on techno-science and modernist ideals and seeking to enact a divide between nature and society, the "Neo-extractive" version of landscapes promoted by the Frelimo-run state in its attempt to generate wealth and alleviate poverty also premised on techno-science and modernist ideals that construct nature as a natural resource and "public good" to be owned through DUATs (land use rights certificates) that only the state can grant or revoke; and finally, the "Secret Mount Mabo" as experienced and expressed by local residents whereby landscapes emerge as relational entities demanding ori'a (respect) from the humans with whom they engage in a relation of mutual belonging. In this world, the amwene emerge as the ones who control access to the mountain and forest through their ritual and spiritual power. The study finds that reframing of colonial and neoliberal notions of property, nature, labour and citizenry by conservationists and the state, underlies their technoscientific approaches seeking to protect nature from devastation and impose and their respective versions of nature, human and time—worlds—on local residents. That approach renders dialogues across ontologies extremely difficult. Working with local residents' concepts and practices the study proposes that Mount Mabo conservation efforts are at odds with local ontologies. While these are central to local residents and their practices of world-making, such ontologies occupy a marginal role in conservation project planning, design, and implementation, amid conservationists' attempts to mobilize local residents' alliance in nature protection. These observations draw from and reinterpret contemporary scholarship on political ecology, political ontology, Africanist thought, and decolonial theory, in that they account for different ecological practices and concepts that are linked to practices of wealth redistribution, recognition of other non-modernist ontologies and their colonial legacies. The study proposes that understanding and accounting for these differences and the ways they are made to endure or resisted could help in finding alternatives conducive to ensuring both ecological and local residents' wellbeing in ways that advance decoloniality in Mozambique.
- ItemOpen Access'Now you see me, now you don't' - a study of the politics of visibility and the sexual minority movement in Kenya(2009) Mugo, Cynthia; Cooper, BrendaThis study explores the varied ways sexual minority organisations in Kenya negotiate their choices, decisions and actions when determining how, when, and why to be publicly visible or retreat from visibility. This they have to do in the context of the threats of retribution on the part of Kenyan state leaders to their efforts to protect sexual minority rights. Sexual minority organising carries the risk of verbal abuse and the threat of arrest and other retribution. In spite of this, sexual minorities have organised themselves into publicly visible social movement organisations over the last ten years. In addition to the hostility of the Kenyan state, these organisations operate within the context of the uneven situation with regard to the constraints or otherwise of organising as sexual minorities between the Global South and North. The situation is further complicated by the role of donors, who bring their own experiences and agendas from the Global North, not always appropriately, into African contexts. Amid such varied responses to sexual minority organising, how, when, and why do Kenyan social movement organizations become publicly visible or retreat from visibility? To recognise the various forces that influence (in)visibility choices that sexual minority organisations have to negotiate, I used sociologist James M. Jasper's (2006) concept of "strategic dilemma". Sexual minority social movement organisations field strategic dilemmas when they strategise around whether and how to become visible, modify their public profile, or forgo political opportunities. To understand the micro-political dynamics of how sexual minority social movement organisations negotiated such strategic dilemmas of visibility and invisibility, I analysed 200 newspaper articles and sexual minority organisational documents and conducted 12 in-depth interviews with staff, members and leaders of sexual minority social movement organisations. Ultimately the findings of this thesis centre on the fluidity of visibility and invisibility as was experienced by Kenyan sexual minority organisations. (ln)visibility was experienced in diverse ways as a process that included a series of steps that do not have absolute values nor are they necessarily coherent in different time and space. My findings advance social movement theorizing by demonstrating the importance of studying social movements in the global South. In addition, my findings contribute to postcolonial feminist and queer theorizing by showing how marginalised sexual and gender minorities in Kenya struggled strategically to assert their democratic inclusion in the state.
- ItemOpen AccessA poor women's pedagogy' : an exploration of learning in a housing social movement(2006) Ismail, Salma; Mama, Amina; Walters, ShirleyThis study examines the critical role that adult education played in a housing social movement whose membership was mainly poor African women in informal settlements. In this social movement women have combined learning with the struggle to obtain social goods from the state. The study explores the interconnectedness between learning, development and social change. The conceptual framework developed from a feminist critique of popular education was applied in the methodology and yielded insights with regard to the learning of VM women. The feminist critique allowed for an exploration of the contradictions within popular education and people-centred development. In addition it provided a vocabulary to explain the learning and agency of VM women. The conceptual framework allowed me to argue that learning is contextual, and to analyse and understand learning in the micro-context (VM and the life changes and learning of VM women) it is necessary to examine the interaction between the macro-- (political, economic and policy context of South Africa) and micro-contexts. The interaction of these contexts has brought political opportunities to mobilise the agency of poor African women who were seeking solutions to their housing problems.
- ItemOpen AccessPower and performativity in prison: exploring male sex workers' experiences and performances of gender and sexuality pre/during/post-incarceration(2017) Lewin, Jan-Louise; Africa, Adelene; Nomdo, Gideon JohnThis study explores the narratives of men who become male sex workers after being in prison. This study looks at prison as a fluid space for sexual expression and gender performativity, which is ironic given the view of prison as punitive and repressive. Sex within the South African prison system is silenced and taboo particularly within the Number prison gang where sex is heavily regulated, ritualized and fiercely guarded. The research question asks how do men who are or become male sex workers construct and perform their gendered and sexual identities in prison and on the street? This qualitative study employs the organizing metaphor of dramaturgy to explore how prison as a social setting (stage) impacts on the gendered and sexual performances of men (actors) who have been incarcerated. Drawing on Foucault's theories of the repressive hypothesis and peripheral sexualities (1990), Butler's theory of performativity (1990) and Gagnon and Simon's scripting theory (1973) this study illustrates theoretically how prison sex culture and male sex work can be theorized from a feminist standpoint perspective. This feminist study is located in the social constructionist paradigm. It is underpinned by grounded theory and narrative methodology to explore the narratives of men who have been incarcerated and continue into sex work post-release. Biographical interviews were conducted with 15 men who were participants in a male sex work support group. Findings revealed two overarching themes in the narratives that explain how men construct and perform their gendered and sexual identities in prison. Renegotiation was the process where the subject engaged in an internalized monologue with self, constantly exploring and (re)constructing the gendered and sexual self in response to the shifting contexts of prison and the streets. Negotiation was the process where the subject engaged in an external dialogue with others. Through interactions with others, they were able to perform gender and sexuality publicly. By framing it within the discourse of dramaturgy, this study shows an alternative view of prison sex culture. (Re)imagining prison as the 'stage', prisoners as the 'actors', prison rituals as the 'script' and identity performances as the 'act', we can begin to envision an alternative script and narrative of prison unfolding.