Browsing by Subject "Globalisation"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    De-creating Language Borders at the University of Cape Town: “The Fall of English” and the Rise of African Languages in Education
    (2021) Botes, Inge-Ame; Nyamnjoh, Francis
    The salience of English as the main language of instruction at tertiary institutions across South Africa has not been without critique. At the University of Cape Town, henceforth UCT, conversations surrounding language and academic success have become bolstered by the rhetoric of decolonisation, necessitating a review of policy and practice. This in turn has opened up research opportunities pertaining to student and staff experiences of language at the institution. This thesis is a response to the urgent need for ethnographic focus on the language situation at UCT and higher education institutions countrywide, where increasingly light falls on the language question within quests for decolonisation and social justice. Focusing the language question within frameworks of decoloniality, glocalisation, translanguaging and the development of African languages in education, this thesis distills ethnographic data to argue that language borders need to be reevaluated in a quest for conviviality informed by the universality of incompleteness, where fluidity, interconnection, and interdependence are prioritised over the current dominance of English. Grounded in rich ethnographic evidence in the form of student interviews and reflections, meeting at the intersection of social and linguistic anthropology, this thesis grapples with the critical questions: “What is language at UCT? And what does language do?”
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    Forgotten by the highway: Globalisation, adverse incorporation and chronic poverty in a commercial farming district
    (2005) Du Toit, Andries
    The paper highlights the key insights arising from a household livelihood survey conducted in Ceres as part of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre’s work in South Africa. It argues that conventional livelihoods analysis needs to be informed by a much more sophisticated awareness of the local and global socioeconomic factors that mediate and shape the strategies that are available in local contexts. The livelihoods of the marginalised rural poor in Ceres, for instance, have to be understood against the background of complex shifts and realignments in global agro-food networks and the implications for local labour market restructuring. This analysis casts doubt on the appropriateness of attempts to frame poverty in South Africa in terms of social exclusion and the lack of integration into the ‘First World’ economy. Rather than social exclusion, poverty in Ceres needs to be understood in terms of adverse incorporation.
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    Globalisation and its effect on the environment: legal aspects of environmental harm caused by multinational corporations
    (1999) Stropp, Constanze; Glazewski, Jan
    Major industrial accidents and situations causing massive environmental harm, which have occurred during the past fifteen years, have often involved multinational enterprises (MNE's). However, the relocation of hazardous activities to the developing countries by multinational companies in the developed world has become a well - established feature of the global economy. Cases such as the Bhopal disaster show problems that can arise from this practice and, in particular, the difficulties foreign plaintiffs may experience in obtaining adequate compensation for resulting injuries. The plaintiff may well find, as in the Bhopal Case, that the domestic company, which caused the damage, has insufficient assets to satisfy any judgement against it. The plaintiff will, therefore, need to consider recourse against the exporting parent company.
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    Siezing the BEPS: an assessment of the efficacy of South Africa’s thin capitalisation regime in combating base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) through excessive interest deductions
    (2019) Nyatsambo, Nyasha Gift; Hattingh, Johann
    This study serves to critically assess the effectiveness of South Africa’s thin capitalisation framework in dealing with Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) through excessive interest deductions by multinational enterprises (MNEs). Given the impact of globalisation in interconnecting economic activities across multiple countries, BEPS presents a major policy concern both internationally and domestically. Thin capitalisation, a situation in which an entity utilises to their tax benefit the deductions/exemption mismatch that arises from crossborder debt financing, is one of the most common methods of BEPS utilised by MNEs. This study aims to ascertain whether the framework is effective in dealing with thin capitalisation whilst balancing the need to attract investment and boost economic development and, to assess whether the framework is reflective of South Africa’s contextual realities. It achieves this by engaging with the South Africa’s legislative framework consisting of s 31 and s 23M of the Income Tax Act and the Draft Note on Thin Capitalisation and their relationship with international tax norms and standards. The study relies on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to identify the international standards and contrasts South Africa’s framework with Canada, a developed and OECD member state. The study concludes that the framework is fraught with uncertainties and administrative difficulties that hinder its effectiveness. It also concludes that the framework’s reliance on the OECD’s standards is misguided and does not reflect South Africa’s contextual realities. This is a stark contrast to Canada which opted for a thin capitalisation approach outside the OECD’s recommendations which more reflects its context. The study thus concludes that South Africa’s thin capitalisation framework is ineffective in dealing with BEPS by way of thin capitalisation.
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    WWF's Earth Hour Campaign: ‘Global Village' or Eco-Imperialism?
    (2020) Chao, Eileen; Chuma, Wallace
    The rapid spread of digital information and communication technologies since the turn of the century has led to renewed debates about globalisation and the power of new media to connect users across national, political and cultural borders. Environmental campaigns like WWF's Earth Hour, which touts itself as “the world's largest grassroots movement for the environment,” often adopt a utopian view of globalisation that celebrates what Marshall McLuhan termed the ‘global village'. While this global ethos might be useful in engaging the publics in collective action, this article argues that the way Earth Hour and similar campaigns actively construct representations of a single global village overlooks the lived inequalities between and among peoples within this imagined community. This article explores this tension using a quantitative and qualitative mixed-methods approach that combines a semiotic analysis of the Earth Hour 2019 promotional video, social media analysis of the use of #Connect2Earth hashtag among South African Twitter users, and in-depth interviews with current and former WWF-South Africa employees. This strategic approach is designed to juxtapose socially constructed representations of Earth Hour with on-the-ground user engagement in South Africa, and then triangulating these findings with qualitative interviews. The dissertation aims to explore the research question: In what ways does WWF's Earth Hour embody Marshall McLuhan's ideal ‘global village' and in what ways might it engender a form of eco-imperialism? This research question is operationalised through three subquestions: What kind of environmentalism do global environmental campaigns like Earth Hour promote? How do audiences in South Africa engage with Earth Hour on social media? How do local WWF of ices adapt global environmental campaigns to suit local audiences? This research contributes to emerging scholarship, rooted in environmental justice and decolonial studies, that is critical of mainstream environmental movements not to discourage environmental consciousness but to ultimately reformulate it.