OpenUCT :: Browsing by Subject "Social Anthropology"

Browsing by Subject "Social Anthropology"

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Open Access
Above the surface, beneath the waves : contesting ecologies and generating knowledge conversations in Lamberts Bay
(2011) Rogerson, Jennifer J M; Green, Lesley; Jarre, Astrid
Based on fieldwork conducted over two months in 2010 in Lamberts Bay on the west coast of South Africa where the cold Benguela Currrent asserts its presence in water and wind, this dissertation aims to describe the ways that people come to know fish and the sea differently.
Open Access
Accepting "expecting"? : on being pregnant and studying
(2009) Powell, Crystal
Pregnancy can be an exciting experience for - but not limited to - women who have planned their pregnancies and have contemplated their futures as mothers. Similarly. education and the achievements of matriculation, bachelors', masters' and PhD degrees toward the pursuit of a lasting career can be an equally exciting experience for ambitious students who value education in its own right and for their potential futures. For female students who would prefer to finish their education and establish their careers before parenthood, inadvertently becoming pregnant during their studies may serve as a turning point requiring drastic re-evaluation for their lives as students and mothers. The female body and the physical changes that take place during pregnancy often make the pregnant body easily identifiable and ultimately a public object, subjecting pregnant women to attention and interpretation from everyone around them, particularly in places like university campuses where pregnancy is not commonplace. Consequently, pregnancy as an obvious implication of sexual activity can subject pregnant women to gossip around the assumed carelessness of their sexual behaviours. On university campuses, where such gossip around a pregnancy is certain to develop, some women seek refuge by hiding their pregnancies. This dissertation explores the experiences of currently pregnant students and student mothers on two university campuses. I consider their experiences of pregnancy as students, distinguishing between those who were single, dating, or married at the time of their pregnancies. I also consider those who planned their pregnancies vs. those who did not and those who had necessary support systems vs. those who did not, towards an understanding of how they managed the simultaneity of pregnancy and studying. This thesis explores the experiences of these women to understand the manner and extent to which their lives and aspirations as students have been impacted in light of their pregnancies and/or children. While highlighting the difference in values of education for the informants, it shows that becoming pregnant has profound implications on student's lives and that moral, emotional and material support are the critical factors that determine whether the pregnant student or student mother will complete her education.
Open Access
Afrikanerdoom? : negotiating Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa
(2000) Vestergaard, Mads; Sichone, Owen
The apartheid regime monopolised Afrikanerdom and institutionalised a speciﬁc Christian-nationalist Afrikaner identity. In post-apartheid South Africa this identity is no longer sanctioned by the state, and central elements of the identity have become illegitimate - most importantly the racial aspect. It is now up to the individual Afrikaner to negotiate this new space of identifications opened up by the end of apartheid order. Through different kinds of post-structuralist theory this thesis investigates some of the ways in which white Afrikaans-speakers position themselves in this new context. For some the new South Africa means exciting new possibilities but others experience it as a loss of freedom. The analysis pivots around the separatist 'volkstaat town' of Orania, where we find some of the central problems facing Afrikaners in general in terms of identity formation. It is argued that although Orania is radical in its claims, it is nonetheless one of the actors in the discursive battles of redefining Afrikaner identity. However, in the context of radical change and indecision, it is but one among many other attempts of redefining Afrikanerdom, many competing voices are heard and boundaries of identity are constantly contested and redrawn.
Open Access
Aging and residence in an urban environment : an anthropological perspective
(1979) Frankental, Sally; West, Martin; Whisson, M G
This study investigates the nature and meaning of the aging process for old people in the urban environment of Cafe Town. It employs methods of participant observation, interviews and life-histories. The study particularly emphasises the role of different residential settings ('normal' housing, total institutions, part institutions) in the aging process and examines their relevance in the formation of a new self-image in this phase of the life-cycle. The presentation of detailed case material shows that old people share the prevailing negative stereotypes of the aged as a category of useless persons. The aged attempt to avoid such categorisations for themselves by substituting notions of activity for the values of youth and/or productivity. The data show the aging process to be a series of adaptations to changing circumstances - essentially changes in health, wealth, composition of social networks, and. frequency and range of social interaction. The adaptations do not emerge as sharp adjustments determined by chronological old age, but as the culmination of coping strategies developed over time and governed by a combination of energy levels, behavioural repertoire, and the opportunities for social interaction provided in the environment. Residence is in itself an important agent of change in this phase because it is perceived as a crucial variable in the projection of the self as independent. The maintenance of an independent image (self-image and projected image) emerges as the key challenge and dilemmas for this phase of the life-cycle – as perceived by the old people themselves. Residence choices are influenced by a variety of factors (health, wealth, proximity of kin and friends, availability of amenities). The analysis shows that final decisions are taken using, cost-benefit assessments which relate, though often implicitly, to notions of independence and security. Residence emerges as a constraining factor in the operation of this cost-benefit analysis. This is shown by comparing the segregate, institutional and congregate dimensions of the institutional settings, and by contrasting these with 'normal' housing. Because the fact of institutionalised living offers greater security, it is perceived to diminish attributes of independence so that old people within the special residential settings devise strategies for maximising an image of independence. Three major strategies are the 'poor dear' syndrome; the identification with the activity programmes offered in these environments (irrespective of actual degree of participation) and the articulation of these activities as work. The final chapter of the thesis examines the potential for community creation in these residences. Turner (1974) notion of 'communitas', or a sense of communality, is considered the crucial element of community. This element is evaluated in relation to a variety of factors: homogeneity, lack of alternative, investment and irreversibility, material distinctions, social exclusivity, leadership, proportion of kinds of contact, interdependance and work. It is argued that the development of 'communitas' remains at the level of potential in the most institutionalised settings because its development is a creative process demanding energy, initiative, and incentive none of which are characteristic of old people in total institutions. The thesis shows that old people are in a state of limbo rather than liminality or marginality (Turner, 1974-) because society has provided no defined status phase for them to enter. They are in large measure statusless - cast aside to wait for death.
Open Access
AllPay and no work: spheres of belonging under duress
(2012) Versfeld, Anna; Ross, Fiona C
AllPay and No Work explores the consequences of post-apartheid political-economic changes on the social fabric of Manenberg, a residential neighbourhood on the Cape Flats, Cape Town. I show that despite the important benefits of codified human rights for all, recent macro-level changes have meant that young women are currently struggling to establish themselves in their local spheres as socially valued individuals, or achieving "positive personhood". In a context of relative deprivation being socially valued is critical for belonging to "coping systems", the systems of support and reciprocity that cushion the worst aspects of suffering.
Open Access
Ambitions of cidade : war-displacement and concepts of the urban among bairro residents in Benguela, Angola
(2009) Roque, Sandra; Ross, Fiona C
The dissertation explores concepts of upward social mobility, proper personhood and processes of social change as a result of the rural-urban migration provoked by the war in post-colonial Angola between 1975 and 2002. The study focuses on the city of Benguela, which received large numbers of war-displaced people, most of whom settled in bairros, informal settlements surrounding the cidade, the formally structured area of the town. The experience of displacement and establishment in urban areas is not marked only by material struggles and recent experiences of violence, displacement, humanitarian aid and so on, but also by social and historical constructions of rural-urban relationships and of urban space. These frame actors' choices, decisions and actions. I show that 'war-displaced people' are individuals with a history and in history.
Open Access
An examination of the implementation of the World Health Organisation's anti-tuberculosis treatment, the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS), in poor South African communities
(2004) Jacobs, Nasolo Monifa; Levine, Susan
This dissertation examines the implementation of the anti-tuberculosis treatment, the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course, of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in poor South African communities. Research for this dissertation was carried out over a two-year period in one poor community, a tuberculosis (TB) quarantine hospital and several primary care clinics. This dissertation argues that the DOTS programme is culturally inappropriate and consequently unsuccessful in meeting the WHO's TB treatment targets. It will show that the design of the DOTS programme assumes access to basic resources such as food and shelter and focuses its attE11tion on ensuring regular access to anti-TB medication. However, TB patients in many poor South African communities do not have access to basic resources and thus experience the DOTS programme and the treatment protocol as a burden. Although TB patients face these challenges to meeting their treatment goals, many of them view the DOTS programme in their communities as a source of resources from which they can access jobs, food, money and general social services. The thesis will demonstrate that there is a wide gap between what the DOTS programme offers and what the TB patients and community members expect. It will also show that this gap limits the ability of TB patients to adhere to the treatment and thus renders the DOTS programme culturally inappropriate and unsuccessful in these South African communities.
Open Access
An ‘anthropological' exploration of individuals' perceptions on Infant Mental Health in South Africa
(2023) Mafela, Sedzani; Ross, Fiona
Infant Mental Health (IMH) is a concept developed by psychologists, psychiatrists, child development specialists, to describe preverbal children's emotional well-being. In everyday life, however, people may not be familiar with this idea, use these terms or think about infant well-being in the same way. The research therefore posed the general question 'do infants have mental health?' to a range of participants, including parents, grandparents, and those who haven't had children. A decolonial feminist-queer approach was used. The research revealed that although people did not think of their children's well-being using the language of IMH, they had their ways of ensuring the 'mental health' of their infants. Secondly, mental health is often understood in terms of illness and not as wellness. Lastly, although infants were not thought to have 'mental health', the participants agreed on the presence of mental health in infants and used a variety of terms to describe this concept in their own words as opposed to the formal descriptions according to IMH paradigm.
Open Access
The anti-frackers: an ethnographic account of the South African fracking debate
(2015) Van der Merwe, Lawrence; Green, Lesley
This paper details an intermittent six months of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and participant observation carried out between September 2014 - March 2015, among members of the Treasure the Karoo Action Group and three other South Africans labeled "anti-frackers" and/or "environmentalists": a filmmaker, an entrepreneur, and an attorney. Drawing from analysis of literature, news and multimedia published outside the period of engaged research, the paper explores the contested process of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) from the perspective of those who work to ensure that this technique of shale gas extraction will not be allowed, or will be proven unnecessary, in South Africa. The dissertation details the author's attempts to understand how the binary of "pro"/"anti" is used in the ongoing fracking "debate", and contrasts this with the work of those who have sought to craft positions that stand outside of the prevailing polemic. Tracing the stakes and interests involved in the potential for the use and sale of shale gas through a series of expeditions into the Karoo, the thesis seeks to problematize the idea that there is a fracking "debate" at hand between two collective fronts: the so-called "pro-frackers" and their opponents the "anti-frackers". In the Latourian sense of the term the dissertation critiques the construction of these two 'phantom publics', presenting a series of nuanced personal profiles in a call for a new appreciation of the diverse human, financial and natural forces at play in this currently unfolding scenario.
Open Access
Art and the development of dialogic skills: an ethnography of art in Waldorf teacher training
(2005) Van Alphen, Catherine; Spiegel, Mugsy; Millar, Clive
Waldorf Schools emphasise the use of art in education. This interdisciplinary dissertation demonstrates how Waldorf teacher trainees are prepared to work with art in the school classroom. It does that by documenting the ways that three different art media are introduced to students in a Waldorf teacher training programme in Cape Town, and those students' responses and experiences in working with those media - relying quite heavily on students' oral and written comments about those experiences. The data presented come from the writer's own involvement as a teacher trainer cum researcher who has adopted an ethnographic-style approach to data collection and analysis. The data show that a primary goal of introducing Waldorf teacher trainees to art is to develop what is here described as a dialogic capacity - an ability to be able simultaneously to immerse oneself in the teaching process and to stand back and reflect on everything that that process involves so that, as teachers, they are able to be flexible and open to change. That this can be done through cultivating a teacher's feeling for art through requiring its practice, it is argued, helps to bridge an apparent paradox in Rudolf Steiner's work between his call for practising art for its own sake and his recognition that art should be practised in schools to facilitate the development of the individual.
Open Access
Aspiring to Citizenship: African Immigrant Youth and Civic Engagement in Cape Town, South Africa
(2022) Kuah, Alison Sing Yee; Fuh, Divine
Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the city of Cape Town over four months, this dissertation addresses the question how do African immigrant youth experience life and live as ‘citizens 'in Cape Town? African immigrant youth straddle multiple positions, localities and identities: insider, outsider, victim, perpetrator, dependent, independent, child, adult. This dissertation examines the various ways in which African immigrant youth in Cape Town activate citizenship and belonging through civic participation or engagement, often in the absence of formal citizenship. Contrary to claims of immigrant youth as inherently problematic, youth are actively deciding to be the change they want to see in the world surrounding them, looking backwards and forwards to determine their decision to participate in civic engagement in the present. This thesis posits that young people's notions of themselves and their aspirations (both individual and collective) impact not only their future life-goals and dreams, but can manifest and drive their current actions to embed themselves in their communities and contribute towards the betterment or improvement of these communities. Drawing from youth studies that highlight the individual agency of youth within the larger constraints in which they find themselves in, the dissertation looks at the everyday, informal and localised acts of civic participation, as well as the ways that African immigrant youth leverage institutions (higher education, community organisations) as bridges and platforms for social change. The research demonstrates that civic participation through community engagement allows African immigrant youth to dream and access citizenship and social adulthood, and become a part of society where they are recognised as contributing members.
Open Access
Assaulting childhood : an ethnographic study of children resident in a Western Cape migrant hostel complex
(1990) Jones, Sean Wilshire; West, Martin
This study documents the lives of children between the ages of 10 and 15 years who reside in migrant worker hostels in the Hottentots-Holland region of the Western Cape. It focuses on three particular aspects of the children's lives: their domestic circumstances and relationships prior to their residence in the hostels; their experiences of everyday life in the hostels; and the quality, extent, and determinants of their education over time. The children's domestic circumstances before moving to the hostels had been disrupted in the extreme. This disruption took various forms, but was caused primarily by the participation of parents and other significant adults in labour migration. Consequently, the children's histories are characterised by high levels of mobility, where children themselves have migrated, by frequent separation from parents, and by high incidences of foster-parenting. Testimony by the children indicates that they have felt this domestic disruption acutely. A further consequence of the children's residential and domestic mobility has been regular interruptions over time in their schooling. Factors such as the frequency of the children's own movement, separation from their parents, devaluative attitudes towards education by temporary foster parents, and vicissitudes in their economic circumstances have meant that most of them have progressed less than half as far at school as they should have done. This is compounded at Lwandle by the state's refusal to provide a school for hostel children, and by the inadequacy of the 'self-help' teaching which takes place there as a result. The children's everyday lives in the hostels are examined in relation to the severe limitations on space and privacy which exist there. Particular attention is granted to children's perceptions of the hostel milieu, to the difficulties which parents experience in rearing children in the hostels, to parent-child relations, and to the games and other play-activities in which the children engage. Perhaps the most prominent feature of life in the hostels which emerged during the research is the frequency with which children are exposed to acts of extreme violence. The study documents both the children's accounts of this violence, and their diagnoses of it. In conclusion, questions are raised about the future of these children and others like them. Attention is also directed towards the potential for further research into childhood by anthropology and other social sciences. The study grants primacy to children's viewpoints over and above those of their parents and other adults in the hostels, and one of its implicit objectives is to demonstrate the value to anthropology of children's insights into social life. It makes extensive use of the children's own testimony, both written and oral, and of life history material.
Open Access
At the interface : marine compliance inspectors at work in the Western Cape
(2014) Norton, Marieke; Green, Lesley; Jarre, Astrid
The Western Cape fisheries are heavily contested. Primary concerns in the contestations are over access to marine resources, which have been regulated through the Marine Living Resources Act of 1998. At the centre of these conflicts, is the figure of the marine compliance inspector, whose task is to enforce the state’s version of nature onto the collective of resource users. This thesis, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork alongside inspectors of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: Fisheries Branch in the Western Cape, explores the everyday human interactions on which the implementation of marine resource law depends. Exploring interactions between inspectors and resource users, the dissertation seeks to contribute to the task of reimagining fisheries governance. Drawing on ethnographic material deriving from participation in inspection duties; observations of fishing behaviour; conversations with inspectors, resource user and marine resource management officials; and analysis of texts such as relevant legislation and job descriptions, I argue that the issue of non-compliance in marine fisheries in the Western Cape can only be partially understood by the framework offered in extant South African compliance scholarship, which has focused largely on the motivations of resource extractors, or the formulation of law and policy. Given that compliance functions are part of the wider social spectrum of contestation and that the compliance inspectors are the interface between the government of South Africa and its fishing citizens, the study explores the real effects of state-citizen-nature contestations on environmental governance, and presents evidence in support of an argument that the design of the job of marine compliance inspector itself needs to be re-conceived. While compliance is a central feature of fisheries management, the performance of its personnel is taken for granted as the simple implementation of institutional policy, in a number of ways. Efforts to address conflicts will fall short of the goal of providing solutions if the assumptions about nature and humanity that current marine resource legislation embodies are not questioned, and this will exacerbate existing suffering in the ecology of relations between state, science, public and marine species.
Open Access
Bantu pottery of Southern Africa
(1965) Lawton, A C; Shaw, Margaret
The Bantu people of Southern Africa entered this region from the North in successive migratory waves and advanced to the regions which they, now inhabit. The first of the immigrants crossed the Zambezi at about the beginning of the Christian era. Pottery of a type belonging to the earliest Iron Age traditions, and found north of the Zambezi (Clark 1959), has been found at Zimbabwe where it has, been dated 330 A.D. by radio carbon tests (Robinson 1961b). Contact with different people and new environments resulted in changes in the way of life and material culture of the migrants. These changes became more pronounced and permanent with the settlement of the European in South Africa and are very evident in regard to pottery. We know from the observations of early travellers and anthropologists that pottery used to be made in large quantities throughout Southern Africa.
Open Access
Bearing witness : women and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(2000) Ross, Fiona C; Reynolds, Pamela
Summary in English. Bibliography: p. 206-215.
Open Access
'Becoming' and overcoming : girls’ changing bodies and toilets in Zwelihle, Hermanus
(2015) Vice, Kerry Leigh; Spiegel, Andrew
The dissertation draws on ethnographic research conducted in 2012 and 2013 in a South African township called Zwelihle in the Western Cape coastal town of Hermanus. Leading up to this period, protests motivated by a long growing dissatisfaction with shared temporary sanitation facilities and services were rife within townships and informal settlements across the Western Cape, and the provision of toilets by municipalities that formed part of a national “Water is Life, Sanitation is Dignity” campaign became a highly politicised issue. Against this backdrop, and drawing on evidence gathered while doing ten weeks of ethnographic fieldwork in and around Zwelihle, the dissertation highlights the relationship between reproductive health and sanitation. Specifically, it focuses on the experiences, embodied practices and imaginings of adolescent girls in Zwelihle who use predominantly public toilet facilities; and it uses Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of “becoming-woman” as a lens through which to consider how girls experience their changing bodies. The dissertation shows that, within South Africa’s climate of extreme sexual violence, the experiences, embodied practices and imaginings of adolescent girls in Zwelihle reflect the presence of fear in the everyday and their perceptions of public toilets and other ‘dark’ spaces as unsafe. Finally, it shows the value of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept “becoming-woman” as a theoretical lens through which to view how girls inhabit spaces in Zwelihle and adjacent areas, and how they inhabit their bodies; and it provides a means for an analysis that recognises the potential for girls and women to overcome imposed expectations that may appear to be simple realities.
Open Access
Being and belonging among White English-speaking South Africans
(University of Cape Town, 2020) Pedersen, Miriam Aurora Hammeren; Nyamnjoh, Francis B
White English-speaking South Africans - WESSAs - have been an understudied topic in general, and particularly within the discipline of anthropology. In this thesis, I take the reader on an autoethnographic journey of attempting to make sense of life in the suburbs of Cape Town, searching for the elusive middle-class WESSAs and trying to attain an understanding of who they are. What does it mean to be and belong among this fascinating subcategory of Africans of European origin? The thesis takes a novel approach to the topic by viewing it through Nyamnjoh's framework of incompleteness, which posits that humans are incomplete by nature and culture (and cultivation). This framework is based on West/Central African philosophy and draws inspiration from the writings of Amos Tutuola, whose storytelling and conceptual universe also informs this thesis. Two key issues emerging from my fieldwork are power and belonging. A complex interplay exists between these factors of life in Cape Town. On the one hand, I argue that middle-class WESSAs have significant power in my field-site in terms of social status, linguistic dominance as well as control of institutions and the built environment. This hegemony leads to exclusion, marginalisation and Othering of non-WESSAs and less wealthy people, especially people of colour. On the other hand, WESSAs' tendency to perceive their positionality as universal, and their quest for completeness of being, ends up causing alienation and rootlessness even for WESSAs themselves. The themes of rootlessness and non-belonging permeate this thesis, highlighting the detrimental nature of hierarchies of race and class even for those at the top. I join Nyamnjoh in his call for a convivial mode of existence which acknowledges interdependencies, interconnectedness and the inherent incompleteness of human life.
Open Access
Being San' in Platfontein: Poverty, landscape, development and cultural heritage
(2007) Soskolne, Talia; Green, Lesley
As people are relocated, dispossessed of land, or experience the altered landscapes of modernity, so their way of life, values, beliefs and understandings are transformed. For the !Kun and Khwe people living on Platfontein this has been an ongoing process. Platfontein, a dry, flat piece of land near Kimberly in the Northern Cape, was purchased for the Kun and Khwe through the provision of a government grant in 1997. They took permanent residence there in government-built housing in December 2003. Prior to this they had had numerous experiences of relocation and strife, through a long-term involvement with the SADF that brought them from the Omega army base in Namibia, to a time of uncertainty in the tent town of Schmitsdrift, to their current settlement on Platfontein. The dry barren landscape of Platfontein suggests a very different way of life from that of hunter-gathering in Angola and Namibia. In the semi-urban context of Platfontein, basic sustenance and entry into the job market are emphasized, and this brings about changes in people's way of life and understandings, as well as in how they relate to each other and the landscape. In this context, there are certain tensions and contradictions that underlie the work of social development and cultural heritage that are the mandates of SASI (South African San Institute) in Platfontein. It is essential that projects initiated by NGOs like SASI give cognizance to the complexities of people's lives, histories and story lines. Without this, people's experiences and multifaceted stories are inevitably sidelined to create essentialist narratives that meet the imaginings of tourists and sponsors. There is no doubt that SASI works from an intention of bringing about positive transformation in Platfontein, and has done useful work in the community. The essentialist discourse of the 'indigenous', however, is a ready temptation for NGOs and the groups they represent to adopt, as it is politically expedient to do so in order to gain access to land and resources. This needs to be challenged at the level of policy so that access to geographical space or political power does not necessitate a denial of history or complexity.
Open Access
Belonging to the West Coast : an ethnography of St Helena Bay in the context of marine resource scarcity
(2010) Schultz, Oliver John; Green, Lesley
This dissertation uses ethnography as a means to examine how multiple-scale patterns of interaction between social and ecological systems as they manifest locally in St Helena Bay. The growing integration of the West Coast has brought rapid change in the form of industrial production, urban development and in-migration. The pressure placed on local resources by these processes has been exacerbated by the rationalisation of the local fisheries - there are fewer jobs in the formal industry and small-scale fishing rights have become circumscribed. In the neighbourhood of Laingville, historically-contingent racial categories have become reinvigorated in a context resource scarcity.
Open Access
The benefits of international volunteering in educational institutions in Cape Town
(2008) Steckel, Susanne; Frankental, Sally
The study examines two volunteer programmes in Cape Town offered to international volunteers, presents the positive and negative outcomes of these programmes and analyses their value for all parties concerned. On the basis of the data gathered during eight weeks of fieldwork, I argue that these programmes are of value to both the volunteers and to the recipients of their services, albeit in different ways. The positive responses from both sides were significant indicators of the success of the programmes and of the various benefits for all parties. Open-mindedness, enthusiasm and a positive attitude on the part of the volunteers were key characteristics that had a considerable and positive effect on both their and the recipients' experiences.

Browsing by Subject "Social Anthropology"

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