Browsing by Subject "sociology"

Now showing 1 - 17 of 17
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    Beyond social constructivist perspectives on assessment: the centring of knowledge
    (Taylor & Francis, 2008) Shay, Suellen
    Over the past few decades assessment has been heralded for its key role in the improvement of teaching and learning. However, more recently there have been expressions of uncertainty about whether assessment is in fact delivering on its promised potential. Against this backdrop of uncertainty and circumspection this paper offers a critical reflection on higher education assessment discourses with a particular focus on the discourse of criterion referenced assessment. The central argument is that while the social constructivist perspective has significantly illuminated our understanding of assessment, inadvertently the very object of assessment-knowledge has been eclipsed. I propose that a fruitful way forward for our assessment practices is the centring of disciplinary forms of knowledge as an explicit component of the object of our assessment. Drawing on sociologists of education - Basil Bernstein and Karl Maton - I stake out some of the theoretical ground for reconceptualising the relationship between knowledge and assessment.
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    Conflicting rationalities and the governance of homelessness in Ward 64, Cape Town
    (2022) Cousins, Danica; Selmeczi, Anna; Smit, Warren
    In South Africa there is no national mandate or coherent policy framework around the issue of homelessness. Therefore no budget, laws or policies can be used to mobilize and unify the actors involved in the governance of homelessness. This, accompanied by an out of date City of Cape Town Street People Policy, has left the question of "who is responsible for service provision to street-based people'' ambiguous and politically inflammatory. This study explores the value of understanding the problem of homelessness and the way it is governed at a local level. Therefore, it examines how the multiple and varied understandings of street-based people affect governance of the issue of homelessness in Ward 64, Cape Town. To do so, an ethnographic case study approach was combined with Watson's theory of Conflicting Rationalities and used to examine the sociological experiences of street-based people. What resulted was a framework which allowed the “logics and imperatives” of homelessness to be understood through a rationality of survival. Approaching an investigation of homelessness through this rationality validates and reasons with the experiences and survivalist activities of street-based people. To investigate the governance of homelessness in the Ward, data from multiple in-depth interviews and fieldwork observations was analysed through a nodal governance framework. The results indicate that nodes whose engagement with street-based people is motivated by the complaints of, and their responsibility to City and Ward residents, deploy reactive technologies. Alternatively, nodes whose primary responsibility is to street-based people employ a variety of developmental responses. The success of a developmental response is largely reliant on effective partnerships. However, organisational pride and competition for funding present significant challenges to these partnerships and, therefore to the effective governance of homelessness. The case study presented in this thesis highlights the value of Ward level research and interventions into homelessness. Accepting that street-based people are not a homogenous group leads to an understanding that homelessness will not present the same in different areas. Therefore, the facilitation of realistic and meaningful strategies to govern homelessness requires a local understanding of the interaction between the multiple rationalities of both street-based people and governance stakeholders.
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    Disciplinarity in question: comparing knowledge and knower codes in sociology
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012) Luckett, Kathy
    This paper contributes to understanding why curriculum design in a discipline with a horizontal knowledge structure is difficult, time-consuming and contested. A previous paper on the same case study in one sociology department reported that students who had completed the general sociology major found it lacking in coherence. To illustrate the problem, I selected two third-year sociology courses, Urban Studies and Diversity Studies, and set out to compare and contrast how knowledge claims are made and legitimated in these two discourses. The paper also has a methodological focus – to demonstrate the potential of systemic functional linguistics as a method of discourse analysis that can complement and deepen a sociological analysis – Bernstein's sociology of education and in particular his concept of 'grammaticality'. I seek to make explicit the basis for knowledge claims in these two sub-disciplines and then to investigate how this 'grammar' is built into criteria for assessing students. The long-term goal of this project is pedagogic – to understand how academic discourses work, in order to contribute to the development of more coherent curricula and visible pedagogies with explicit assessment criteria, for the enhancement of teaching and learning. The analysis shows that the 'grammars' of these two academic discourses (in the same discipline, sociology) are based on different ordering principles: they are based on different ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions. The analysis also shows that the respective 'grammars' do 'get into' the assessment criteria, although in a contextually contingent manner. The paper concludes by suggesting that the use of SFL as a method of discourse analysis within a social realist sociology of education framework proved to be fruitful and worthy of further development, particularly for education development work where the quest to make explicit the criteria for producing a 'legitimate text' is critical.
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    Diversity Literacy
    (2012) Steyn, Melissa
    This resource provides the entirety of the Diversity Literacy course content. Melissa Steyn's (2010) notion of Critical Diversity Literacy is the conceptual foundation upon which the course is conceptualised. Diversity Literacy can be defined as a set of practices or conceptual tools which allow one to think critically about complex social issues such as identity, power and difference. The course engages many of the central problems which affect processes of transformation in the 'new' South Africa (class, racial, and gender inequality, postcolonial and globalised power relations) in addition to areas of social conflict (Affirmative Action, xenophobia, gender based violence, criminalization of the poor). Divided roughly into two aspects, the course focuses on theories of diversity and contemporary local and global social issues. These are presented in an integrated format, by critically examining and analysing how different authors foreground, think about and represent certain issues. The course is intended for senior level undergraduate students from all faculties. As a course offered to senior students from all disciplinary backgrounds, Diversity Literacy will prepare students to function effectively in diverse social contexts upon their entry into the work environment.
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    Domestic work in Cape Town: an exploration into the growth of part-time domestic work
    (2020) Wooldridge, Kathryn; Crankshaw, Owen
    Statistical analysis of the labour market in South Africa shows that between 1994 and 2015, the growth rate of domestic worker employment was slow in comparison to the growth rate of high-income jobs. In Gauteng, the slow growth of domestic worker employment contributed to the overall slow growth of all unskilled jobs. This is because domestic workers consist of around half of all unskilled jobs. The growth of these elementary jobs was therefore much slower compared to high-income middle-class jobs (Crankshaw, forthcoming). Therefore, Gauteng experienced professionalisation rather than social polarisation. Like Gauteng, Cape Town has also experienced professionalisation, due in part to the slow growth of domestic worker employment. The slow growth of domestic worker employment can be partly attributed to the growth of part-time domestic worker employment. This is because households employing part-time domestic workers tend to share domestic workers, which leads to fewer domestic workers being employed per household (Crankshaw, forthcoming). This thesis explores some of the reasons behind the growth of part-time domestic work in Cape Town. Specifically, it uncovers and describes some of the reasons behind why middleclass households in Cape Town choose to employ part-time domestic workers. The thesis also explores how legislation has an impact on the wages, hours, and conditions of employment of domestic workers in middle-class households. The research conducted for this thesis uses both descriptive statistical methods and qualitative methods. The statistical research lays the foundation for the qualitative research by showing the slow growth rate of domestic employment in comparison to managerial, professional, and technical occupations. A critical realist approach is used to guide the qualitative research. A critical realist approach seeks to explain causality through understanding the qualitative properties which create, determine or generate relations and objects. Therefore, the qualitative research uncovers and describes some of the causal mechanisms behind the growth of part-time domestic work in Cape Town with a specific focus on middle-class households. Reasons behind why middleclass households employ full-time domestic workers or no domestic workers at all, is explored as counterfactual evidence. The thesis finds that many middle-class households which hire domestic workers do not base their wages only on the minimum wage. Rather the wages these households set are influenced more by their personal values and/or personal finances. The households in this study which employed domestic workers did not generally adhere to government regulations such as having written contracts with their domestic workers or registering them for UIF. The causal mechanisms behind the decision to hire part-time, full-time or no domestic work is summarised in the table below. Shared causal mechanisms are highlighted.
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    Exploring the impact of South Africa's immigration policy (2000-to 2006) on the medical doctors' shortage—a critical realist perspective
    (2021) Zhou, Yiying; Tame, Bianca
    South Africa is facing a severe shortage of medical doctors and has a government that is sceptical of reliance of foreign skills known as skilled immigration. The government and the national Department of Health (DoH) have implemented a variety of intervention measures in order to alleviate the negative impact of this shortage caused by medical skills shortage in the sector. However, the DoH's reluctance to recruit foreign medical doctors, and particularly its prohibition on the recruitment of doctors from South Africa's neighbouring countries, undermines the government's effort to increase the number of doctors in the health system. Skilled immigration, the importation of scarce skills from outside the country, made little progress with the enactment of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002. The priority of South Africa's immigration policy is still focused on controlling skilled immigration, as is underlined by its protectionism and restrictiveness. The Department of Home Affairs' (DHA) immigration policy and its counterproductive approach to attracting skilled foreign labour has drawn criticism from a wide range of people including academics, politicians and businesspeople. The DHA itself has in its white papers of 1999 and of 2017 admitted that its inflexible approach to immigration has resulted in the country's failure to attract skilled foreign workers. In this study, I use archived parliamentary meeting minutes and parliamentary documents as the primary data source to understand the deliberations of stakeholders on skilled immigration which resulted in the Immigration Act 13 of 2002. The Act had a direct effect on the DoH's approach to the recruitment of foreign medical doctors. More specifically, this dissertation aims to explore how stakeholders who were involved in the drafting process of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002 deliberated on the existing cultural and structural conditions that resulted in the Immigration Bill which preceded the Act. By exploring the changes in the immigration policy, the dissertation aims to understand the impact of the immigration policy and institutional xenophobia on the recruitment of foreign doctors. Margaret Archer's (1995) morphogenetic/morphostatic cycle is used to understand the development of South Africa's immigration policy from 2000 to 2006 as this was the period in which the discussion of the Immigration Bill started. I argue that institutional xenophobia which is manifested in South Africans' antagonism towards foreign nationals, the deeply-entrenched employment equity policy that promotes national workers, the weakened state of the civil society, and the consolidated power of the government in decision-making all contributed to the DoH's decision to restrict the recruitment of foreign medical doctors. In the absence of government's support, it is unlikely that there will be a conducive environment to put in place a skilled immigration policy that can harness skilled foreigners' skills and facilitate skilled foreigners' entry. This dissertation suggests that the government critically review its immigration policy which is deepening South Africa's skills gap in the medical field. This dissertation further recommends the government to consider the option of allowing foreign doctors to work in the private sector. This would not only increase the overall number of doctors in the health sector, it would also dispel the public's concern that the employment of foreign doctors would cost a hefty amount at the expense of the public.
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    The Human Question
    (2014-09-23) Nattrass, Nicoli
    Lecture series coordinated by Professor Nicoli Nattrass, School of Economics, University of Cape Town. The question of what it means to be human is an old one, and of central importance to the social sciences. Our powerful brains and complex cultural and economic lives distinguish us from other animals, yet recent developments in neuroscience are placing new emphasis on the mammalian nature of human brains. This poses challenges for how the social sciences view the question of being human. The first lecture of this course will focus on the implications of recent neuroscience for psychology and for how we understand human behaviour. The lectures that follow will explore how the social sciences have engaged with the issue of what it means to be human, covering classical understandings as well as recent evidence from the biological and behavioural sciences. The second lecture will discuss the way in which the human has been conceptualised by neoclassical economics as ‘homo-economicus’ and how recent developments in behavioural economics are shifting our understanding. The third lecture will discuss classical political thinking (primarily Locke and Rousseau) and then turn to empirical research on power, authority, hierarchy and obedience among humans and other primates. The fourth lecture will look at the issue of sociality and antisociality by posing the question of how we understand the criminal. The course will conclude with a panel discussion reflecting on the key challenges that neuroscience poses for social science and vice versa. LECTURE TITLES: *1. The animal mind within us Mark Solms, Dept of Psychology; *2. Homo-economicus? Prof Nicoli Nattrass, School of Economics; *3. Humans, hierarchies and the study of political power, Prof Jeremy Seekings, Depts of Political Studies & Sociology (podcast not available due to technical error); *4. Who is the criminal? Prof Clifford Shearing, Centre of Criminology; *5. Economics, politics, criminology and the brain Panel discussion.
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    ‘Joining late': exploring the impact of the Late Joiner Penalty (LJP) imposed by South African medical aid schemes
    (2021) Moodaley, Natasha; Paremoer, Lauren
    This study explores how black women in paid employment experience the Late Joiner Penalty (LJP) that has been imposed on them by the Medical Schemes Act of 1998. Using various theories of citizenship, this research explores ways in which women are still excluded from obtaining full citizenship rights. The researcher applied a qualitative approach and conducted one-on-one in-depth interviews to generate meaningful data. The findings of the study reveal that women experience work precarity in various forms, which has been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Women are subject to periods of “waithood” with delays that may impact their economic stability and growth. In addition, strong themes of control exerted by medical aids, healthcare practitioners and male partners reinforce the ways in which women are denied full access to citizenship. Furthermore, medical aid is gendered and forces women to organise their productive lives around their reproductive obligations. The LJP revealed no risk for the scheme but appears only to endeavour to exploit those who have been historically marginalised. Moreover, the lack of knowledge of the LJP, the finer details and the long-term implications of joining a medical aid scheme for poorer working-class families are problematic and consistent with current hegemonic practices that reward citizens for fitting into the ideal mould. These findings were then discussed within the theoretical framework of citizenship using Barchiesi's (2007) Theory of Social Citizenship and Brown's (2016) Theory of Sacrificial Citizenship as analytical tools. The research demonstrates that neoliberal policies and legislation punish the poor through a form of poverty tax (LJP) and decrease the ability to generate financial and health security through medical aid scheme subscription. Additionally, the LJP undermines the constitutional promise of equal citizenship by effectively discriminating against citizens on the basis of age, gender and historical disadvantage.
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    New Pentecostal churches, politics and the everyday life of university students at the University of Zimbabwe
    (2018) Gukurume, Simbarashe; van Wyk Ilana; Posel, Deborah
    In the past 15 years, there has been a concerted ‘Pentecostalisation’ of university spaces in Africa. Despite enormous growth in Pentecostal Charismatic Church membership and activities on African university campuses, and its attendant implications for academic and everyday life, there is hardly any study that explores this phenomenon. Thus, little is known about the complex entanglements between religion, politics and the dynamics of the everyday within the university campus and how this mediates students’ subjectivities. This thesis examines the lived experiences and everyday lives of university students at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). The thesis is based on the narratives of students drawn through a qualitative methodology and more particularly, through participant observation, semi-structured and in-depth interviews over 15 months. Findings in this study revealed that university students convert and sign-up for new Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCCs) because they were imagined as spaces through which young people could forge supportive economic and social networks. PCCs’ gospel of prosperity and ‘spiritual warfare’ technologies were also deeply attractive to students who were caught in the hopelessness and uncertainty wrought by the country’s protracted socio-economic and political crisis. In this context, PCCs cultivate a sense of hope and optimism. However, although new PCCs reconfigure young people’s orientation to the future, many PCC promises remain elusive. The entrance of PCCs onto this university campus has also lead to institutional conflict as new churches struggle against the entrenched historical privilege of mainline churches- and the political influence of their followers in university management. New PCCs on the UZ campus have also become heavily involved in student and national politics, which further complicates their relationship with the university and the state. This thesis demonstrate the extent to which faith permeates every aspect of university experience for those who subscribe to its Pentecostal forms. I argue in this thesis that these complex linkages between faith and university life are mediated by the wider politics of the country, including linkages between the state and the university.
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    Non-governmental organisations and poverty reduction in the north west and east regions of Cameroon
    (2021) Nsah, Edwin Saka; Garba, Muhammed Faisal
    Literature on NGOs and poverty reduction shows inconsistencies in NGOs adding value to poverty reduction. E.g. some researchers have criticized developmental NGOs for not supporting the needy. Contrarily, some have argued that NGOs provide for the underprivileged. NGOs in Cameroon do not pose issues different from the above. What worries Cameroonians most is the fact that a high number of developmental NGOs are created in the same areas. On the other hand, poverty is getting widespread in the same areas serviced by these NGOs. This study analyses why NGOs participate in poverty reduction programmes given that these programmes do not reduce poverty. To achieve the aim of the study, six objectives were established: (1) Establishing the reasons for continued increase in poverty in the selected regions. (2) Exploring how NGO staffs and their beneficiaries perceive poverty. (3) Understanding the nature of participation (4) Understanding reasons donors give funding to NGOs. (5) Investigating the challenges NGOs encounter. (6) Finally formulating suggestions that may lead to better integration of programmes designed. The study was conducted in Cameroon and a qualitative research design was used. Access into the field was established through informal telephone calls, emails, and covering letters to General Managers seeking their consent to use their organisations for this research. Purposive and Snowball sampling was used to select the study participants based on their links with the study NGOs. The study adopted the triangulation approach. The study found that selected NGOs programmes continue to fail because there were extraneous variables which account for ineffectiveness in NGOs poverty reduction programmes. For example, poverty reduction in any nation is the duty of every government and its citizens to fight against poverty and NGOs only assist as support mechanisms towards the realization of government obligations to its citizens, here the government and it citizen were not doing enough to fight poverty. Attributing poverty reduction only to NGOs is demanding too much from them. In conclusion, NGOs are purporting to have made real achievements in poverty alleviation but in reality their programmes are benefitting only a few from the grave effects of poverty because they are more involved with charity work. The study suggests that, dialogue with all NGOs stakeholders will reduce possible contradiction and will improve coordination and collaboration between the actors.
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    Returning to the rand revolt: centering settler colonialism and racial capitalism in labour history
    (2022) Coleman, Daniel; Benya, Asanda
    This study focuses on the Rand Revolt, a white mineworkers strike that occurred in 1922, as a lens into the white working class in the early 20th Century, Witwatersrand, South Africa. This strike is significant because the events surrounding its conclusion led to the co-optation of the white working class which in turn contributed to the consolidation of white minority settler rule and the racial organisation of capitalism in the following years. Prevailing historical materialist approaches give primacy to class in explaining these events at the expense of thorough engagements with settler colonialism and racialism. As such, my research question is the following: How can placing settler colonialism and racial capitalism at the centre of analysis reframe the prevailing understanding of the Rand Revolt? Three sub-questions flow from this main question. First, I ask: How did settler colonialism shape the state's response to the 1922 strike? Second, how did racialism structure the consciousness of the white working class during the Rand Revolt? Third, how did racialism shape the character and orientation of class conflict as it unfolded in the Rand Revolt? To answer these questions, I gathered data from the state-mandated commission of inquiry following the strike and analysed the commissioners' final report alongside the oral testimonies given by witnesses. The main argument is that the foundational antagonism between the ‘Native Other' and a ‘white South Africa' produced by settler colonialism shaped the internal dynamics of the strike. On one hand, state actors' responses to white working-class resistance ushered in broader concerns with maintaining the security of white domination over ‘natives'. On the other hand, racialism, embedded in the class consciousness of strikers, saw white working-class militancy and selforganisation subsumed into the reification of the dominant order at the height of class struggle. I demonstrate this argument using evidence of the discourse and practices among both state actors and strikers. These revealed shared racial anxieties between the state and strikers surrounding ‘Natives' which were resolved through violence and enclosure aimed at Black subjects in urban areas. Considering the intertwined relationship between race and class reveals that both the affective and material dimensions of white supremacy shaped the character and orientation of class struggle between white labour and capital in the early 20th Century, South Africa.
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    Socially constructed meanings of Impucuko in a comparative historical analysis
    (2022) Sigenu, Zimingonaphakade; De Wet, Jacques
    Sociological analysis of African societies has tended to rely on Western concepts and theories while neglecting indigenous conceptualisations and explanations of social phenomena. Guided by social constructionism and hermeneutics, this thesis seeks to respond to this by investigating the socially constructed meanings of impucuko (dictionary translation: civilisation) and associated terms by isiXhosa-speaking professionals at the turn of the 20th century and then again at the turn of the 21st century, exploring the changes and continuities in the meanings over the 100-year period. Documentary sources from the isiXhosa literary archive, a sample of contemporary isiXhosa newspapers and in-depth interviews are utilised as part of the qualitative research approach to explore the social construction of meaning. The different meanings of impucuko that emerge from the inquiry include an understanding of the concept as: • enlightening knowledge • inkqubela phambili (progress) • detachment from inkcubeko (cultural heritage) • reimagined as a system of development that uplifts. This thesis demonstrates the practice of endogeneity by taking a single isiXhosa term, impucuko (and associated words), and demonstrating how endogeneity works organically in the process of the social construction of meanings in the vernacular by African sociolinguistic groupings. It highlights the relationship between socio-cultural context and meaning construction. The study challenges the hegemony assumed by western conceptual tools and the English language in academic knowledge production. Furthermore, the thesis shows an innovative method of developing critical conceptual tools that centre African perspectives.
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    The experience of money and the domestic moral economy of a group of young adults in Khayelitsha and their transition to adulthood
    (2022) Spyropoulos, John; Posel, Deborah; Seekings, Jeremy
    This thesis is a qualitative study of patterns of earning, sharing and spending among a cohort of young South African men and women, aged 25 to 35, in Khayelitsha, a mainly poor, Black African residential area of Cape Town. As less skilled ‘youth,' they are rarely able to sustain regular employment and therefore remain intermittently dependent on household income and resident in or near their parents' homes; they may have children but are not married. This thesis interprets how their low wage irregular employment and spending patterns affect relationships of mutuality and the dynamics of redistribution in their households. The thesis then considers how these phenomena change with their transition to ‘adulthood,' which occurred in the context of the COVID19 pandemic. The young adults experience a state of ‘locked in' material and existential depletion while balancing their aspirations, reflected in urgent and often conspicuous consumption, with their obligations in a context of chronic economic stress. As older adults, they progress from an economically dependent status to a mainly precarious adult status in their household where the matrix of domestic obligations and entitlements overwhelm youthful, aspirational spending. The thesis advances our understanding of the lived experience of money of ‘township youth' – as young adults – and then, as they progress into adulthood, of adult decision-making, in their domestic domain. The thesis unpacks and explains this experience in relation to the notion of a ‘domestic moral economy' produced at the nexus of economic and social cultural factors. Here responses of young adults to labour market conditions and consumerism impact on and are in turn impacted by social relations in the household. These responses introduced and embedded in both domestic relations and their social lives among peers and friends, demonstrate the inseparability of external capitalist relation of production from historically instituted social relations in the wider South African moral economy.
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    The levels and patterns of racial residential desegregation in Cape Town
    (2005) Le Fleur, Chantel Carmen
    The first aim of this study was to assess the levels of desegregation in Cape Town's southern suburbs. The characteristics of desegregated areas in terms of tenure, socio economic status of residents, and type of housing were explored to identify possible patterns of desegregation. Thereafter a qualitative examination of the processes and emerging patterns of residential desegregation in a case study approach of three different patterns of desegregation evident in Rondebosch East, Mowbray and Kenilworth was conducted. In-depth interviews were conducted with black households in these areas. The 1996 Census was used to assess the levels of desegregation and explore the characteristics of desegregation emerging in Cape Town. The gradual movement of black households to the former white group areas was1 found as twenty-one of the areas in the Cape Town, Simon's Town and Wynberg magisterial districts were significantly desegregated. Areas in which 15% or more of the households were black were considered desegregated in this study. Desegregation was mainly characterised by Coloured households as opposed to African or Indian households moving to former White areas. This is in part as a result of their higher socio economic status compared to African households. The lower and middle class suburbs were more likely to be desegregated than the more affluent upper class areas. One of the main ways in which black households are moving to formerly white areas was by renting property rather home ownership. In addition, in many desegregated areas, black households were renting flats, which was the most affordable option. The second aim of this study was to identify patterns of desegregation in Cape Towns' southern suburbs. Three patterns of racial residential desegregation were identified. The first pattern was associated with middle class homeownership, while the other two patterns were associated with rental flat accommodation. These three patterns and the dynamics involved were explored in a case study of three areas in Cape Town, namely Mowbray, Rondebosch East and Kenilworth. The first pattern was characterised by young black middle class families purchasing houses in Rondebosch East. The second pattern in Mowbray was characterised by students and African foreigners seeking cheap rental accommodation. A complex interplay of factors including a decline in property prices, unscrupulous landlords who charged high rentals, resulted in some black households overcrowding apartments, to be able to afford the rents and slum-like characteristics due to a lack of maintenance on the part of landlords. The third pattern identified "respectable rental accommodation" contrasted with the findings in Mowbray with young black middle class households renting flats in the area in the absence of decline or overcrowding.
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    The necropolitical crisis of racial subjectivity in the South African postcolony: black consciousness as a technology of the self and the limits to transformation
    (2022) Naicker, Veeran; Luckett, Kathleen
    In this thesis, I problematize whether Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Philosophy, reread as an affective and psychic Foucauldian technology of the self can operate as a strategy of psychic repair and transformation for pathological racialised subjects, produced by Necropolitical governmentality in the South African colony and postcolony. Centrally, I argue that Foucault's revolutionary reading of ancient Greek notions of parrhesia and political spirituality can be found in Biko's work on Black Theology and the reconstruction of Black subjectivity through several rational techniques that are performatively embodied in his writings and sacrificial militancy, deploying death as politicizing mechanism via the figure-Frank Talk. The pathologies of the South African postcolony are bequeathed to us via the Atlantic slave trade, colonial and Apartheid governance, engendering intergenerational traumas that have been institutionalised, internalised, and inverted in contemporary postcolonial discourses on African selfhood with detrimental and precarious consequences for political minorities and women. Although I interrogate anticolonial scholarship from a predominantly postcolonial perspective which includes a diagnosis of African political subjectivity in the Black Radical Tradition, the theoretical toolbox that animates my analysis is drawn from a post-structural combination of Michel Foucault's work on governmentality as a combination of technologies, that is, political rationalities of domination or social subjugation and technologies of the self, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, and several strands of psychoanalysis. Deploying Foucault's toolbox enables me to articulate a historical and nominalist account of African state formations without a relation to a general Weberian model, Marxist political economy, specifically the historical constitution of the body as labour power and psychoanalysis, particularly the desiring subject. Through this approach, I aim to undermine the universality of Eurocentric and essentialist conceptions of modern subjectivity as epistemic or discursive constructs that have become points of identification in symbolic systems. However, I argue that despite being valuable for understanding contemporary Europe, Foucault's conception of biopolitics cannot account for the reciprocal constitution of modernity, colonialism, and capitalism in the rest of world. Therefore, I have employed Achille Mbembe's notion of Necropolitics to account for contemporary, violent death practices in the governance of colony and postcolony, as well as the global precarity that results from the age of the Anthropocene and the becoming black of the world, signalling the limits of Biko's Africanist humanism, metaphysics (Ubuntu) and the racial animus of his followers in the contemporary context.
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    The politics of welfare policy reforms: a comparative study of how and why changes of government affect policy making on social cash transfer programmes in Zambia and Malawi
    (2021) Siachiwena, Hangala; Seekings, Jeremy
    This thesis examines how and why social protection policy reforms happened after changes of government in Zambia and Malawi. It provides four case studies that account for the process of reforms to promote or constrain social cash transfer programmes (SCTs) by government administrations within and across the two countries over time. Recent research on social protection in Africa shows that politics matters for the expansion of programmes, but the literature discussing the specific forms of politics that drive or limit support for reforms is still emerging. There is also a paucity of evidence accounting for variation in reforms within and between countries on the continent over time. This thesis contributes to these knowledge gaps. The study argues that while donors introduced pilot SCTs in Zambia and Malawi and continue to promote reforms, domestic politics is important for understanding when, how and why national governments expanded donor supported pilots into national programmes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to understand variation in political support for reforms within countries and to bring attention to the relative importance of partisanship. The study uses a process tracing method to understand the reform process from the mid-2000s until 2017. It draws on qualitative interviews with policy makers such as political elites, government technocrats and donor officials, and a review of policy documents. It also includes a statistical analysis of reforms in 10 East and Southern African countries to understand how Zambia and Malawi fit into a broader set of cases. The thesis demonstrates that in Zambia and Malawi, there was a greater incentive for political parties and the leaders within them to promote programmatic social protection when it had not already been seized as a mechanism for poverty reduction by the preceding government. Moreover, in cases where state support for social protection was limited, changes of government provided opportunities for international donors and government technocrats to persuade political elites in new ruling coalitions to push for faster reforms. This thesis accounts for the causal mechanisms that link changes of government and reforms and shows that the influence of international donors on political elites and the ideological, electoral and factional interests of elites and parties are crucial for understanding support for either clientelist or programmatic redistribution. Where the interests of donors and elites converge, there is a greater incentive for reforms to promote the provision of social protection. While the quantitative analysis does not provide evidence of a statistical relationship between changes of government and social policy reforms across the region, it demonstrates that democratization was associated with more social protection and shows that the interests of political elites and donor influence (controlling for other independent variables) were significant predictors of reform in the region. Furthermore, the trajectories of reform in Zambia and Malawi were similar to other low and lower middle-income democracies in the region but distinct from both upper middle-income democracies and weakly democratic low and lower middle-income countries.
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    Youth employability in ghetto neighbourhoods: The role of personal agency in reproducing or transforming social structures
    (2018) Ince, Merlin Ince; Crankshaw, Owen
    This thesis explores variations in employment outcomes among youth living under similar structural conditions of poverty and unemployment in ghetto neighbourhoods. It challenges structuralist accounts that ignore the role of personal agency and hold that structures alone determine action. The critical realist framework offers a helpful understanding of social structures as both material and cultural since human agency, or action, is influenced by circumstances that are both materially objective and culturally subjective. By probing the interaction of agency and structure this research shows that individual agency is a response to cultural beliefs and competing cultural norms. The ensuing worldview informs decisions and actions of youth which, under different cultures and material family structures, either reproduce or transform their educational and employment prospects in ghetto neighbourhoods. Ten case studies are analysed from youth in Manenberg, Cape Town, a neighbourhood that was historically segregated through the apartheid system of forced removals and resettlement. In-depth interviews provide evidence from life histories, experiences of education institutions and of looking for work. Further information is gathered from interviews with secondary participants, apart from participant observation in family and community activities through an ethnographic approach. Findings reveal that the culture of disengaged parenting leaves youth exposed only to the influence of low education and employment expectations such that they despondently relinquish career aspirations by dropping out of school, remaining unemployed and underemployed as a result. By contrast, consistent mentoring from parents entails a culture that competes with the negative influence of gangs and enables resilience among youth to pursue tertiary education. Youth thereby transform, rather than reproduce, their position in the labour market as unemployed or underemployed unskilled manual workers. Similarly, social networks beyond the neighbourhood provide youth with job information, supportive resources, and cultural capital, which enable them to conceptualise ideas of professional careers. This transforms the historical and contemporary material structure of ghetto neighbourhoods with socially isolated networks that limit youth to low-skilled employment opportunities. Such networks do not support personal agency towards alternative employment and youth resort to cultural practices of gangsterism, irregular and informal work.