scholarly journals Ukuphumelela: Flourishing and the pursuit of a good life, and good health, in Soweto, South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 100022
Author(s):  
Lindile Cele ◽  
Sarah S. Willen ◽  
Maydha Dhanuka ◽  
Emily Mendenhall
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Good Health

Poor housing, good health: a comparison of formal and informal housing in Johannesburg, South Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 625-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thea de Wet ◽  
Sophie Plagerson ◽  
Trudy Harpham ◽  
Angela Mathee
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Informal Housing

“I need to respect that person and that person needs to respect me”

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-109
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
African People ◽  
People’S Perception

This chapter explores the narrative that people associate strongly with a Zulu identity, but which also resonates beyond South Africa, a moral schema demanding that the good life requires respect for all people. It talks about hierarchies, how it affects people's perception of who they are, and how they learn to live with them. It defines inequality as the kind of situation when someone with lesser power has to figure out how to demand better treatment from someone in power. The chapter discusses how South African people manage with precarity — a situation when people have a source of income, a supportive social group, and a home to live in, yet they are always hovering just at the edge of losing those basic necessities. It also talks about respect as a moral code, respect being at the intersection of work and the good life, and it asks if respect is truly achievable.

“Hustling is when you try to make a good life”

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-138
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Young People ◽  
Good Life ◽  
African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
New Generation

This chapter introduces a narrative of “hustling” that motivates young people to perform their future hopes and never give up, despite full awareness of the disproportionate challenges they face in society. It defines a hustler as someone who tries, and talks about what entrepreneurship is like in South Africa. It discusses the difficulties that aspiring African entrepreneurs encounter as they try to become successful in their business. It talks about the lack of pride the new generation of South Africans have and how this has affects their attitude towards work and how this impacts African society. It talks about survivalist improvisation, how Africans put up an image of dignity in the midst of struggle, and their feelings of being trapped in that situation.

scholarly journals Gender difference in trends in healthy life expectancy in 2005-2012 for adults aged 50 years and older in South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Witness Chirinda ◽  
Yasuhiko Saito ◽  
Danan Gu ◽  
Nompumelelo Zungu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Older People ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Gender Disparities ◽  
Healthy Life Expectancy ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Healthy Life ◽  
Fiscal Planning ◽  
Using Data

Data characterizing older people’s life expectancy by good or poor health isimportant for policy and fiscal planning. This study aims to examine trends and investigategender differences in healthy life expectancy (HLE) for older people in South Africa for theperiod 2005–2012. Using data from three repeated cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2005,2008, and 2012, we applied a self-rated health measure to estimating HLE. The Sullivanmethod was used in the calculations. We found that unhealthy life expectancy decreased overthe period, while HLE and the proportion of life spent in good health increased more thantotal life expectancy in the same period. Gender disparities were evident: Women had higherlife expectancy than men, yet they spent a greater proportion of their lifetime in poor health.We concluded that HLE of older people in South Africa has improved over the period underinvestigation.

scholarly journals Anak Dalam Perspektif Hadis

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Suryadi Suryadi
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Raising Children ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
The Future ◽  
Good Vision

The future of a nation, including Indonesia, can be predicted from the current condition of its children. A nation may have a good vision of their future if children are living in a good life, in a good health whether physically or psychologically, and free from any violence. In contrast, if the current condition of children is bad, such as what we find in Indonesia which is among the eight most populous Muslim countries, we may be pesimistics over the future of our nation. Children experiencing violences one after another particularly in Muslim counries intrigues our conscience whether there is something wrong in our understanding over religious texts, hadits in this context. Hadits has been taken as a religious source for raising children, for education as well as development of children's future. Presumably incorrect understanding of hadits on children raising and education has provoked violence on them. This article seeks to present better understanding of several prophetic traditions on children issues, and to promote the messages of the Prophet Muhammad to rectify the quality of children.

Back to the Good Life: Towards an Enlarged Conception of Social Justice

1997 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M Smith
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
Universal Ethic ◽  
Intellectual Environment

Social justice has returned to the geographical agenda, but in an intellectual environment different from that in which ‘radical geography’ emerged more than two decades ago. The author attempts to (re)integrate the notion of social justice with some broader conception of the good life. An egalitarian formulation of distributive justice is posited, to set the scene for an argument that its application requires reference to the way of life in which it is embedded. Postapartheid South Africa is used for illustrative purposes. It is argued that the interdependence of distributional and relational aspects of justice might find fruitful expression in a universal ethic of care, as a central feature of a good way of life.

“Despite the contradictions”

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter offers closing thoughts that reiterate and summarizes the main points of the book. The chapter explores the ways people make a careful survey of their situation and work out a method to yield growth despite life's contradictions and pressures. If their lives look at times like wind-torn shrubs, that does not mean that they are poorly adapted or lethargic. Instead, it offers evidence of the hard work it takes to thrive in a world where the good life is hard to find. It shows that a dominant myth blaming inequality on laziness has guided, upheld, and justified racial inequalities in South Africa and the world since the earliest mercantile and colonial encounters between Europeans and Africans, and this narrative was never eradicated, despite antislavery, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements that achieved important legal and structural changes. The struggle to change this social narrative is an unglorified resistance with no clear ending point, but it is essential to the pursuit of the good life. It also shows evidence that in order to generate employment while aiming for the higher goal of seeking good, South Africa must address the history of antiblack disrespect that perpetuates dysfunctional employment structures. The people described in this book refuse to conform to narratives of inevitable happy endings or easy hope, but neither do their stories end only in despair.

The Laziness Myth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
South African ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The People ◽  
Good Lives

When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, this book invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The book challenges the widespread premise that hard-work determines success by tracing the titular “laziness myth,” a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups. The book offers evidence of the laziness myth's harsh consequences, as well as insights into how to challenge it with other South African narratives of a good life. In contexts as diverse as rapping in a library, manufacturing leather shoes, weed-whacking neighbors' yards, negotiating marriage plans, and sharing water taps, the people described in the book will stimulate discussion on creative possibilities for seeking the good life in and out of employment, in South Africa and elsewhere.

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