Racialized social class work: Making sense of inequality in South Africa during the COVID-19 lockdown

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Jenny M. Hoobler ◽  
Kim E. Dowdeswell ◽  
Lerato Mahlatji
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Making Sense

scholarly journals ‘A Sentimental Attachment to the Neighbourhood’: African Christians and Land Claims in South Africa

Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah James ◽  
Geoffrey Nkadimeng
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
South African ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Land Claims ◽  
African Society ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Local Construction

As part of its attempt to understand ‘an apartheid of souls’, this volume is concerned to show how mission activity, particularly that of European-based churches with close links to the expansion of Dutch/Calvinist influence, may have nurtured the local construction of race or ethnic difference in Indonesian and South African society. One well-known account of Christianity in South Africa shows how the interaction between mission and missionised produced a sharply dichotomised sense - experienced by the Tshidi Tswana as the contrast between setsivana and segoa - of difference between indigenous and imported culture. While this shows how processes devoted to undermining it may paradoxically strengthen a sense of cultural identity, what it does not yield is a sense of how Christianity, appropriated within Tswana and other African societies, furnished a means of marking internal distinctions of social class, dovetailing in unexpected ways with ethnic difference. It is such divisions - potently fusing class with ethnicity and having crucial implications for the ownership, reclaiming, and use of land - with which the present paper is concerned.

Religious vs. Linguistic vs. Class Voting: The “Crucial Experiment” of Comparing Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland

1979 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 442-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arend Lijphart
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Multivariate Analysis ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Sample ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Crucial Experiment ◽  
Party Choice ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Religious Factor

For the purpose of determining the relative influence of the three potentially most important social and demographic factors on party choice–social class, religion, and language–a comparison of Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland provides a “crucial experiment,” because these three variables are simultaneously present in all four countries. Building on the major earlier research achievements in comparative electoral behavior, this four-country multivariate analysis compares the indices of voting and the party choice “trees” on the basis of national sample surveys conducted in the 1970s. From this crucial contest among the three determinants of party choice, religion emerges as the victor, language as a strong runner-up, and class as a distant third. The surprising strength of the religious factor can be explained in terms of the “freezing” of past conflict dimensions in the party system and the presence of alternative, regional-federal, structures for the expression of linguistic interests.

Human Sovereignty Eclipsed? Toward a Posthumanist Reading of the Traumatized Subject in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World

The main aim of this article is to analyse J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) from a posthumanist perspective. By focusing on the character David Lurie, this article analyses the complex materiality of bodies and the agentic powers of nonhuman entities in coping with individual trauma, where agency is no longer considered to be the distinguishing quality unique to humans. In so doing, it highlights the interdependence of the human and the nonhuman and the idea that environment is not a mere canvas onto which characters’ traumas are being reflected. On the contrary, it is a material-affective matrix which becomes a catalyst for making sense of the world in post-apartheid South Africa. At the same time, as this article argues, it decentres the sovereignty of the human subject.

Collective Victimhood Resulting From Structural Violence

2020 ◽  
pp. 231-251
Author(s):  
Silvia Mari ◽  
Denise Bentrovato ◽  
Federica Durante ◽  
Johan Wassermann
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Direct Violence ◽  
Collective Victimhood

This chapter discusses collective victimization resulting from structural violence, and how the effects of inequality can have similar deleterious consequences for peoples’ ability to meet basic needs. Social class and structural violence have been underexamined so far in the literature on collective victimhood. However, considering collective victim beliefs due to structural violence—which are related to, but distinct from relative deprivation—enriches our understanding of relevant experiences and extends the collective victim beliefs that should be assessed. The authors show with empirical examples from Italy and South Africa that collective victim beliefs about structural violence are distinct from collective victim beliefs about direct violence. They also reveal that collective victim beliefs about structural violence may predict different outcomes, such as the preference for different forms of acknowledgment or the need for empowerment and acceptance.

scholarly journals Making sense of the PIRLS 2006 results for South Africa

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Janks
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Home Language ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Literacy Interventions ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Reading To Learn ◽  
Basic Comprehension

Results on the PIRLS test in 2006 make it clear that South African educators need to examine the way in which they teach literacy in the Foundation phase. While the test gives a fair indication of what our children cannot do, it is less clear about what they can do. Mastery of decoding, for example, is assumed and children are tested on their ability to read lengthy texts and answer cognitively demanding questions. The test is therefore not a good indicator of whether learners can decode or not. By setting the kinds of skills demanded by PIRLS, against Freebody and Luke’s roles of the reader, this article suggests that the problem with literacy learning in our schools is that too often students do not get much beyond decoding and basic comprehension. !ey are not taught to be text ‘participants’,text ‘users’ or text ‘analysts’. Literacy interventions in schools need to prepare students to ask and answer middle and higher order questions on texts written in their home language if they are to move from learning to read to reading to learn.

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