Researching resilience: lessons learned from working with rural, Sesotho-speaking South African young people

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 720-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda C Theron
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
High Mobility ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Cellular Telephone ◽  
Telephone Contact ◽  
Majority World ◽  
Interview Methods ◽  
Country Study ◽  
Canadian Chinese

Theories of youth resilience neglect youths’ lived experiences of what facilitates positive adjustment to hardship. The Pathways-to-Resilience Study addressed this by inviting Canadian, Chinese, Colombian, New Zealand and South African (SA) youths to share their resilience-related knowledge. In this article I report the challenges endemic to the rural, resource-poor, South African research site that complicated this Pathways ideal. I illustrate that blind application of a multi-country study design, albeit well-designed, potentially excludes youths with inaccessible parents, high mobility, and/or cellular telephone contact details. Additionally, I show that one-on-one interview methods do not serve Sesotho-speaking youths well, and that the inclusion of adult ‘insiders’ in a research team does not guarantee regard for local youths’ insights. I comment critically on how these challenges were addressed and use this to propose seven lessons that are likely to inform, and support, youth-advantaging qualitative research in similar majority-world contexts.

Self-Knowledge Creation Through Collective Poetic Inquiry: Cultivating Productive Resistance as University Academics

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Pillay ◽  
Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan ◽  
Inbanathan Naicker
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
South African ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Poetic Inquiry ◽  
Collaborative Creativity ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Found Poetry ◽  
Research Analysis

We explore how using the literary arts-based methodology of collective poetic inquiry deepened our own self-knowledge as South African academics who choose to resist a neoliberal corporate model of higher education. Increasingly, poetry is recognized as a means of representing the distinctiveness, complexity and plurality of the voices of research participants and researchers. Also, poetry is understood as a mode of research analysis that can intensify creativity and reflexivity. Using found poetry in the pantoum and tanka formats, we provide an example of a poetic inquiry process in which we started off by exploring other university academics’ lived experiences of working with graduate students and came to a turning point of reflexivity and self-realization. The escape highlights our evolving understanding that collaborative creativity and experimentation in research can be acts of self-knowledge creation for nurturing productive resistance as university academics.

South African Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Nganje ◽  
Odilile Ayodele
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Conception ◽  
The Government

In its foreign policy posture and ambitions, post-apartheid South Africa is like no other country on the continent, having earned the reputation of punching above its weight. Upon rejoining the international community in the mid-1990s based on a new democratic and African identity, it laid out and invested considerable material and intellectual resources in pursuing a vision of the world that was consistent with the ideals and aspirations of the indigenous anti-apartheid movement. This translated into a commitment to foreground the ideals of human rights, democratic governance, and socioeconomic justice in its foreign relations, which had been reoriented away from their Western focus during the apartheid period, to give expression to post-apartheid South Africa’s new role conception as a champion of the marginalized interests for Africa and rest of the Global South. Since the start of the 21st century, this new foreign policy orientation and its underlying principles have passed through various gradations, reflecting not only the personal idiosyncrasies of successive presidents but also changes in the domestic environment as well as lessons learned by the new crop of leaders in Pretoria, as they sought to navigate a complex and fluid continental and global environment. From a rather naive attempt to domesticate international politics by projecting its constitutional values onto the world stage during the presidency of Nelson Mandela, South Africa would be socialized into, and embrace gradually, the logic of realpolitik, even as it continued to espouse an ethical foreign policy, much to the chagrin of the detractors of the government of the African National Congress within and outside the country. With the fading away of the global liberal democratic consensus into which post-apartheid South Africa was born, coupled with a crumbling of the material and moral base that had at some point inspired a sense of South African exceptionalism, Pretoria’s irreversible march into an unashamedly pragmatic and interest-driven foreign policy posture is near complete.

Understanding the ‘bigger picture’: Lessons learned from participatory visual arts-based research with individuals seeking asylum in the United Kingdom

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelli Stavropoulou
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Meaningful Participation

This article presents reflections from a participatory visual arts-based research study with individuals seeking asylum in the north-east of England. This study invited participants to represent their lived experiences through biographical and visual methods. In doing so, they engaged in a process of ethno-mimesis, accomplished through the production of images that function as sites for meaning making, self-representation and social critique. This article demonstrates how an arts-based approach can stimulate change and transformation in individuals’ lives by supporting meaningful participation in the knowledge production process and providing a safe space where participants are empowered by sharing stories that challenge, subvert and reimagine what it feels like to be an asylum seeker. Furthermore it suggests that in contrast to interview settings, through the process of ethno-mimesis participants were offered the time and space to consciously engage with their experiences and invest in their creativity and storytelling capacities in order to render their worldviews visible. Although the findings from this study reinforce an existing rich body of ethnographic work on lived experiences of asylum seekers, this study recognizes that the identified themes highlight the enduring impact of immigration policies on individuals asylum-seeking trajectories and focuses instead on how such experiences are creatively negotiated by participants.

Humanitarian Medical Response to the Syrian Arab Republic (April 7, 2013 to April 23, 2013)

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeyn Mahomed ◽  
Feroza Motara ◽  
Ahmed Bham
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Publication Type ◽  
International Intervention ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Medical Response ◽  
Syrian Arab Republic ◽  
Care Worker

AbstractThe Syrian Arab Republic is entrenched in a deadly civil war, plunging the country into a state of chaos. With 3.2 million refugees abroad, 7.6 million internally displaced persons, and more than 200,000 killed, humanitarian assistance and international intervention are in dire need.This report outlines the response to the Syrian humanitarian crisis by a South African-based nongovernmental organization (NGO). It describes the experiences of a health care worker, the patient profiles, and the lessons learned in a war zone.Responding to a nation in need is of paramount importance. In order to maximize the benefit conferred, the team should always attempt to implement measures that leave a lasting legacy.MahomedZ, MotaraF, BhamA. Humanitarian medical response to the Syrian Arab Republic (April 7, 2013 to April 23, 2013). Prehosp Disaster Med. 2016;31(1):114–116.

scholarly journals Reading hegemonic masculinities in 2 Samuel 11 in the South African contexts

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Madipoane Masenya
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
Majority World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
Study Perspective ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
2 Samuel

The present essay will engage the concepts of (hegemonic) masculinities as depicted in the actions of David and Uriah in 2 Samuel 11. It is argued that although Uriah’s character in the preceding text occupies a place on the hegemonic masculinities ladder, his masculinity (which is much akin to that of the majority of men in the two thirds majority world context) is subordinated to those of a more powerful man. Given the social location of the present author (and the scant research from a masculinity study perspective on his character), Uriah’s character will be the focal point of attention in this essay. From a contemporary perspective, it is argued that men in our two thirds majority world context (including African-South African men), who like Uriah, sit at the relatively lower rung of the hegemonic masculinities ladder, and subordinated to more powerful men, still have a sense of agency. Thus, such men are not completely powerless. As a point of departure, I will engage David’s masculinity, basically foregrounding his abuse of power. This will be followed by an elaborate discussion on Uriah’s masculinities and some sections on the agency of subordinated men. In the final analysis, concluding remarks will be made.

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