scholarly journals The decolonial turn: reference lists in PhD theses as markers of theoretical shift/stasis in media and journalism studies at selected South African universities

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zvenyika Eckson Mugari

The supervision and production of a PhD thesis often presents a potentially interesting tension between PhDs as conforming to disciplinary epistemologies and PhDs as breaking epistemological boundaries. No academic discipline has been left untouched by decolonial thinking in the South African university space since the eruption of radicalized student protest movements in 2015. The Rhodes Must Fall student protest movement, which quickly morphed into Fees Must Fall, precipitated a new urgency to decolonize the university curriculum in post-apartheid South Africa. A new interdisciplinary conversation in the humanities and social sciences began to emerge which challenged established orthodoxies in favour of de-Westernizing, decolonizing and re-mooring epistemological and pedagogic practices away from Eurocentrism. Whether and how that theoretical ferment filtered into postgraduate students’ theses, however, remains to be established. This article deploys a decolonial theoretical framework to explore the tension between epistemic conformity and boundary transgressing in journalism studies by analysing reference lists of PhD theses submitted at three South African Universities three years after the protest movement Rhodes Must Fall. With specific focus on media and journalism studies as a discipline, this article argues that the PhD process represents a site for potential epistemic disobedience and disciplinary border-jumping, and for challenging the canonical insularity of Western theory in journalism studies. The findings appear to disconfirm the thesis that decolonial rhetoric has had a material influence so far on the media studies curriculum, as reflected in reference lists of cited works in their dissertations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1890897
Author(s):  
Joseph O. IseOlorunkanmi ◽  
Mathew E. Rotimi ◽  
Grace O. Adebola ◽  
Adedoyin I. Lawal ◽  
Nweke-Love C. Henry ◽  
...  

10.28945/4186 ◽  
2019 ◽  

Aim/Purpose: Improving or changing business processes is one of the most important roles for Information technologies functions. Yet, most organizations struggle with planned process change and even more with unplanned change. There is little support from research as the dynamics of planned process change is understudied and unplanned process change is seldom researched. Background: This paper describes the impact of unplanned business process change from a systems perspective. The #feesmustfall student protest movement, which began in 2015, and affected Universities throughout South Africa provides the context. Methodology: An interpretive abductive case study at a South African university used Steven Alter’s Work System framework to describe the unplanned business process change that occurred due to the #feesmustfall student protest movement. Contribution: Theoretically, this paper demonstrates the practical use of Alter’s work system framework to analyze unplanned business process change. Practically, it de-scribes and explains the impacts of the change which may be useful to executives or administrators responsible for operational systems within organizations. Findings: During unplanned business process change, change management, staff training, customizable technology and strategic fluidity and focus were found to be important. Unplanned business process change results in all elements of the work systems and its environment changing, even resulting in changed products and customer behavior. Impact on Society: If organizations are more aware of the impacts of unplanned process change they will be better equipped to control them. Future Research: Future action research studies on unplanned business process change could suggest actions for manager’s dealing with them.


Curationis ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 12 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
W.J. Kotze

At their annual meeting during 1987, the heads of the Departments of Nursing at South African Universities discussed the sub-division of Nursing Science. They identified the following problems in this regard:


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 100132
Author(s):  
Tembisa Ngqondi ◽  
Pardon Blessings Maoneke ◽  
Hope Mauwa

Literator ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Steyn

A study of the history of South African universities from 1918 to 1948 showed that six factors influenced the use of a particular language as a language medium at a university, namely economic and political power, as well as the number of people in the language community (which determines matters such as the official status of the language and the availability of money for universities), lecturers' and students ’ knowledge of the language, its position as scholarly language, language loyalty and attitudes toward other languages and the support enjoyed by language and related ideologies. Whereas these factors were reasonably favourable for Afrikaans universities in the past, they currently pose a threat to the survival of Afrikaans-medium universities. The standpoint is defended that retaining Afrikaans as educational and scholarly language should be an important factor when making decisions on universities. The tension between internationalisation and retention of the own language and culture is also topical in Europe, and steps have been taken to try to protect the retention of Dutch as language medium at Dutch and Flemish universities.


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