The Everyday in a Time of Transformation: Exploring a Single South African Lifeworld after 20 Years of Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
P. Conrad Kotze ◽  
Jan K. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Epistemological Framework

Transformation has come to be a defining characteristic of contemporary societies, while it has rarely been studied in a way that gives acknowledgement to both its societal effects and the experience thereof by the individual. This article discusses a recent study that attempts to do just that. The everyday life of a South African is explored within the context of changes that can be linked, more or less directly, to those that have characterized South Africa as a state since the end of apartheid in 1994. The study strives to avoid the pitfalls associated with either an empirical or solely constructivist appreciation of this phenomenon, but rather represents an integral onto-epistemological framework for the practice of sociological research. The illustrated framework is argued to facilitate an analysis of social reality that encompasses all aspects thereof, from the objectively given to the intersubjectively constructed and subjectively constituted. While not requiring extensive development on the theoretical or methodological level, the possibility of carrying out such an integral study is highlighted as being comfortably within the capabilities of sociology as a discipline. While the article sheds light on the experience of transformation, it is also intended to contribute to the contemporary debate surrounding the current “ontological turn” within the social sciences.

Financialization in South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 1012-1030
Author(s):  
Ewa Karwowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
South African ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Global South ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
The Social

Financialization has become a popular concept across the social sciences, usually defined as the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors, and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies. Financialization researchers highlight the detrimental consequences of an excessively large and powerful financial sector on economy and society. In South Africa, financialization has been shaped by its colonial and apartheid past, especially the strong links of South African corporations and banks to the international financial centre of London. Low growth and investment, an outcome of the finance-led accumulation regime, have also resulted in the continuity of extreme inequality and high levels of unemployment. In the Global South, financialization mainly affects emerging economies since they possess relatively developed financial markets in comparison to poorer countries. South Africa is the only African economy for which there is a substantial financialization literature. In comparison to other emerging economies, South Africa is relatively strongly financialized as stock market capitalization is extremely high, making Johannesburg one of the top financial centres in the Global South. Furthermore, financial inflows into the country are comparatively large, JSE-listed companies are well integrated into global value chains and household debt is high.

scholarly journals Living and Dealing with Food in an Affluent Society—A Case for the Study of Lived (Non)Religion

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Salonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Everyday Ethics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Point Of Departure

Significant changes have been taking place in the field of the sociology of religion in the last few decades, which challenge researchers to rethink this scholarly field. This article suggests that a great deal could be learned about the current dilemmas within this field through research that explores the moral underpinnings of everyday food consumption within contemporary society that is characterized by abundance. More specifically, the article proposes that everyday food consumption and everyday ethics provide unique opportunities to transcend and surpass crucial distinctions within social sciences in a way that can feed the sociological imagination in relation to research on lived (non)religion. Drawing on examples from research on food consumption in the nonreligious context and at the individual, discursive and institutional levels, this study shows how the everyday ethics of food consumption can serve as a point of departure for sociological research, which could help researchers to understand the currents of lived religion and nonreligion in a way that evades the idea of religion as a certain set of practices or beliefs, or as a specific religious affiliation. This research would enable the study of issues such as practices, beliefs, meanings and belonging, as well as distancing, withdrawal, and indifference.

scholarly journals South African Social Science and the Azanian Philosophical Tradition

Theoria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (168) ◽  
pp. 111-135
Author(s):  
Anjuli Webster
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Social Science ◽  
South African ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Material Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This article discusses the contemporary history of South African social science in relation to the Azanian Philosophical Tradition. It is addressed directly to white scholars, urging introspection with regard to the ethical question of epistemic justice in relation to the evolution of the social sciences in conqueror South Africa. I consider the establishment of the professional social sciences at South African universities in the early twentieth century as a central part of the epistemic project of conqueror South Africa. In contrast, the Azanian Philosophical Tradition is rooted in African philosophy and articulated in resistance against the injustice of conquest and colonialism in southern Africa since the seventeenth century. It understands conquest as the fundamental historical antagonism shaping the philosophical, political, and material problem of ‘South Africa’. The tradition is silenced by and exceeds the political and epistemic strictures of the settler colonial nation state and social science.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Inequality Research in Sociology for Inequality Reduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110201
Author(s):  
Thomas A. DiPrete ◽  
Brittany N. Fox-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Scale Change ◽  
The Subject

Social inequality is a central topic of research in the social sciences. Decades of research have deepened our understanding of the characteristics and causes of social inequality. At the same time, social inequality has markedly increased during the past 40 years, and progress on reducing poverty and improving the life chances of Americans in the bottom half of the distribution has been frustratingly slow. How useful has sociological research been to the task of reducing inequality? The authors analyze the stance taken by sociological research on the subject of reducing inequality. They identify an imbalance in the literature between the discipline’s continual efforts to motivate the plausibility of large-scale change and its lesser efforts to identify feasible strategies of change either through social policy or by enhancing individual and local agency with the potential to cumulate into meaningful progress on inequality reduction.

What Makes a Hero? Theorising the Social Structuring of Heroism

Sociology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Frisk
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Structuring ◽  
The Relationship

The article discusses four dominant perspectives in the sociology of heroism: the study of great men; hero stories; heroic actions; and hero institutions. The discussion ties together heroism and fundamental sociological debates about the relationship between the individual and the social order; it elucidates the socio-psychological, cultural/ideational and socio-political structuring of heroism, which challenges the tendency to understand people, actions and events as naturally, or intrinsically, heroic; and it points to a theoretical trajectory within the literature, which has moved from very exclusive to more inclusive conceptualisations of a hero. After this discussion, the article examines three problematic areas in the sociology of heroism: the underlying masculine character of heroism; the presumed disappearance of the hero with modernisation; and the principal idea of heroism as a pro-social phenomenon. The article calls for a more self-conscious engagement with this legacy, which could stimulate dialogue across different areas of sociological research.

Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon

Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Turn

Researchers in political science are devoting increasing attention to the ontological commitments of their theories – that is, to what those theories presuppose about the nature of the political world. This article focuses on a recent contribution to this ‘ontological turn’ in political science ( Sibeon, 1999 ). Tensions are identified in Sibeon's account of the causal interplay between agency and social structure. It is argued that these tensions can be resolved by reflecting explicitly on ontological issues, in particular the causal efficacy of social structure, using a particular approach to the philosophy of the social sciences known as critical realism. The value of such reflection for the explanatory power of political analysis is highlighted.

scholarly journals Review: Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen M, Kuehne C & Lombard A-P. 2014. Learning Pathway for Number in the Early Primary Grades. South Africa.

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Mike Askew
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Primary Grades ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early Primary ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

<p>I cringe at the fashion of reducing everything to a set of discrete points – ‘the five keys to eternal happiness’, ‘twenty-seven ways to beat procrastination’ – yet find myself attracted to the 4 E’s model of cognition: that cognition is embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. Far yet from being a coherent model in the sense of general agreement over what each of these terms means, and despite sounding reductionist, the model seems to have traction through bringing together differing theoretical positions and suggesting that cognition cannot be accounted for by just one of them.<br />For example, Lakoff &amp; Núñez (2000) argue for embodied origins of mathematics, but the power of mathematics also resides in the way that it extends our ‘natural’ understandings. And while the Vygotskian position of cognition arising from the move from the interpersonal – the embedded and enactive – to the intrapersonal is popular, it seems to lack explanatory power about how it is that what originates between people comes to be located within the individual. The proprioceptor emphasis of embodied theories (that cognition originates through our literal, common senses of position and the movement of our bodies in space) has, I think, potential to unlock this connection between the social and individual.</p>

scholarly journals Moral discourses and pharmaceuticalised governance in households

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
P Norris ◽  
J Gabe ◽  
K Chamberlain ◽  
D Hodgetts
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Natural Production ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Health Experts

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This article extends our understanding of the everyday practices of pharmaceuticalisation through an examination of moral concerns over medication practices in the household. Moral concerns of responsibility and discipline in relation to pharmaceutical consumption have been identified, such as passive or active medication practices, and adherence to orthodox or unorthodox accounts. This paper further delineates dimensions of the moral evaluations of pharmaceuticals. In 2010 and 2011 data were collected from 55 households across New Zealand and data collection techniques, such as photo- and diary-elicitation interviews, allowed the participants to develop and articulate reflective stories of the moral meaning of pharmaceuticals. Four repertoires were identified: a disordering society repertoire where pharmaceuticals evoke a society in an unnatural state; a disordering self repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a moral failing of the individual; a disordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a threat to one's physical or mental equilibrium; a re-ordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify the restoration of function. The research demonstrated that the dichotomies of orthodox/unorthodox and compliance/resistance do not adequately capture how medications are used and understood in everyday practice. Attitudes change according to why pharmaceuticals are taken and who is taking them, their impacts on social relationships, and different views on the social or natural production of disease, the power of the pharmaceutical industry, and the role of health experts. Pharmaceuticals are tied to our identity, what we want to show of ourselves, and what sort of world we see ourselves living in. The ordering and disordering understandings of pharmaceuticals intersect with forms of pharmaceuticalised governance, where conduct is governed through pharmaceutical routines, and where self-responsibility entails following the prescription of other agents. Pharmaceuticals symbolise forms of governance with different sets of roles and responsibilities.

scholarly journals RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IN-STORE PROMOTIONS AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN SHOPPING MALLS IN SOUTH AFRICA

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinessa Naidoo ◽  
◽  
Nkhumeleni Mathivha
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Consumer Behaviour ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Price Discounts ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Point Of Purchase ◽  
Spss Software

Promotions of products and services close to the point of purchase is a reality to many companies. These promotions include the demonstration of products, price discounts and free samples. This paper sets out to determine the influence of in-store promotions on consumer behaviour. The study sampled 200 middle-of-the-month and month-end shoppers in four of the largest shopping malls in Polokwane, South Africa among. The paper was designed along quantitative method dicta and the primary data were collected by means of a questionnaire. Data were analysed via IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, and presented in graphs and tables for easy interpretation. The results and knowledge gained from this study add to the existing body of knowledge in the discipline, and it might assist shop managers in finding the most suitable methods for in-store promotions. All ethical requirements were considered during the course of the study. The outcome of the study indicated a statistically significant relationship between consumer behaviour and in-store coupon offers. However, the association analysis results for the enjoyment of in-store promotions, in-store free samples, in-store buy-one-get-one-free offers, and in-store price discounts, failed to provide any evidence of association with consumer behaviour.

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