scholarly journals Exploring ubuntu discourse in South Africa: Loss, liminality and hope

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John L.B. Eliastam
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
South African Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social ◽  
Discursive Leadership ◽  
Core Elements

This article explores the current state of the social value of ubuntu. The notion of ubuntu seems to offer possibilities for nation building and social cohesion in post-Apartheid South Africa.However, this is contested by scholars who argue that the concept is vague and open to abuse.Interviews reveal that, whilst core elements remain, the meaning of ubuntu has been eroded,and is subject to distortion and even abuse. Ubuntu exists tightly interwoven with un-ubuntu. The notion of liminality is introduced to understand the current state of both ubuntu and South African society in transition. A liminal space offers possibilities for the creative re-imaginingand recovery of ubuntu as a social value that can drive social transformation in South Africa.The lens of discursive leadership offers insight into the ways in which leaders can stimulate and shape ubuntu discourse and facilitate the construction of new meaning in society.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article forms part of broader research into perceptions of difference and threat, and prejudice on the part of South Africans towards foreigners. Ubuntu is a social value that should challenge prejudice and xenophobia and shape social relationships. Research in a rural and urban context in the Eastern Cape suggests that ubuntu discourse has been eroded and is in need of reinvigoration.

Gendered Understanding of Disability and Aging

2018 ◽  
pp. 241-253
Author(s):  
Vaijayanti Bezbaruah ◽  
Nilika Mehrotra
Keyword(s):  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
North India ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
And Gender

In its early conventional sense, disability was largely understood in bio-medical model which subsequently was supplemented with the psycho-social underpinnings of disability. In recent times, the social identities in terms of race, religion, class, caste, and gender add other dimensions to the social science discourse on disability studies. The chapter attempts to inform through the dimensions of age and aging in relation to the disability discourse, drawing from ethnographic cases over a period of research in North India. In the process, this chapter offers an analysis of disability and aging with focusing on the lack of access to social and familial resources for people with disability who are old and people who acquire any kind of disability in their old age. This chapter examines uncertainties experienced by the older disabled and the disabled older persons in relation to the extent of family ties and other social resources in both the rural and urban context.

Gendered Understanding of Disability and Aging

2022 ◽  
pp. 90-101
Author(s):  
Vaijayanti Bezbaruah ◽  
Nilika Mehrotra
Keyword(s):  
Medical Model ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
North India ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
And Gender

In its early conventional sense, disability was largely understood in bio-medical model which subsequently was supplemented with the psycho-social underpinnings of disability. In recent times, the social identities in terms of race, religion, class, caste, and gender add other dimensions to the social science discourse on disability studies. The chapter attempts to inform through the dimensions of age and aging in relation to the disability discourse, drawing from ethnographic cases over a period of research in North India. In the process, this chapter offers an analysis of disability and aging with focusing on the lack of access to social and familial resources for people with disability who are old and people who acquire any kind of disability in their old age. This chapter examines uncertainties experienced by the older disabled and the disabled older persons in relation to the extent of family ties and other social resources in both the rural and urban context.

scholarly journals Theorising the Image as Act: Reading the Social and Political in Images of the Rural Eastern Cape

Kronos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Steele
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Cape Province ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
Social Acts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
A Site

ABSTRACT Certain anthropological narratives of South Africa's Eastern Cape province, such as Monica Hunter's 1936 Reaction to Conquest and Philip Mayer's 1963 Townsmen or Tribesmen, persist as potent referential 'bodies of knowledge'. By laying down the coordinates of Black rural and urban experience, such studies continue to animate concepts of tradition and modernity, effectively conjuring up notions of 'the border', both literally and metaphorically. Encountering Pauline Ingle's photographic collection amidst these circuits of knowledge and ways of seeing is to recognise that it is both unusual and exceptional. It is a collection of over 4000 images that are not only located in a rural area but also covers a sustained time period, corresponding to the period of formal apartheid. The concept of the rural is amplified in the collection, positioning it as a site of development, as the 'not yet modern', in which subjects are figured both in class hierarchies and in relation to Daniel Morolong's urban photographs in and around East London in the 1950s. Employing the theory of social acts enables a re-contemplation of the subject, and a reading of the social that suggests a set of possibilities and futures beyond what currently constitutes the rural and the urban; and upturns the disciplinary optics that condition the predominating ethnographies and historiographies of the Eastern Cape.

The Impact of Endorsing the Belief in a Just World on Social Judgments

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît Testé ◽  
Samantha Perrin
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Social Judgments ◽  
Just World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
The Impact

The present research examines the social value attributed to endorsing the belief in a just world for self (BJW-S) and for others (BJW-O) in a Western society. We conducted four studies in which we asked participants to assess a target who endorsed BJW-S vs. BJW-O either strongly or weakly. Results showed that endorsement of BJW-S was socially valued and had a greater effect on social utility judgments than it did on social desirability judgments. In contrast, the main effect of endorsement of BJW-O was to reduce the target’s social desirability. The results also showed that the effect of BJW-S on social utility is mediated by the target’s perceived individualism, whereas the effect of BJW-S and BJW-O on social desirability is mediated by the target’s perceived collectivism.

Disciplining Polenta: A Parody on the Politics of Saving Food

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Zachary Nowak ◽  
Bradley M. Jones ◽  
Elisa Ascione
Keyword(s):  
Food Products ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Traditional Food ◽  
Traditional Foods ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Identity Creation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article begins with a parody, a fictitious set of regulations for the production of “traditional” Italian polenta. Through analysis of primary and secondary historical sources we then discuss the various meanings of which polenta has been the bearer through time and space in order to emphasize the mutability of the modes of preparation, ingredients, and the social value of traditional food products. Finally, we situate polenta within its broader cultural, political, and economic contexts, underlining the uses and abuses of rendering foods as traditional—a process always incomplete, often contested, never organic. In stirring up the past and present of polenta and placing it within both the projects of Italian identity creation and the broader scholarly literature on culinary tradition and taste, we emphasize that for so-called traditional foods to be saved, they must be continually reinvented.

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

Victor S. D'Souza. Development Planning and Structural Inequalities: The Response of the Underprivileged. New Delhi: Sage Publications 1990. Pages 206 + Index. Price: Rs 180 (Hardbound).

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-317
Author(s):  
Ziaul Haque
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Capital Formation ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
The Social

Deveiopment planning in India, as in other developing countries, has generally been aimed at fostering an industrially-oriented policy as the engine of economic growth. This one-sided economic development, which results in capital formation, creation of urban elites, and underprivileged social classes of a modern society, has led to distortions in the social structure as a whole. On the contrary, as a result of this uneven economic development, which is narrowly measured in terms of economic growth and capital formation, the fruits of development have gone to the people according to their economic power and position in the social structure: those occupying higher positions benefiting much more than those occupying the lower ones. Thus, development planning has tended to increase inequalities and has sharpened divisive tendencies. Victor S. D'Souza, an eminent Indian sociologist, utilizing the Indian census data of 1961, 1971, and 1981, examines the problem of structural inequality with particular reference to the Indian Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes - the two most underprivileged sections of the present Indian society which, according to the census of 1981, comprised 15.75 percent and 7.76 percent of India's population respectively. Theoretically, he takes the concept of development in a broad sense as related to the self-fulfIlment of the individual. The transformation of the unjust social structure, the levelling down of glaring economic and social inequalities, and the concern for the development of the underprivileged are for the author the basic elements of a planned development. This is the theoretical perspective of the first chapter, "Development Planning and Social Transformation".

Disability as a social phenomenon

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Natalia Guseva ◽  
Vitaliy Berdutin
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Rehabilitation Programs ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Consistent Solution ◽  
First Time

At present, the problem of establishing disability is a point at issue in Russia. Despite the fact that medical criteria for disability are being developed very actively, high-quality methods for assessing social hallmarks are still lacking. Since disability is a phenomenon inherent in any society, each state forms a social and economic policy for people with disabilities in accordance with its level of development, priorities and opportunities. We have proposed a three-stage model, which includes a system for the consistent solution of the main tasks aimed at studying the causes and consequences of the problems encountered today in the social protection of citizens with health problems. The article shows why the existing approaches to the determination of disability and rehabilitation programs do not correspond to the current state of Russian society and why a decrease in the rate of persons recognized as disabled for the first time does not indicate an improvement in the health of the population. The authors proposed a number of measures with a view to correcting the situation according to the results of the study.

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