1,909 research outputs found
Representation and Misrepresentation: San regional advocacy and the Global imagery
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Arts on 19/07/2010, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02560041003786490The San of southern Africa are one of the most represented peoples of southern Africa. Internationally, they are most often depicted as a hunting-gathering people or as a people recently removed from that way of life. Organisations such as Survival International draw on these images for political advocacy and in campaigns for land rights for indigenous peoples. In southern Africa, San organisations fight for similar rights and, despite their membership being comprised of San people, the images and ideas of San-ness are dominated by the global imagery. The images and ideas of the San draw on racialised caricatures and colonial imagery that freeze San imagery into a mythologised past. We argue that this is a limiting factor in political advocacy that constrains the types of responses possible for aboriginal rights in Africa
The edge of the periphery: situating the ≠Khomani San of the Southern Kalahari in the political economy of Southern Africa
Get PDFThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in African Identities on 14/04/16, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14725843.2016.1154813In this article, we situate the Southern Kalahari San within the political economy of Southern Africa and within the world system. Here we draw on and critique modernization theory as a model of explanation for the lack of development found locally. In the Southern Kalahari, the ≠Khomani San won a massive land claim that should have empowered and enabled local development. Yet they remain largely impoverished, while seeking out a meaningful life on the edge of the capitalist world system. Within states, contradictions remain as local diversity continues to be reproduced and modernity itself is reproduced as local diversity. The research is premised on empirical fieldwork conducted in the Southern Kalahari in 2013 and supported by a series of earlier field research over the previous five years. The San of the Southern Kalahari are not resisting modernity but drawing on aspects of it selectively for their own vision of meaningful development
Oil Corrupts Elections: The Political Economy of Vote-Buying in Nigeria
Get PDFThe extant perspectives on vote-buying have produced three central arguments around its causes, which are the factors of poverty, the electoral/voting system, and the nature of politics in the state. Going beyond these perspectives, this study presents the argument that vote-buying can also be explained by considering the nature of the political economy of a state, especially when the state is oil-‑dependent. The Nigerian case study demonstrates this argument. We employ the “oil-impedes-democracy” framework, which is a strand of the resource curse theory, to argue that the incidence of vote‑buying in Nigeria’s contemporary elections is prevalent because of the oil wealth associated with politics and elections in the state. This is because abundant oil wealth intensifies elite competition, which explains the use of all strategies to win elections including vote-buying. This is also facilitated by the fact that the political elite, especially the incumbent, have adequate access to oil wealth and spend it to “buy” elections and hold on to power. Voters, on their part, also prefer to sell their votes during elections to have a share of the “national cake” given their perception of the wealth associated with politics in Nigeria and the poor service delivery by politicians after assuming state offices
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Teacher beliefs about listening in a foreign language
Get PDFThis study investigated, through a questionnaire, the stated beliefs and stated practices of 115 foreign language teachers in England regarding listening pedagogy: whether such beliefs and practices reflect the literature on listening, whether beliefs and stated practices converged, and what factors might underpin them. Responses indicated a mismatch between teachers’ stated belief in the importance of teaching learners how to listen more effectively, and the lack of evidence in their stated practice of such teaching, with a focus instead on task completion. Findings are discussed against the accountability agenda of the study’s context, and its implications for teacher development highlighted
The KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature : political elite formation and change, 1994-2004.
Get PDFThesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2008.This is a study, through extensive empirical fieldwork research, of political elite formation in the Provincial Legislature of KwaZulu-Natal over a ten-year period from 1994-2004. The period of this study covers two successive provincial government elections and two terms of office. The first election was the founding election of South Africa's new democracy. Through the frameworks of classical and democratic elite theory, the social and political composition, patterns of recruitment, values, ideology and institutional capacity of the elected members of the legislature are analysed. The findings of this study demonstrate that the new institutional context has provided for greater party fluidity and instability in the legislature of a political elite that came to power through fragmented and contradictory alliances, has become more homogenous, and for some, their contradictory affiliations tie their interests to the legislature. In addition, an emerging political culture of value systems and ideology is beginning to take shape across political parties in a manner that has the potential to undermine the democratic institutions of government. As a product of this, and an underdeveloped institutional capacity, certain issues dominate the provincial agenda as the elite come to redefine their interests. Alongside this the longevity of a few is guaranteed. As such, political elite formation in KwaZulu-Natal has the potential to undermine the basis of democracy in the province
Violence against Muslims: Conquered, not fully colonized, in the Making of the Muslim “Other” in the Central African Republic
Get PDF© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of African Studies AssociationMuslims in the Central African Republic have experienced extreme violence for more than a decade. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this article shows how the foundations for contemporary violence were created through colonial and postcolonial state-making. The civilizing mission of republican colonialism set Muslims apart. Lifestyle and mobility were never fully colonized; escape depicted difference. Nationalist liberation mythologies render Muslim citizenship as foreign, precarious, and subject to ongoing contestation. Pentecostalism, a lateral liberation philosophy presented as patriotism, provides power to anti-Muslim discourse. Violence against Muslims is situated in an accumulated “pastness” of state-making and struggle in Central African historiography.Unfunde
Traces, CSLBS Newsletter Autumn 2023
Get PDFWith contributions from Matthew J. Smith, Hannah Bekkers, Suzanne Francis-Brown, and Jess Hannah
Media waves and moral panicking: The case of the FIFA World Cup 2010
Get PDFAs with previous international sporting events, the threat of human trafficking quickly became part of public consciousness during the lead up to the World Cup. Out of 350 articles covering human trafficking in South African newspapers between 2006 and 2010, 82 (or 24 per cent) directly linked this sporting event with human trafficking. We claim that media hypes based on constructed moral panics might be recycled in similar scenarios to that displayed during the FIFA World Cup, demonstrating the staying power of such media hypes and the utility of moral panics
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