Suchergebnisse

In Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa Zimitri Erasmus questions the notion that one can know 'race' with one's eyes, or through racial categories and or genetic ancestry tests. She moves between the intimate probing of racial identities as we experience them individually, and analysis of the global historical forces that have created these identities and woven them into our thinking about what it means to be 'human'. Starting from her own family's journeys through regions of the world and ascribed racial identities, she develops her argument about how it is possible to recognise the pervasiveness of race thinking without submitting to its power. Drawing on the theoretical work of Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter and others, Erasmus argues for a new way of 'coming to know otherwise', of seeing the boundaries between racial identities as thresholds to be crossed, through politically charged acts of imagination and love.

South Africa's government requires information on apartheid race classification to implement and monitor racial redress. This has sparked resistance to race classification as a criterion for redress in higher education admissions. I argue that (1) jettisoning apartheid race categories now in favour of either class or 'merit' would set back the few gains made toward redress; (2) against common sense uses of 'race' and against the erasure of 'race' through class reductionism; and (3) for developing and testing new indicators for 'race' and class disadvantage with a view to eventually replacing apartheid race categories. I offer a critical-race-standpoint as an alternative conceptual orientation and method for transformative admissions committed to racial redress that is socially just. I conclude that admissions criteria should encompass the lived realities of inequality and be informed by a conception of humanism as critique. This requires resistance to ways of knowing orchestrated by apartheid's codes.

Bibliography: pages 608-625. ; This study is a sociological analysis of participatory-democratic organisations in 'third world' contexts. Firstly, it assesses the degree of participatory democracy in each enterprise studied. Secondly, it explores whether cooperative development is a process. Thirdly, it assesses the applicability of existing theory in the field for organisations in 'third world' contexts. The data used is predominantly qualitative, though quantitative information is utilised. Qualitative data is gathered from in-depth interviews using semi-structured questionnaires, observation and the examination of primary sources. Empirical information is analysed in the light of theoretical constructs reviewed and practical constraints identified by other researchers in the field. The key construct is an 'ideal-type' participatory-democratic organisation. Significant findings include the following: (a) cooperatives in 'third world' contexts are formed and joined primarily for material reasons; (b) specific constraints include a severe lack of basic education among cooperators, relationships of dependency between co-ops and service organisations, and a 'survival' consciousness among cooperative members; (c) the nature of relationships between cooperatives and service organisations have significant implications for co-op development; (d) there is a relationship between organisational structures and viability as an economic unit and (e) members in different positions in the enterprise have different conceptions of cooperation. The study concludes that cooperative development is a process involving different stages characterised by different degrees of participation in decision-making, viability, organisational development and cooperative consciousness.

Listening has long been understood as characteristic of writing centre practice, and as central to writing centre philosophy. This reflective progress report argues that such listening is also the generating culture of a university-wide writing programme of writing intensive courses, and that this culture will only be manifested and sustained if constantly modelled at all levels of the programme. In order to model what we teach, we need to build listening into the processes and structure of the programme as well as into the classrooms. Through letters from the invited co-authors of this paper, a snapshot is provided of the generative power of active listening in the teaching conversations between professor and writing fellows; lecturer, writing fellow and students; and writing fellows as a team as they create their lesson plan. Active listening is understood as a discipline of attentiveness to multiple and simultaneous meanings, and thus as a discipline which is necessary for complex thought and writing. Edward Said (2013) has described this attentiveness to simultaneity as key to a humanist critical literacy, which not only promotes engaged students and teachers but is also a political commitment to developing the citizen scholar. In the Wits Writing Programme, attentiveness to simultaneity represents a principle of teaching and of learning, an aim of writing, and a guiding value of the programme's construction.

"The reconciliatory project [in South Africa] seems to have completely fallen away from the national agenda, and many of the TRC's [Truth and Reconciliation Commission's] recommendations remain unimplemented and unrealised. Has reconciliation been successful? Do South Africans feel reconciled? What is the way forward? This book brings together leading social scientists and researchers to critically interrogate the success of the reconciliatory project, using ten years of public opinion data collected by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) through the South African Reconciliation Barometer survey."--Back cover