376 research outputs found

    Perspectives on Knowledge and Higher Education within Marginalised Communities in South Africa

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    With increasing calls to decolonise education across the globe, the inclusion of different knowledges in mainstream education has become a priority. Initiatives have included diversifying curriculum content and the creation of modules with a focus on localised knowledge. These initiatives have rarely been undertaken in collaboration with local communities and students, but rather have involved extracting and repurposing local knowledges for mainstream education (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2008; Shizha,2014; Mkhize & Ndimande-Hlongwa 2014). In South Africa, colonialism, and apartheid systematically marginalised traditional and indigenous ways of producing knowledge. The end of apartheid brought with it a move away from segregated education and new policy emerged to increase the access to higher education. However, many universities remain segregated, which means that students from historically marginalised communities are still attending universities that are under-resourced (Heleta, 2016). The curriculum in many higher education institutions remains Eurocentric, reinforcing Western dominance and privilege. The lack of meaningful decolonisation led to student protests in 2015, which propelled decolonisation and the demand for an Afrocentric curriculum to the forefront of the national debate (Kwoba, Chantiluke & Nkopo, 2018). Through utilising a collaborative approach as part of a decolonising methodology, this study attempts to challenge Eurocentric research methods that can undermine local knowledge and the experiences of marginalised groups. As well as being collective, this approach requires the researcher to critically reflect on their own participation in a research project (Smith, 2002). This research highlights the tensions inherent in meeting the aspirations of a decolonisation agenda and student expectations of the currency afforded by attending a neoliberal higher education institution. The findings of this study add to the critical research base on decolonisation by focusing on indigenous perspectives of received education, their own knowledge, and how this knowledge can/should be used. Furthermore, this research is a recognition of the complexities and contextual considerations necessary when exploring decolonising

    A case study exploring disability inclusion within the Muslim Ummah in South Africa

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    Religion and spirituality are central to the way many people, including persons with disabilities, make sense of both the world itself, and their place in that world. However, in most scholarship focusing on disability, religion, as a way of understanding and dealing with disability, is side-lined or absent (Imhoff, 2017). Islam has a long rich history in South Africa and is currently one of the major religions here (Mahida, 2012). Followers of Islam are commonly referred to as members of the Muslim Ummah as a collective, an Ummah that includes persons with disabilities and non-disabled persons. Given the paucity of research focusing on disability in the Muslim Ummah in South Africa, this study sets out to gain insight into the way disability inclusion is enacted within the Muslim Ummah in South Africa. The research question asks: How is disability inclusion interpreted, experienced and enacted by people within the Muslim Ummah in South Africa? Adopting an interpretative qualitative research approach and applying an intrinsic case study method, the research was conducted with members of the Ummah in three major cities in South Africa, viz. Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Data was generated from persons with disabilities, family members of persons with disabilities, the Ulema and a non-disabled person from the Ummah from each city. In-depth face-to-face interviews and a review of three Muslim publications were used as data gathering mechanisms. Interviews were held with seven persons with disabilities, either a physical or sensory disability, five family members of participants with disabilities, six Ulema and three non-disabled persons. All participants were aged 18 and older. Data was analysed by looking for themes that emerged from the data. Three themes, “Seen as Inferior'', “Carrying the Weight for Inclusion” and “We Are Not Doing Enough”, each with two sub-themes, emerged from the analysis. “Seen as Inferior'' and its two sub- themes, ‘' Gaze of Othering and ‘'The Deep Impact of Disability'', highlight the way in which persons with disabilities are viewed as inferior within the Ummah and how this is reflected in the gaze of non-disabled persons on persons with disabilities and their families, and the impact of this gaze. ‘'Carrying the Weight For Inclusion” emphasises the responsibility that persons with disabilities have assumed in order to be accepted into and included in the Ummah and this is demonstrated through the two sub-themes, “The Unspoken Responsibility of Negotiating Persons with Disabilities” and ‘'Negotiating the Effort to be at the Masjid”. “We Are Not Doing Enough” explains that although some aspects of inclusion are evident within the Muslim Ummah, the pace of change is very slow and inclusion remains inadequate. Sub-themes ‘'Inclusion could Create Ease and Belonging” and “Still a Journey to Travel to be Included” capture the way disability inclusion is interpreted and experienced by the participants of the study, highlighting that much work is still needed to attain full inclusion and to create ease and belonging for persons with disabilities within the Ummah. The discussion explains how the dominant discourse around disability is one that reflects an ableist, normative, colonial narrative. This narrative influences how disability inclusion is enacted within the Ummah, belabouring a move to full inclusion. The phenomenon of an unconscious exclusion of persons with disabilities within the Ummah is discussed as it emerges from this dominant discourse, together with the silence that sustains the continuation of the exclusion. The ways in which this unconscious exclusion plays out in many spaces and places significant to the lives of persons with disabilities are identified. It is proposed that, in order to achieve full inclusion and belonging for persons with disabilities within the Ummah, there needs to be a re-shaping in the thinking around disability through generating new knowledge and by challenging the dominance of the normative, ableist narrative. Informed by a decolonial turn, pathways towards full inclusion and belonging of persons with disabilities within the Ummah are proposed. It is suggested that collective action by both persons with disabilities and non-disabled persons within the Ummah is needed for full inclusion and belonging to transpire. The pathway to full inclusion and belonging would enable systemic change around disability within the Ummah to ensue and it would help move the de-colonisation project forward

    Thabo Mbeki: an intellectual biography

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    Generally, this study contributes toward efforts to privilege African thinkers and scholars who have been and continue to be the victim of epistemic closure and silencing by Western (Euro-North American) scholarship and epistemic practice. This is framed through the intellectual biography of Thabo Mbeki in order to bring to the fore the evidence that could be used to advance this argument. The engagement with Mbeki's intellectual thought and ideas is approached from four different entry points and perspectives. Firstly, this study traces and locates the historical and intellectual context of Mbeki within the black intellectual tradition finding its roots in the New Africa Movement (1862-1960) of the nineteenth century, consisting of religious leaders, teachers, writers, and graduates who used the acquisition of modern colonial education to identify themselves as New Africans (specifically New African intellectuals). Secondly, it provides that Mbeki’s intellectual thought is a product of the teachings and examples of the liberation movement’s leaders within the ANC, an organisation steeped in rich intellectual tradition and thought leadership. Third is the travel of the world which exposed Mbeki to the Western education and liberal political tradition in Britain, the communist training and Marxist-Lenin political thought in the Soviet Union, as well as African political thought acquired during the period spent in Africa. Finally, this includes a critical analysis of Mbeki’s thoughts and perspectives on politics, ideas, and power, as the three thematic areas of this study in order to understand the thrust of Mbeki’s intellectual thought. Read together, these aspects not only contextualise and position Mbeki as an intellectual that he is, but they also reflect his intellectual dimensions and contribution to the body of knowledge. It should be noted that the intellectual thought of Mbeki and his political ideas can be convincing and not convincing depending on the position from which the truth is being looked at from. In the main, this study seeks to position, privilege, and defend Mbeki as a political intellectual that he is.SociologyPh. D. (Sociology

    24th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics (NoDaLiDa)

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    Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad: actas de las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en ciberseguridad: Vigo, 21 a 23 de junio de 2023

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    Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad (8ª. 2023. Vigo)atlanTTicAMTEGA: Axencia para a modernización tecnolóxica de GaliciaINCIBE: Instituto Nacional de Cibersegurida

    The Influence of Religion on Marital Crisis: A Qualitative Study

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    The purpose of this case study was to explore how married Christians couples and pastors perceive the influence of religion, religious over-idealization, and community-centered social processes on couples’ ability to cope with relationship crises within their marriage in New York. The theory guiding this study was the Social Learning Theory by Albert Bandura (1977). The Social Learning Theory was fundamental in the discussion of marriage because behaviors can occur in a marriage that one spouse may disagree with, but due to lack of consequences or rewards, the behavior has persisted, leading to conflict within the marriage. The researcher interviewed ten Christian couples, six pastors, and held two separate focus groups to obtain substantial data regarding addressing the three research questions. To complete a thorough thematic analysis the researcher implemented Robert Yin’s (2014) five-step analysis. The data resulted in three themes in answering research question one, three themes in answering research question two, and one theme in answering research question three. Findings show that couples and pastors agree, although from different points of view, that couples that center their marriage around God rather than secular opinions about their marriage and participate in community-centered social processes (i.e., Christian-centered activities such as Bible studies or small groups), report more success in overcoming marital crises

    Imagining race and identity in the reading and writing of Caribbean literature: a decolonial psychological perspective

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    Claiming fictional literature as a site of resistance to coloniality, this study has two aims. I consider critically the manifestations of (de)coloniality and decolonising psychological work evident in selected Caribbean literature. I also use my own fictional writing to provide a case study of how decolonial writing might be used to illustrate and explore how other-than-Western epistemology and ontology can offer space to re-imagine psychology and its praxis. Creative Caribbean literature offers rich material to (re)animate psychologically oriented thinking about identity and ‘race’ and the contemporary experiences of racism, colourism, sexism, classism, economic exploitation, and homophobia using a decolonial lens. This study provides a critical decolonial reading of Jamaican Literature as a Subset of Caribbean Literature. I explore whether and how fiction, inspired by a decolonial turn, opens spaces for psychological oriented decolonial work. I underline the tensions in the shifts between coloniality and decoloniality in Jamaican writing including novels, anthologies of short stories, and poetry. The conceptual schemas that underpin my practices of reading, thinking, and writing as both researcher and creative, are simultaneously decolonial theory and decolonial methodology. As such, the theory-methodology for this study is framed as interconnected concepts and ideas derived from Critical Race Theory, Black Feminisms, and Afrocentric and decolonial thought. The derived key decolonising practices include Critical Relationality and Scepticism, Intersectionality, Border Crossing, Inscriptions of Indigeneity, Afro-Creolised Aesthetics, Faithful Witnessing, and Linguistic and Conceptual Subversions.PsychologyPh. D. (Psychology

    Planning in Cape Towns interstices: case studies of informal land occupations in Cape Town, South Africa

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    Participatory planning has been institutionalised through planning legislation in most Western-style democracies since the 1940s. Irrespective of the variability in how participation is conducted in different contexts, participation is regarded as desirable. That is, provided participation activities and processes do not flout laws or infringe the property rights of others in the manner that informal land occupations do. Often characterised as a problem, informal land (whereby land is defined broadly to include vacant and under-utilised buildings) occupations and, consequently, the numbers of autoconstructed and retrofitted housing have not only continued apace since 1994 in South Africa, they have intensified in scale, frequency, and level of organisation. The aim of this research is to develop a theoretical understanding of informal land occupations from the residents' (read occupiers') perspectives. These citizen-led place making practices, which have not yet been fully theorised in Southern planning literature, constitute the issue under study. Thus, the main research question is: What strategies and tactics are used by residents to claim and sustain urban spaces in Cape Town, South Africa? To answer this question, the research employed the case study and discourse analysis methods. The four cases for this research were located in Green Point, Woodstock, and Khayelitsha. Fourteen (14) semi-structured interviews and five (5) focus groups were conducted to gain the perspectives of a range of actors in the spatial planning and human settlements sectors, namely occupiers, professional planners working within local government and non-government organisations (NGOs), activists, elected local government officials, and bureaucrats within local and provincial government departments. Additional data in the form of government publications, namely policy documents, legislation, and transcripts of Parliamentary debates and Council meeting minutes to mention a few, as well as photographs, media statements and articles was also collected in the period between 2016 and 2022. This data was analysed through an iterative cycle of open, axial and selective coding. The findings indicate that residents claim spaces, namely land and building, that are perceived to be vacant or underutilised. These spaces, which whilst requiring the (re)construction of housing or retrofitting, are suitable for a range of land uses. These spaces are residual in nature, nonsynchronous, accommodate new or atypical performances, create uncertainty and new rules. These spaces are claimed through bold, bi-directional discursive and physical strategies and tactics. Occupations are initiated through mobilisation, which continues for the occupation's lifespan in order to re-mobilise existing residents and to mobilise (additional)support and resourcesfor the movement. Once the occupation is under way, autoconstruction, retrofitting, repair, and maintenance activities are undertaken. These activities, along with discursive strategies and performative repertoires, enable residents to sustain their claims. The findings also highlight that these processes occur in the city's interstices, with many of these spaces being left vacant or underutilised as a result of the city's growth. Within these spaces of possibility, residents' visionsforthe city are ineffectively realised. These visions are based on inherited imaginations that, in turn, are founded on both Western and African philosophical and theological currents. And, it is from this intellectual foundation that the radicality of informal land occupations emerges. On this intellectual foundation, residents strive to foster an African sense of self, re-affirm their humanity and dignity whilst highlighting alternative solutions for dealing with their current reality

    LIPIcs, Volume 258, SoCG 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 258, SoCG 2023, Complete Volum
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