Economic and cultural determinants of elite attitudes toward redistribution

Previous studies have posited that elites are willing to advance the redistribution of income and social goods when the negative effects of inequality, such as crime and conflict, threaten their own interests. Although elites acknowledge these negative effects, their support for redistributive policies remains low throughout the Global South. We address this paradox using a multi-method research design. Drawing on 56 in-depth interviews with Brazilian political and economic elites, we document how, when discussing the negative effects of inequality, interviewees consistently characterized the poor as ignorant, irrational and politically incompetent. We use these findings to theorize about the negative impact of such perceptions of the poor on elite support for redistribution. We then test this relationship using survey data gathered from random samples of political and economic elites in Brazil, South Africa and Uruguay (N = 544). We find the relationship to be robust

Distancing the past: racism as history in South African schools

How are histories of racial oppression dealt with in contexts of diversity? Chana Teeger tackles this question by examining how young South Africans, born into democracy, confront their country’s racist apartheid past in high school history lessons. Drawing on extensive observational, interview, and textual data, Distancing the Past vividly chronicles how students learn that racism is a thing of the past, even as they experience it in their everyday lives. Teeger shows how teachers’ desire to avoid conflict between students mirrors a national focus on racial reconciliation, leading to the historical distancing of the recent apartheid past. This historical distancing allows schools to present a façade of transformation. Beneath the surface, however, the lessons reproduce unequal power relations at school and legitimize inequality at the societal level. In documenting these processes, Distancing the Past illuminates the subtle reconfiguration of racism in the era of civil liberties. It shows how acknowledging the racist past is not enough. When the past is remembered—but its legacies ignored—racism can continue unabated in the present. Distancing the Past is a timely account of the remaking of race and inequality in the aftermath of de jure discrimination. It offers vital lessons for other societies grappling with their own racist histories

Collective memory and collective fear: how South Africans use the past to explain crime

The past is a resource that individuals can draw upon as they try to make sense of the world around them, and scholars have long assumed that individuals internalize and utilize collective memories in their daily lives. Yet capturing and analyzing the deployment of collective memory has proven elusive. This paper offers a novel approach for tapping whether, and how, individuals selectively draw on their collective pasts to explain the present. Analyzing interviews with young South African managers and professionals, this paper demonstrates racial variation in how respondents organically introduce the country’s apartheid past as an explanans for current crime, and suggests how these differences are related to divergent levels of commitment by blacks and whites to the South African nation-building project. In so doing, the paper offers a method for examining how individuals selectively use the past to construct, justify, and explain their present-day attitudes and behaviors. The study further highlights the importance of attending not only to what people remember, but also to how they think through and with collective representations of the past

Both sides of the story: history education in post-apartheid South Africa

Scholars have documented the emergence of apparently race-neutral discourses that serve to entrench racial stratification following the elimination of de jure segregation. These discourses deny the existence of both present-day racism and the contemporary effects of histories of racial oppression. Researchers posit that individuals are socialized into these views, but little empirical attention has been paid to the processes through which such socialization occurs. Focusing on the South African case study, I draw on five months of daily observations in seventeen 9th-grade history classrooms, content analysis of notes distributed in class, and 170 in-depth interviews with teachers and students to document how and why students are taught not to attend to the effects of apartheid on their society. To mitigate race-based conflict in their local school context, teachers told “both sides of the story,” highlighting that not all whites were perpetrators and not all blacks were victims. By decoupling the racialized coding of victims and perpetrators, and sidelining discussions of beneficiaries, teachers hindered students’ abilities to make connections to the present. In outlining how and why individuals are taught about the irrelevance of the past, this study contributes to literatures on race, education, collective memory, and transition to democracy

(Not) feeling the past: boredom as a racialized emotion

This paper centers boredom as a racialized emotion by analyzing how it can come to characterize encounters with histories of racial oppression. Drawing on data collected in two racially diverse South African high schools, I document how and why students framed the history of apartheid as boring. To do so, I capitalize on the comparative interest shown in the Holocaust, which they studied the same year. Whereas the Holocaust was told as a psychosocial causal narrative, apartheid was presented primarily through lists of laws and events. A lack of causal narrative hindered students’ ability to carry the story into the present and created a sense of disengagement. Boredom muted discussions of the ongoing legacies of the past and functioned as an emotional defense of the status quo. I discuss the implications for literatures on racialized emotions, collective memory, and history education

Ruptures in the rainbow nation: how desegregated South African schools deal with interpersonal and structural racism

Racially diverse schools are often presented as places where students can learn to challenge racist discourse and practice. Yet there are a variety of processes through which such schools reproduce the very hierarchies they are meant to dismantle. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in two racially diverse South African high schools, I add to the literature by analyzing moments that threatened to undermine harmonious race relations. First, I focus on racially charged interpersonal incidents at school. Second, I examine how teachers dealt with topics of racial inequality that emerged in the context of the formal curriculum.School personnel addressed these challenges in ways that hindered discussions of interpersonal and structural racism. A normative climate limited students’ abilities to label racially charged incidents as racist. Further, teachers managed potentially conflictual classroom dynamics by downplaying the salience of contemporary racial stratification. I discuss the implications of these findings for scholarship on racial inequality in racially diverse schools

Teaching Transformations: History Education and Race Relations in Post-Apartheid South Africa

How do nations deal with their difficult, shameful, and traumatic past? I tackle this question by examining how the history of apartheid is taught to--and understood by--South African high school students. I further examine the consequences of these understandings for contemporary race relations. To address these questions around the production, reception, and consequences of history education in schools, the study draws on data collected during 18 months of fieldwork in two racially and socioeconomically diverse public high schools in Johannesburg, South Africa. The data collection involved a multi-method research design that included: 1) five months of daily observations in 17 distinct classrooms; 2) content analysis of official curricular documents and materials used in classes; 3) interviews with teachers (N=10); and 4) interviews with two samples of students: one prior to, and one following, exposure to apartheid history education (total N=160). I find that teachers present the country’s racially divisive past in ways that limit its salience for understanding contemporary social issues. I show that this is driven both by broad national imperatives concerning racial reconciliation and by more local imperatives related to minimizing race-based conflict in the classroom. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I demonstrate that the narratives presented in class leave students without the cultural tools they need to understand, identify, and respond both to contemporary racism and to the structural legacies of apartheid which they encounter on a daily basis. Theoretically, the study contributes to literature that focuses on schools as sites where racial inequalities are reproduced by highlighting the importance of attending to messages transmitted through the formal curriculum. In so doing, it identifies both institutionalized representations and micro-level understandings of racially divisive pasts as important loci for examining contemporary race and ethnic relations.Sociolog

Interviews in the social sciences

In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. They allow individuals to explain, in their own words, how they understand and interpret the world around them. Interviews represent a deceptively familiar social encounter where people interact, asking and answering questions. They are, however, a very particular type of conversation, guided by the researcher and used for specific ends. This dynamic introduces a range of methodological, analytical and ethical challenges, for novice researchers in particular. In this primer, we focus on the stages and challenges of designing and conducting an interview project and analysing data from it, as well as strategies to overcome these challenges