Dynamics of identity and space in higher education: an institutional ethnographic case study of a transforming university

Higher education globally is characterised by persistent inequality, which is particularly acute in South Africa. Due to the enduring legacy of colonialism and apartheid, students from certain categories of identity are marginalised, whereas others are privileged. An essential element of these dynamics of power is space. Intersections of identity such as race, class, ability and gender are axes of power in differential experiences of space. Despite this, space is often neglected in research into higher education transformation in South Africa. Through an institutional ethnography, this study examines the dynamics of space and identity at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The study involved a photovoice project, roving interviews and surveys with students; the collection of multimodal data in which space is documented; campus observations; and semi-structured interviews with staff and policymakers. The first analysis chapter involves a multimodal discourse analysis of the identity discourses produced for the Jameson Plaza by the students in the study, specifically as a place of belonging and connection and a place of alienation and discomfort. The second analysis chapter examines the institutional power geometries at play at the UCT across three specific dimensions: 1) spatial memory and material familiarity; 2) material campus symbolism; and 3) spatialised social practices and relations. The findings illustrate how space and power across these dimensions engender experiences of spatialised belonging or spatialised alienation on campus. The affective potentialities of campus, in turn, influence the types of identities students construct for themselves across campus space. Emerging from these considerations, the final analysis chapter explores what student do across, within and through campus spaces. The chapter focuses on everyday use of space by students at the individual level, and specifically spatial coping strategies students use to negotiate and manage their daily lives on campus

Black students' experiences of transformation at UCT : a photovoice study

South African higher education has faced much structural transformation since the end of apartheid, and yet remains a racialised space. It is clear that despite a stated commitment to transformation in university policy nationally, in reality there is much ambivalence around transformation. In debates around transformation, black students are frequently represented in stigmatising ways. These negative representations are part of a discourse that holds the increasing numbers of black students responsible for lowering university standards. When black students encounter these discourses it can affect their self-esteem and academic performance. This study thus explores black students’ experiences of transformation at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Over six months, 10 black African and coloured UCT students participated in a photovoice research project. They participated in focus groups and produced personal reflections, photographs and written stories representing their experiences and perspectives on transformation in higher education in a previously white University. This data was analysed using thematic analysis, within a critical psychological framework, specifically decolonising psychologies. The participants’ everyday experiences of UCT were explored, and four themes were evident: the narrowness of UCT’s transformation focus; the prevalence of racial stereotypes on campus; the Eurocentric focus of the university; and the racialisation of space on campus. Ultimately, it appears that whiteness is dominant at UCT. This detrimentally affects many black students who are required to learn within this often unwelcoming white space, and who internalise the negative stereotypes they encounter. Nevertheless, many black students succeed. The participants in this study employed a variety of coping mechanisms to help them navigate through life at UCT. They were also able to employ strategies to resist the dominant discourse of black inferiority, and to re-present themselves and transformation on their own terms

Coming to UCT: Black students, transformation and discourses of race

Since the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, increasing numbers of black studentshave been enrolling at historically whites-only universities. This situation has beenparalleled by a resurgence of racialising discourses that represent black students as lackingin competencies, lowering academic standards and undeserving of their places at university.This paper investigates the impact of these discourses on black students at the Universityof Cape Town (UCT). Over six months, 24 students from seven departments and fourfaculties participated in a Photovoice project during which they produced photographsand stories representing their experiences at UCT. The findings demonstrate that, throughpractices of material and symbolic exclusion, racialising discourses of transformation hada detrimental impact on students, affecting their self-esteem, sense of belonging, andacademic performance. The discussion reflects on the identity dynamics and the copingstrategies that black students adopt to fit into the whiteness of the university

Race, gender and sexuality in student experiences of violence and resistances on a university campus

With the dismantling of apartheid in 1994, significant changes were made to higher education in South Africa. Access to higher education has expanded and student bodies are now more representative in terms of gender and race. However, demographic change alone is insufficient for higher education transformation. As in other parts of the world, within dominant educational discourses ideal students are still typically represented as white, middle-class, male, cisgender and heterosexual. Furthermore, students who occupy these categories tend to hold symbolic power within these institutions. Recently, student movements, starting with RhodesMustFall (RMF) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), have begun to challenge this and draw attention to these issues of transformation. This study was critically and empathically provoked by engagements around the RMF movement and aimed to examine students’ experiences of transformation in higher education relating to race, gender and sexuality at UCT. Photovoice methods (involving focus groups, personal reflections, photographs and written stories) were used to explore two groups of students’ experiences of non-direct, symbolic violence (i.e. issues of bathrooms, residences and campus art) and direct, physical violence on campus as well as these students’ resistances and disruptions to the violence they encountered

Considering poststructuralist discursive community psychology

Although critical community psychology (CCP) has embraced several discursive paradigms (e.g., critical discourse analysis, discursive psychology, and Foucauldian discourse analysis), there remains little CCP work that attempts to conceive of CCP through a poststructuralist discursive lens, a lens that extends beyond, but certainly does not ignore, the analysis of data. In this study, we consider what we are calling poststructuralist discursive community psychology through a synthesis of poststructuralist discourse theory and CCP. Such a psychology is one that conceives of social phenomena, and indeed conceives of itself, through a poststructuralist understanding of discourse. We offer two pathways through which to consider poststructuralist discursive community psychology: re-envisioning community and discursive consciousness-raising. We conclude by considering some of the theoretical limitations of our discussion, as well as the areas that future work into poststructuralist discursive community psychology may enter into.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

"The asylum system is completely broken": An analysis of justifications and resistance for the UK Government's Rwanda policy in parliamentary debates

In April 2022, the UK government announced the signing of a 'partnership agreement' with the Government of Rwanda in which some asylum seekers who enter the UK would be transported to Rwanda where their cases would be decided. This 'Rwanda policy' has been met with strong resistance from opposition politicians. This paper examines how the UK Government has sought to justify this 'offshore processing' policy and the ways in which the policy is resisted by politicians from the Opposition. We present a discursive analysis of the transcript of the Home Office's statement to the House of Commons on the "Global Migration Challenge" and the subsequent debate among Members of Parliament about the statement. We identified three discursive repertoires that politicians on opposing sides used to both justify and resist the Rwanda policy, specifically repertoires focussing on the safety of Rwanda, the need to deter people smugglers and be in line with 'what the people want'. Despite political polarisation in the debate on this policy, we argue that the use of similar discursive devices to both justify and resist this policy creates problems for supporters of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in carving out a clear discursive space for their arguments

Examining the Dynamics of Belonging and Alienation in Higher Education Through Photovoice

The higher education system globally is inherently inequitable. Discriminatory practices and oppressive power dynamics are particularly prevalent in the South African higher education landscape, which is characterized by a legacy of colonialism and apartheid. As a result, although students from a wide range of backgrounds are increasingly participating in higher education, many students who do not fit the dominant status quo question their belonging within these spaces. Students’ experiences of alienation within higher education can have profoundly negative physical, psychosocial, and education outcomes. However, students also display agency in negotiating the exclusionary institutional cultures within their universities and succeed despite these experiences. Photovoice methodology can be a useful tool for critiquing and highlighting such agentic practices, and for foregrounding the voices of students. In this research brief, we reflect on two photovoice projects that sought to examine the complexity of students’ experiences of belonging and alienation in higher education in South Africa. Our findings illustrate that although students may experience alienation on campus, they may also create spaces of belonging, “speak back” to, and challenge the exclusions inherent to campus life.South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) The Humanities Faculty The Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychology in Africa at the University of Cape Town.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Researching Protest Policing in South Africa: A Discourse Analysis of the Police– Researcher Encounter

Researchers have played a significant role in influencing the public’s critical engagement with the South African Police Service (SAPS). Resultantly, SAPS officers tend to be wary and/or untrusting of researchers. In the present study, we sought to understand how this climate of suspicion impacts policing research in South Africa. To do so, we employed a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis on emails leading up to a study with SAPS officers, and on the transcripts of three focus group discussions with SAPS officers. We identified three discursive strategies that SAPS employed: Security Stall (i.e. blocking research through bureaucratic procedure), Eliciting Sympathy (i.e. winning sympathy for the struggles of SAPS officers) and Undermining the Researcher Subjectivity (i.e. rendering legitimate knowledge on protest violence the sole product of police officers). These strategies destabilize police research while challenging the broader discursive terrain within which SAPS is located. We conclude by offering some insights for police research.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

A multimodal reading of public protests

Public protests in (un)democratic polities, reflective of discursive articulations of resistance and material expressions of struggle, seek to disrupt prevailing unjust societal, political and cultural practices. The insurrectionist purposes of protests are often in contravention of public order regimens, which seek to regulate enactments of public protests, minimise the disruptions inher ent to protests and legitimise those defined as non-violent. This produces a non-violent–violent protest binary, which fails to account for the dynamic nature of protests. This study, critical of the non-violent–violent binary, assumed a multimodal analysis of unedited video footage of a selected authorised protest in the City of Cape Town, South Africa to understand the rapid discursive and kinaesthetic shifts that may occur within single protest events. The findings suggest that protests shift between moments of resistance and insurgency and moments of appeasement of official scripts. As such, protest enactments within a particular discursive space seem to be constitutive of resistance to power, insurgence and cooperation as well as actions defined either as legitimate or illegitimate by official discourse.Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS

Reflecting critically on the researcher-participant encounter in focus groups: Racialized interactions, contestations and (re)presentations of South Africa’s “protest culture”

South Africa has a considerable history of public protest from which a contemporary “culture of protest” has emerged. Despite the wide-ranging body of research on protest in South Africa, few studies have considered critically the discursive space in which researchers and participants are embedded. In this article, we use discursive psychology to examine reflexively how South African protesters discursively contest, (re)produce, and negoti ate South Africa’s culture of protest in the presence of their comrades and researchers. Our analysis focuses on the making of “protest culture,” discursive resistance in the research setting, and the effect of researcher silence. We conclude by calling for protest researchers to remain sensitive to power differentials operating in research settings, while establishing a discursive space within these settings wherein participants feel heard and researchers do not attempt to mute their presence to achieve "neutrality".Institute for Social and Health Studies (ISHS