Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid, and the conceptualisation of "race"

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 23 September, 1991In recent years our historical understanding of Afrikaner nationalism has been transformed. No longer is it possible to talk of Afrikaner nationalism in terms of an unchanging, timeless tradition. Nor can we speak of the Afrikaner nationalist movement as a socially undifferentiated entity, pursuing its own primordial ethnic agenda. We now have a much deeper understanding of the ways in which Afrikaner identity was forged from the late nineteenth century, and the means by which Afrikaner ethnicity was mobilised in order to capture state power in the twentieth century. Gaps in our knowledge nevertheless remain. One such silence concerns the relationship between Christian-nationalism and the conceptualisation of racial difference. This omission partly reflects a general state of amnesia about the place of racist ideas in Western thought. In South Africa it has been exacerbated by materialist scholarship's fear of "idealism'. The ideology of race has therefore tended to be discussed in terms of its functional utility: for example, the extent to which racist ideas can be said to express underlying class interests. My intention in this paper is not to dispute the ways in which race, understood as a sociological phenomenon, has been treated in the literature on Afrikaner nationalism. Rather, it is to consider the content and internal logic of racist ideology. The focus of this study is therefore on the conscious elaboration of race in the development of Christian-nationalist thought from around the 1930s to the 1950s. Specifically, it considers the extent to which an explicitly biological concept of race informed apartheid theory, and how this related to theological and cultural explanations of human difference. The argument in this paper is that Christian-nationalism was flexible and eclectic in its use of racist ideas. In constructing an intellectually coherent justification for apartheid, Afrikaner ideologues frequently chose to infer or to suggest biological theories of racial superiority, rather than to assert these openly. Both for pragmatic and doctrinal reasons, the diffuse language of cultural essentialism was preferred to the crude scientific racism drawn from the vocabulary of social Darwinism

The idea of race in early 20th Century South Africa: Some preliminary thoughts

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented April, 1989In the first half of the twentieth century racist ideology - whether explicit or implicit - was a vital part of the ideological repetoire by which white supremacy legitimated itself to itself. At one level this contention should not surprise for South Africa is manifestly structured on racist principles. But, whereas noone could deny the existence of racism in South Africa, the extent to which racist ideology fashioned patterns of thought and the ways in which racist ideas articulated with similar trends overseas, is barely understood. I would suggest that this gap in our knowledge is not entirely an accident. In Europe and America the reality of Nazism alerted people in a terrifying way to the consequences of explicit racism. As a result there now exists a sort of collective amnesia about pre-war intellectual and political traditions of racist thought outside of Nazi Germany - traditions which were not only widely pervasive, but also attained a significant degree of respectability. So fundamental has the shift in intellectual attitudes to race been over the past three or four decades, we almost lack the categories by which to understand the pre-war racial mind-set. In recent years this problem has begun to be addressed in a number of important works dealing with the general topic of Social Darwinism. Yet, even heret a comforting and comfortable attempt to distance approved intellectual traditions from tainted ones is evident. For example, racist science is often referred to dismissively as 'pseudo science'. The difficulty with such an approach is that it begs fundamental questions about the very nature of science for, by implication, the suggestion is that pseudo science can be easily separated from true or objective science. Moreover, to dismiss racial science as bogus seems to suggest that it was peripheral to mainstream scientific investigation, thereby ignoring the extent to which respected scientists participated in its development. Many of the writers who devoted considerable research to the investigation of racial differences were prominent intellectuals who conformed to recognised standards of academic rigour; their arguments are logically constructed and copiously footnoted so that on formal grounds at least there is not always reason to dismiss them as charlatans - however wrong their premises or conclusions may be

Ethnicity, Space, and Politics in Afghanistan

The 2004 election was a disaster. For all the unity that could have come from 2001, the election results shattered any hope that the country had overcome its fractures. The winner needed to find a way to unite a country that could not be more divided. In Afghanistan’s Panjshir Province, runner-up Yunis Qanooni received 95.0% of the vote. In Paktia Province, incumbent Hamid Karzai received 95.9%. Those were only two of the seven provinces where more than 90% or more of the vote went to a single candidate. Two minor candidates who received less than a tenth of the total won 83% and 78% of the vote in their home provinces. For comparison, the most lopsided state in the 2004 United States was Wyoming, with 69% of the vote going to Bush. This means Wyoming voters were 1.8 times as likely to vote for Bush as were Massachusetts voters. Paktia voters were 120 times as likely to vote for Karzai as were Panjshir voters. While Wyoming composes .2% of the American population, those 7 provinces represent a full sixth of Afghanistan. .

Summer learning experience for girls in grades 7–9 boosts confidence and interest in computing careers

Academic exposure to computer science, encouragement to study computer science, and connecting personal interests to computing areas influence women to pursue degrees in computer science. Guided by these recommendations, we designed and offered a summer learning experience for girls in grades 7--9 in summer 2016. The goal of the program was to improve girls\u27 perceptions of learning computer science through academic exposure in the informal setting of a girls-only summer camp. In this paper we present a study of the girls\u27 perceptions of CS learning. Four constructs were used to develop pre- and post-survey items: computing confidence, intent to persist, social supports, and computing outcomes expectations. The camp appeared to have positively influenced the girls on two of the four constructs, by improving computing confidence and positive perceptions of computing careers

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea: Questions of Equity for American Business

Three decades ago, the search for petroleum and natural gas moved to the ocean floor. Offshore exploration, modestly begun in shallow water, opened up a new frontier in petroleum exploration and exploitationwhich now extends to water depths beyond 1600 feet. Today, the seabeds off the shores of coastal countries supply approximately seven percent ot the world\u27s oil and gas requirements. Yet only a small portion of the world\u27s continental shelves have actually been tested for their natural resource potential, and exploration of the potential petroleum and natural gas supply of the deep seabed is still in its infancy

Creative Computing Challenge: A Teacher Professional Development to Enhance Non-Computing Career and Technical Education Curriculum with Engaging Computational Practices for All Students (Poster Abstract)

The Creative Computing Challenge (CCC) project (2014-2018) is funded by the National Science Foundation and is designed to broaden participation in computing by providing professional development (PD) for high school teachers at Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs throughout the state of New Hampshire. Teachers receive a stipend and tablets for their classrooms; they attend several in-person PD sessions through the year, where master teachers and PD facilitators introduce modeling of inquiry and equity-based practices, as well as teach the App Inventor tool and how to inculcate computational thinking in students. Project evaluation has included teacher interviews, classroom and PD observations, as well as student and teacher surveys. External evaluation of this project has been an integral part of the project from the beginning and, along with the project team’s observations and input, has significantly reshaped the project activities. It became clear after the first year that a central challenge of this project would be working with a mix of teachers across multiple domains -- from teachers who had little experience even using computers to teachers who had computer science degrees; from teachers who came to teaching from professional backgrounds to those who had education degrees; and from beginning teachers to those who had been teaching the same courses for twenty years. Through evaluation data and really listening to teacher feedback, we not only tailored the PD content and structure, but also refined the data collection instruments and evaluation design to bridge the gap between different teacher experiences and levels of preparation. As a result, we have been able to bring computing into non-technical content areas such as Hospitality and nonprogramming classes such as Photography, as well as support computing educations in New Hampshire CTE programs. In Year 4, we now better understand the range of benefits and challenges involved in working with CTE programs and inserting CCC-inspired curricular modules in non-computing courses

Race, civilisation and culture: The elaboration of segregationist discourse in the inter-war years

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 3, 198

It came in little waves : Feminist Imagery in Chantal Akerman\u27s Je, Tu, Il, Elle +

Chantal Akerman writes, “she who seeks shall find, find all too well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions.”[1] This thesis addresses the films of Chantal Akerman from a theoretical feminist film perspective. There are many lenses through which Akerman’s rich body of work can be viewed, and I would argue that she herself never intended for it to be understood in just one way. I wish to situate Akerman’s films, in particular her 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1h 30m), within a discourse of other feminist film theorists and makers that were further rooted in the women\u27s movement of the 1960s. Using this framework, I will argue that Akerman not only addressed the calls of these feminist scholars, but also exceeded their breadth, by drawing attention to, and working across, boundaries, in addition to dismantling patriarchal narrative conventions. [1] Chantal Akerman “On D’Est.” In Bordering Fiction: Chantal Akerman’s “D’Est,” ed. Kathy Kalbreich and Bruce Jenkins. (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1995)