Ways of Being: Feminist Activism and Theorizing at the Global Feminist Dialogues in Porte Alegre, Brazil, 2005

This article attempts to capture some reflections by an African feminist scholar and activist on the activism and academic debate at the Global Feminist Dialogues (FD) in Porte Alegre, Brazil in January 2005. The activism and the space for dialogue is a feminist space that includes different types of feminism, but is also a space that attempts to build a movement within diverse feminist networks. This form of activism is contrasted with the depoliticization of activism caused by gender mainstreaming in Africa. The academic debate at the FD takes place in the intersections between activism and theorizing and opens a space for discussing the politics of the body, the problems of strategizing and the problems of translation of the local to the global, as well as the creation of strategies for action

Theorizing Feminism from the South: Knowledge Production through South Africa’s Feminist Journal AGENDA

One of the important ways that feminists in South Africa have generated knowledge and theory is through an independent feminist journal, AGENDA, that was founded in 1987. In this article, I discuss the history of AGENDA and analyze the type of feminist knowledge that AGENDA produces as a feminist journal of the Global South and specifically Africa. I also show how African feminism and intersectionality have always been the two core dimensions of knowledge production in AGENDA through the analysis of two trilogies: one on African feminism and one on African sexuality to show how knowledge is used to create new theories. I also reflect on the South/North divide and hegemonic thinking from the North. What the analysis reflects is the resistance against hegemonic thinking, the invention of new concepts, as well as new theorization and hybrid theories that draw on the Northern theories at the same time as it disrupts them

The Slow Intimacy of Necropolitics

Human beings seem to have a fascination with pictures of death or what can be called ‘necrovoyeurism’. Circulating pictures of dead bodies has become easier with the use of social media. Necropolitics or the politics of death relates to the careless treatment of the lives of the marginalised, destitute and the ones without voice, the precariat. In late modernity one of the shadow sides of democracy is necropolitics, using processes of social exclusion and devaluing the lives of the poor and the ones in need through the desire to ‘keep them out’ – to curb mobility through the brutality of borders that often leads to death. This article concerns itself with the slow intimacy of necropolitics – how, through looking at pictures of death and redistributing them by retweeting, appropriating, decontextualising and recontextualising them we slowly become acquainted with the intimacy of death that may prevent an authentic empathy or desire to change the conditions of the marginalised

A Transformative Approach to Gender Mainstreaming: Changing the Deep Structure of Organizations

Mainstreaming: Changing the Deep Structure of Organizations. This article argues that gender mainstreaming will only be successful if a transformative agenda setting process is used through which the institutional cultures of organizations are changed. This implies an engagement with the deep structure of organizations. The deep structure of most organizations is the embedded masculinist values and norms that are normalized so that everyone accepts them. This deep structure is most often resistant to gender transformative change. The article suggests a gendered archaeological investigation as well as the implementation of a transforming gender mainstreaming model through which gender mainstreaming becomes acceptable. The article draws on gender mainstreaming research done with the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa

Feminist Encounters: Special Issue on Slow Intimacy

Editorial: Special Issue on Slow Intimac

Antimicrobial-resistant Klebsiella species isolated from free-range chicken samples in an informal settlement

Sub-therapeutic doses of antimicrobial agents are administered routinely to poultry to aid growth and to prevent disease, with prolonged exposure often resulting in bacterial resistance. Crossover of antibiotic resistant bacteria from poultry to humans poses a risk to human health. In this study, 17 chicken samples collected from a vendor operating in an informal settlement in the Cape Town Metropolitan area, South Africa were screened for antimicrobial-resistant Gram-negative bacilli using the Kirby Bauer disk diffusion assay. In total, six antibiotics were screened: ampicillin, ciprofloxacin, gentamicin, nalidixic acid, tetracycline and trimethoprim. Surprisingly, Klebsiella ozaenae was identified in 96 and K. rhinoscleromatis in 6 (n = 102) of the samples tested. Interestingly, ~40% of the isolated Klebsiella spp. showed multiple resistance to at least three of the six antibiotics tested. Klebsiella ozaenae and K. rhinoscleromatis cause clinical chronic rhinitis and are almost exclusively associated with people living in areas of poor hygiene.Web of Scienc

IDASA National Election Survey, 1994

This study focused on the 1994 general election and specifically on voting intention, attitudes towards democracy, economic evaluations and various other political issues

A conversation with Anne Phillips on multiculturalism

During March 2015, Professor Anne Phillips of the London School of Economics was a visiting fellow at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). On 13 March a group of nine gender scholars from different disciplines held a one-day workshop to explore the notion of multiculturalism with her. At the end of the workshop it was suggested that Gender Questions should conduct an electronic interview with Professor Phillips and that the scholars who attended the workshop would write responses to the interview. What follows are the interview with Professor Phillips and responses from four of the gender scholars who attended: Professor Amanda Gouws (Political Science, Stellenbosch University) Professor Desiree Lewis (Women's and Gender Studies, University of the Western Cape), Professor Louise du Toit (Philosophy, Stellenbosch University), and Dr Stella Viljoen (Fine Arts, Stellenbosch University). The other scholars who attended were Professor Shireen Hassim (Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand), Professor Kopano Ratele (Unisa/Medical Research Council), Professor Cherryl Walker (Sociology, Stellenbosch University) and Dr Christi van der Westhuizen (HUMA, University of Cape Town)

Evidence for multidrug resistance in nonpathogenic mycoplasma species isolated from South African poultry

One hundred seventy-eight mycoplasma strains isolated from South African poultry flocks between 2003 and 2015 were identified by full-genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene and were classified as follows: Mycoplasma gallisepticum (25%), M. gallinarum (25%), M. gallinaceum, (23%), M. pullorum (14%), M. synoviae (10%), and M. iners (3%), as well as one Acheoplasma laidlawii strain (1%). MIC testing was performed on the axenic samples, and numerous strains of each species were resistant to either chlortetracycline or tylosin or both, with variable sensitivity to enrofloxacin. The strains of all species tested remained sensitive to tiamulin, except for one M. gallinaceum sample that demonstrated intermediate sensitivity. The mutation of A to G at position 2059 (A2059G) in the 23S rRNA gene, which is associated with macrolide resistance, was found in the South African M. gallisepticum and M. synoviae strains, as well as a clear correlation between macrolide resistance in M. gallinarum and M. gallinaceum and mutations G354A and G748A in the L4 ribosomal protein and 23S rRNA gene, respectively. No correlation between resistance and point mutations in the genes studied could be found for M. pullorum. Only a few strains were resistant to enrofloxacin, apart from one M. synoviae strain with point mutation D420N, which has been associated with quinolone resistance, and no other known markers for quinolone resistance were found in this study. Proportionally more antimicrobial-resistant strains were detected in M. gallinaceum, M. gallinarum, and M. pullorum than in M. gallisepticum and M. synoviae. Of concern, three M. gallinaceum strains showed multidrug resistance to chlortetracycline, tylosin, and oxytetracycline.The Technology Innovation Agency-Tshwane Animal Health Innovation Cluster Initiative (grant number TAHC12-00034). A.B. was funded by the Health and Welfare Sector Education and Training Authority, University of Pretoria, and the National Research Foundation.http://aem.asm.orgam2019Production Animal StudiesVeterinary Tropical Disease

Problematising race and gender in everyday research processes : a model of feminist research praxis

CITATION: Gouws, A. 2020. Problematising race and gender in everyday research processes : a model of feminist research praxis, in Jansen, J. & Walters, C. (eds). 2020. Fault lines : a primer on race, science and society. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS, doi:10.18820/9781928480495/11.The original publication is available at https://africansunmedia.store.it.si/zaWhen researchers do research with human subjects, there is the hope that their findings will be taken up by, for example, government, to formulate policies; the public, for a better understanding of social, political or economic processes; or pharmaceutical companies, for new treatments. The hope is that, in the long run, everyone would benefit from the findings. But seldom is there a reflection on exactly what it means to the individuals and communities that were used as research subject-participants. More often than not, the thinking is that as long as the subjectparticipants were treated in an ethical way, they had played their role. Rarely is there any report back of the findings to the subject-participants. When our the subject-participants become aware of the findings of our research and what it means for them, we as the researchers become aware of the impact of our research. This is not the type of impact for the collective good, but the type of impact that positions the subject-participants in a certain way, especially when the findings are used to generalise about entire communities. In a country that has only recently emerged from a deeply racialised past, in which racial categories were imposed on its citizens and where “scientific research” was used to justify the racial categorisation of apartheid and exclusions based on race, researchers need to exercise caution when drawing inferences based on racial categories. In South Africa, race is often a useful explanatory variable to understand exclusions and marginalisation, but context is everything. When race as a variable is used in an essentialist way (i.e. one that assumes certain unchanging characteristics of groups and ignores how identities are socially constructed) to argue that it is the cause of perceptions and behaviour, the findings “freeze” people in their racial identities, and cause researchers to lose sight of how the treatment of racial groups through processes of colonialisation, oppression and marginalisation have positioned them to have certain attitudes or exhibit certain behaviours. When the controversy around the Sport Science article started on social media, it was to have serious repercussion for the researchers, the research community at Stellenbosch University, the women and communities from which the subjectparticipants were drawn and South Africa as a whole. At the centre of the controversy sits race and gender. In a sense, social media is a great information equaliser that can expose those who use it to research that they would not otherwise know about. It was the wrath of women from communities like the one from which the subject-participants were selected that made many a complacent researcher sit up and take note.Publisher's versio