Shooting horizons: a study of youth empowerment and social change in Tanzania and South Africa

This thesis is a social psychological approach to youth empowerment and social change in urban African contexts. Over a period of 22 months, 39 young people from Dar es Salaam and Soweto participated in a community‐based initiative called Shooting Horizons. The aim of the project was to engage young people in a process of critical consciousness and social action to represent themselves and their communities through their own words and images using Photovoice methodology. Six Photovoice workshops, involving a total of 23 young women and 16 young men, took place in multiple sites, two youth centres in Dar es Salaam and one in Soweto. The data was collected through multiple methods, including a series of 37 photo‐stories, 6 focus groups on development and social change, a record of daily discussion groups, and 1 focus group and 10 individual interviews post‐project. Emerging from the narrative positions of the participants, the project affirms the different directions for living envisaged by young people and promotes alternatives to the stigmatization of young people and their communities by the grand discourses and practices of development. Through a social psychological lens, I explore the impact that stigmatizing representations of development have on individual and social identities in order to make sense of the contradictions and ambiguities that it presents for enacting social change. I argue that a community empowerment framework, supported by an agenda of resistance to the exclusionary discourses and practices of development, can overcome some of the complex mechanisms of power that lead to oppressive social stratifications. The analysis observes the politics of knowledge and recognition in constructing social identities and building social capital to open up spaces for alternatives within the limitations of these particular contexts. The findings of this study consistently refer to how ‘difference’ is imbued in the narratives of young people and the need to address the gendered and racialized beliefs that contribute to participants’ internalized and victimising perspectives and that constrain processes of social change. Recommendations include practical, concrete, and innovative methods for urban African youth to engage in initiatives that suit their own development interests within a social psychological approach to empowerment that redefines community as a space of inbetweens, a citizenry of people sharing common interests and different agendas

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

Psychology and Society in Dialogue with Decolonial Feminisms: Perspectives from the global south, Volume 1

In the call for this special issue we, incoming editors of PINS, expressed the desire to build on the fast-growing legacy and genesis of decoloniality through encouraging and amplifying the most marginalised perspectives and approaches within contemporary decolonial trends. There are a range of reasons why this current moment of decoloniality has energetically re-emerged and taken hold in knowledge production and activist efforts globally. Foremost amongst these reasons is the fact that global inequalities that are racialized, gendered, spatial and classed are rising; and past injustices, and historical and collective traumas, are either completely erased or silenced. Calls for decoloniality have taken hold in the context of ongoing racialized, patriarchal, heterosexist and structural violence

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

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

Experiences of young people preparing to transition out of cluster foster care in South Africa

Abstract: Purpose. Research on young people transitioning out of care due to reaching the age of majority (referred to as care-leaving or aging out of care) is still emerging in South Africa. To date, almost all research on leaving care has focused on the transition out of residential care, with little attention to the transition out of foster care, including cluster foster care (roughly equivalent to group homes in other countries). This paper aims to describe the experiences of youth preparing to age out of cluster foster care in South Africa. Methods. Individual interviews were conducted with nine youth preparing to leave a cluster foster organization called Home from Home. In addition, a semi-structured focus group was run with six of their foster mothers. Findings. Thematic analysis generated four themes: the desire for independence; the centrality of meeting material and physical needs at the time of transition; the continuity of emotional care during the transition; and the supported development of the capacity for self-determination. Discussion. Self-determination theory, ambiguous loss and ubuntu (or interdependence) were found to be useful theories to interpret the findings. Recommendations are proposed to better prepare foster children for leaving care and for creating a social environment that is receptive to and conducive for foster care-leavers

Transforming historically white universities: students and the politics of racial representation

Africa's institutions of higher education are interrogating the practices that promote effective transformation in order to redress the inequalities of the past. In historically white universities, these debates include important issues such as admissions policies and academic support programmes, which represent significant responses to the disparate experiences and lived realities of students in South Africa today

The politics of moving beyond prejudice

Dixon et al have highlighted the importance of a political conceptualisation of intergroup relations that challenges individualising models of social change. As important this paper is for the development of critical debates in psychology, we can detect at least three issues that warrant further discussion: a) the cultural and historical conditions of structural inequality and its perception, b) the marginalisation of post-colonial works on collective mobilisation and c) acknowledging the complex perspectives and politics of those targeted by prejudice