Photovoice as a narrative tool for decolonization: Black women and LGBT student experiences at UCT

Decolonization is a key term in the current higher education crisis across South African universities as student movements are advocating for free decolonized education. In this paper, I explore how Photovoice research, as a narrative approach combined with participatory action methods, can engage a group of black, working-class, and LGBT students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to explore their daily experiences on campus in relation to the call for decolonization. Findings demonstrate how naming decolonization allows students to locate their own experiences within a context of power relations and expose alienating institutional legacies. Of particular relevance are the experiences of students of diverse gendered identities whose daily struggles are often rendered invisible through multiple bureaucratic and cultural assumptions. Students spoke about the violence of institutional spaces, the policing of their bodies and the silencing of alternative ways of knowing and doing

Social representations and the politics of participation

Recent work has called for the integration of different perspectives into the field of political psychology (Haste, 2012). This chapter suggests that one possible direction that such efforts can take is studying the role that social representations theory (SRT) can play in understanding political participation and social change. Social representations are systems of common-sense knowledge and social practice; they provide the lens through which to view and create social and political realities, mediate people's relations with these sociopolitical worlds and defend cultural and political identities. Social representations are therefore key for conceptualising participation as the activity that locates individuals and social groups in their sociopolitical world. Political participation is generally seen as conditional to membership of sociopolitical groups and therefore is often linked to citizenship. To be a citizen of a society or a member of any social group one has to participate as such. Often political participation is defined as the ability to communicate one's views to the political elite or to the political establishment (Uhlaner, 2001), or simply explicit involvement in politics and electoral processes (Milbrath, 1965). However, following scholars on ideology (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson, 1990) and social knowledge (Jovchelovitch, 2007), we extend our understanding of political participation to all social relations and also develop a more agentic model where individuals and groups construct, develop and resist their own views, ideas and beliefs. We thus adopt a broader approach to participation in comparison to other political-psychological approaches, such as personality approaches (e.g. Mondak and Halperin, 2008) and cognitive approaches or, more recently, neuropsychological approaches (Hatemi and McDermott, 2012). We move away from a focus on the individual's political behaviour and its antecedents and outline an approach that focuses on the interaction between psychological and political phenomena (Deutsch and Kinnvall, 2002) through examining the politics of social knowledge

Painlev\'e structure of a multi-ion electrodiffusion system

A nonlinear coupled system descriptive of multi-ion electrodiffusion is investigated and all parameters for which the system admits a single-valued general solution are isolated. This is achieved \textit{via} a method initiated by Painleve' with the application of a test due to Kowalevski and Gambier. The solutions can be obtained explicitly in terms of Painleve' transcendents or elliptic functions.Comment: 9 p, Latex, to appear, J Phys A FT

Production of selenium nanoparticles in Pseudomonas putida KT2440

Selenium (Se) is an essential element for the cell that has multiple applications in medicine and technology; microorganisms play an important role in Se transformations in the environment. Here we report the previously unidentified ability of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida KT2440 to synthesize nanoparticles of elemental selenium (nano-Se) from selenite. Our results show that P. putida is able to reduce selenite aerobically, but not selenate, to nano-Se. Kinetic analysis indicates that, in LB medium supplemented with selenite (1 mM), reduction to nano-Se occurs at a rate of 0.444 mmol L−1 h−1 beginning in the middle-exponential phase and with a final conversion yield of 89%. Measurements with a transmission electron microscope (TEM) show that nano-Se particles synthesized by P. putida have a size range of 100 to 500 nm and that they are located in the surrounding medium or bound to the cell membrane. Experiments involving dynamic light scattering (DLS) show that, in aqueous solution, recovered nano-Se particles have a size range of 70 to 360 nm. The rapid kinetics of conversion, easy retrieval of nano-Se and the metabolic versatility of P. putida offer the opportunity to use this model organism as a microbial factory for production of selenium nanoparticles.Universidad de Costa Rica/[809-B5-A68]/UCR/Costa RicaCentro Nacional de Innovaciones Biotecnológicas/[]/CENIBiot/Costa RicaBio-SEA/[]//FranciaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigación en Estructuras Microscópicas (CIEMIC)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Básicas::Facultad de Ciencias::Escuela de QuímicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigación en Electroquímica y Energía Química (CELEQ)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigaciones en Productos Naturales (CIPRONA

Still a matter of dialogue: A response to Potter's, Augoustinos's, and Jovchelovitch's commentaries

In their insightful and challenging commentaries, Potter, Augoustinos, and Jovchelovitch interestingly contributed to the debate we sought to promote. They allowed us to further reflect on our proposal of bringing together some strands of theory of social representations and discursive psychology for forging a stronger social psychology, that is, one more prepared to understand social change by better comprehending how meaning is constructed and transformed in discourse and communication. Through the present commentary, we attempt to better clarify this proposal in dialogue with their observations.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio