Spazas, hawkers and the status quo: Black consumption at the margins of media discourse in post-apartheid South Africa

http://dx.doi.org/10.5902/217549777298This paper examines the mediated marginalization of forms of black consumption that were considered unthreatening to South Africa’s economic elite during the 1990s, South Africa’s first decade of political freedom. It argues the English language press of the time treated certain practices of black consumption produced, and approved of, by Apartheid state structures as natural, and as such contributed to a propping up of the economic status quo in the face of a sea change in the political environment. The paper offers as a theoretical framework a discussion of the tensions between citizenship and consumption in South Africa, and the complexity of claims that consumption equals empowerment in post-colonial contexts. Next, a brief account is provided of the process of constructing the corpus of media texts analyzed. Finally, the paper presents the key themes of the ways in which black consumption was discursively marginalized and critically discusses those in relation to bigger questions about the extent to which consumption stands for empowerment in post-Apartheid South Africa

[Introduction] The politics and aesthetics of luxury in Africa

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Beautiful Pixels- Aesthetic Innovation in Interactive Online Art: The Case of

Is a collaboration between EDS and leading LSE academics from a range of disciplines researching the determinants of innovation, technology, creativity and productivity and the policies needed to foster them. The Discussion Paper series features the research of the four teams

The (im)possibility of interdisciplinarity: lessons from constructing a theoretical framework for digital ecosystems

This paper reflects critically on challenges and opportunities associated with developing a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary Framework Programme 7 research project funded by the European Commission in the area of digital ecosystems. The paper first provides a description of the interdisciplinary structure of the research agenda of the project and the areas of digital ecosystem research prioritised by each discipline. Second, it discusses the challenging questions of epistemology that arose in the context of theorising interdisciplinary research and provides a summary of how these were dealt with in order to outline a theoretical framework for digital ecosystems research by the end of the project. Finally, it discusses the lessons that can be extrapolated from the project experience, arguing that it is impossible to develop a unified interdisciplinary theoretical framework due to irreconcilable epistemological differences, yet it is possible and very worthwhile for those adhering to various disciplinary perspectives to collaborate towards the achievement of a practical joint endeavour. These lessons, which are considered valuable to the broader research community, are summarised in a model of the (im)possibility of interdisciplinarity