13 research outputs found
Gatekeepers of financial power: from London to Lagos
The main premise of this paper is that, until recently, African elites did not regulate or control financial flows moving across the continent. They were not financial gatekeepers. In Africa Since 1940, Cooper identified African elites as gatekeepers regulating access to resources and opportunities passing through strategic sites. This paper makes a case for revision of existing notions of the gatekeeper state in an ongoing effort to (re)negotiate the continentâs colonial past through two new arguments. The first is that financial power was never located at a âperipheralâ African gate, but resolutely held onto within leading financial centres, circumventing any opportunity for African elites to control financial flows. Failure to distinguish between types of flows distorts analysis of African political economic power under colonialism. It is only in the post-2000 period, that we see powerful African states driving the integration of African markets into the global financial system. The second argument is that these African goals to control financial flows correspond more to âgatewayâ strategies than to gatekeeper. Drawing on the case of Lagos, I demonstrate how this âgatewayâ concept better captures trans-scalar processes of new financial clustering in Africaâs emerging markets than a concept associated with âgatesâ under Empire
âWe create our own small worldâ: daily realities of mothers of disabled children in a South African urban settlement
Parents of disabled children face many challenges.
Understanding their experiences and acknowledging
contextual influences is vital in developing intervention
strategies that fit their daily realities. However, studies of
parents from a resource-poor context are particularly scarce.
This ethnographic study with 30 mothers from a South
African township (15 semi-structured interviews and 24
participatory group sessions) unearths how mothers care on
their own, in an isolated manner. The complexity of low
living standards, being poorly supported by care structures
and networks, believing in being the best carer, distrusting
others due to a violent context, and resigning towards life
shape and are shaped by this solitary care responsibility.
For disability inclusive development to be successful,
programmes should support mothers by sharing the care
responsibility taking into account the isolated nature of
mothersâ lives and the impact of poverty. This can provide
room for these mothers to increase the well-being of
themselves and their children
Subjek en etiese verantwoordelikheidsbesef: Die Idee van die Oneindige in Levinas se Totality and Infinity
Subject and the realisation of ethical responsibility â The Idea of the In finite in Levinas' Totality and Infinity. In Totality and Infinity Emmanuel Levinas writes about the categorical character of the ethical responsibility that the subject owes to the other. The confrontation with the suffering other puts the subject's natural self-interest into question, and brings him/her to realise an ethical responsibility of which s/he cannot unburden himself/herself. The question arises as to what in the constitution of the subject makes him/her susceptible to the realisation of ethical responsibility. This article illustrates that in order to accentuate ethical responsibility as strongly as he does, Levinas needs to take a quasi- metaphysical step. The âtrace of the infiniteâ that âcreationâ has left on the finite subject, predisposes the subject to the appeal of the other. Levinas' use of words such as âGodâ, âthe Goodâ, âcreationâ and âthe Idea of Infinityâ does not have a theological or a mystical underpinning. These metaphysical concepts are
philosophical figures of speech that Levinas borrows from Plato and Descartes.
S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.19(2) 2000: 133-15