Visual images of South African communities

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 13 August 1984Language -- or labels -- is a prime site of ideological struggle in South Africa. The tussle for meanings, images and sounds occurs at every level within the media. Because the media are owned and controlled by the politically and economically ascendant classes within the social formation, it is inevitable that the media will accredit a dominant reality over subordinate ones. In South Africa, the state not only defines the hegemonic construct of reality, but it perpetuates and delineates the ethnic, racial, political, historical and geographical content of what it calls 'nation-states' and the racially segregated 'communities' which fall outside the homelands

Hacking through academentia : autoethnography, data and social change

Abstract: The question of who may produce and own knowledge, under what conditions, is critically discussed in relation to research regulatory regimes and academic managerialism. The nature of researcher position and nature of researcher-researched encounters is discussed. Autoethnography is offered as one way of examining Self-Other relationships in doing field work. How to negotiate the relationship is examined in the context of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) and the questions of essentialism and paradigm clash. The dominant ideology of data is questioned. Case studies of how (over-)regulation excludes unconventional science from its system of rewards illustrates the contradictions imposed by residues of positivism

Indeterminacy, Indigeneity, Peer Review and the Mind–Body Problem

Peer review is discussed from the perspective of different ways of making sense, most specifically, Immanuel’s Kant’s statement on the indeterminacy of radical translation.   Ontological differences are examined with specific examples illustrating actual contestations, with some instances invoking indigeneity and self-knowing.  The veracity of claims of racism and exclusion by allegedly hegemonic Western-dominated editorial boards of scientific journals is examined.     Positivism is contrasted with relational thinking and just where ‘the body’ fits into scientific practice is discussed.  Paradigm and paradigm shift as constituting the rules of peer engagement is proposed.  The method is an autoethnographic one that draws on the author’s own experience as a journals’ editor analysing peer review issues via the prism of Western philosophy on the one hand, and the Subject-Object integration of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) postulates on the other. Conspiracy theories are questioned and the conclusion is that both determinacies (Cartesian and IKS) need to generate new insights via dialectical engagements

The geography of Plan S open science

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Theatre, Repression and the Working Class in South Africa

As humanity and, by implication theatre, become more technomorphic, performance outside of a building specifically designed for the purpose is either ignored or pre-packaged as \u27street\u27 or \u27guerrilla\u27 theatre. Whereas the theatre building functions to separate the audience from the players and entrench the distinction between art and life, these latter styles are an attempt by professionals to overcome this distinction, to draw attention to specific problems in society and to concientise the public to alternative everyday forms of theatre. Such theatre, however, remains a novelty (in South Africa at least) for it is a deliberate attempt by actors or directors to involve bystanders in a performance which does not normally occur outside of a theatre

Public intellectuals. Thoughts into action

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The tail wagging the dog: Tomaselli’s Contemporary Campus Life and why we are overdue for introspection as academics

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Perverse incentives and the political economy of South African academic journal publishing

Abstract: Academic publishing in South Africa attracts a state research incentive for the universities to which the authors are affiliated. The aim of this study was twofold: (1) to examine the composition of the research value chain and (2) to identify the effects of broken links within the chain. The methodology selected was a lived cultural economy study, which was constructed through incorporating dialogue with editors, authors and researchers in terms of my own experience as a journal editor, read through a political economy framework. The prime effect is to exclude journals, especially independent titles, from directly earning publishing incentives. The behaviour of universities in attracting this variable income is discussed in terms of rent-seeking which occurs when organisations and/or individuals leverage resources from state institutions. Firstly, this process commodifies research and its product, publication. Secondly, the value chain is incomplete as it is the journals that are funding publication rather than – in many cases – the research economy funding the journals. Thirdly, authors are seeking the rewards enabled by the incentive attached to measurement systems, rather than the incentive of impacting the discipline/s which they are addressing. Fourthly, the paper discuses some policy and institutional matters which impact the above and the relative costs between open access and subscription models. Editors, journals and publishers are the un- or underfunded conduits that enable the transfer of massive research subsidies to universities and authors, and, in the case of journals, editors’ voluntary work is the concealed link in the value chain enabling the national research economy. Significance: • The South African scientific publishing economy is built on a foundation of clay: this economy distorts research impact and encourages universities and academics to commoditise output

Humanities, citations and currency : hierarchies of value and enabled recolonisation

Abstract:A comparative analysis examines the relevance of journal measurement indices for the Humanities and the Sciences. It explains how different measurements work, what they measure and their impact on the integrity of research, paradigm change and citation levels. The increasing use by university auditors of impact factors as performance management and research output indicators is critically examined with regard to implications for the humanities. The effect of this neoliberal approach on African-based academic developments is examined, as are the intellectually re-colonising effects of such systems

Journals editing, editor recognition, and impacting disciplines

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