Anticipatory adjustments to being picked up in infancy

Anticipation of the actions of others is often used as a measure of action understanding in infancy. In contrast to studies of action understanding which set infants up as observers of actions directed elsewhere, in the present study we explored anticipatory postural adjustments made by infants to one of the most common adult actions directed to them - picking them up. We observed infant behavioural changes and recorded their postural shifts on a pressure mat in three phases: (i) a prior Chat phase, (ii) from the onset of Approach of the mother's arms, and (iii) from the onset of Contact. In Study 1, eighteen 3-month-old infants showed systematic global postural changes during Approach and Contact, but not during Chat. There was an increase in specific adjustments of the arms (widening or raising) and legs (stiffening and extending or tucking up) during Approach and a decrease in thrashing/general movements during Contact. Shifts in postural stability were evident immediately after onset of Approach and more slowly after Contact, with no regular shifts during Chat. In Study 2 we followed ten infants at 2, 3 and 4 months of age. Anticipatory behavioural adjustments during Approach were present at all ages, but with greater differentiation from a prior Chat phase only at 3 and 4 months. Global postural shifts were also more phase differentiated in older infants. Moreover, there was significantly greater gaze to the mother's hands during Approach at 4 months. Early anticipatory adjustments to being picked up suggest that infants' awareness of actions directed to the self may occur earlier than of those directed elsewhere, and thus enable infants' active participation in joint actions from early in life

Matters of age: An introduction to ageing, intergenerationality and gender in Africa

This introductory essay to this special issue of Agenda draws together a wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary literature on ageing, intergenerationality and gender, and locates the significance of writing from Africa within this context. The first half of the essay provides a critical and comprehensive review of available literature in the field, highlighting the significance of research and writing on the ways in which gender mediates ageing and intergenerationality as both process and emotional space. The latter half of the essay engages the significance of the depth of contributions in this issue as critical in the conversation around ageing, gender, and intergenerationality in the context of Africa and the South, and the need for perspectives from multiple disciplines to continue engaging the field through both scholarship and advocacy.International Bibliography of Social Science

Familiar claims : representations of same-gendered families in South African mainstream news media

From the Introduction: There has been significant reform of South African legislation pertaining to same-gendered families. The Constitution supports the rights of gay men and lesbians to establish life partnerships or, more recently, to enter into civil unions, to adopt children, keep custody of their own children in divorce proceedings, and to undertake co-parenting of their created families. Despite—or maybe because of—these developments, public debate on these issues is as lively and vociferous as it has ever been. At the time of writing this chapter, for instance, a veteran journalist published a column in a national newspaper in which he denounced same-gendered family “arrangements” as “neither the norm nor ultimately desirable” (Mulholland, 2013). Children in same-gendered families must be informed of this, he claimed. His argument was unsupported, save for unsubstantiated claims regarding the unnaturalness of same-gendered families, which defy “the natural order of things”, and the vehement refusal that “same-sex matrimony is the same as that of heterosexuals” (Mulholland, 2013). Mulholland’s column, which met with outrage by various activists and academics, demonstrates some of the ideas that circulate in public discussion of same-gendered families: concerns regarding the differences between homosexual and heterosexual families and the effects that these ‘differences’ might have on children living in ‘alternative’ families. In this chapter, we examine the public discussion, focusing on South African print media as a key site where debate has occurred. Recognising that the discussion of LGBTI issues in South Africa has increased in visibility over time, focusing on stories about coming out, rights, transgressions, stigma, discrimination and violence, this chapter concentrates on the public discussion in local print media that centre on ‘alternative’ family arrangements that are in contrast to a traditional heterosexual nuclear family. Drawing on a selection of print media reportage, we examine the social and public discourses that underpin and resist normative meanings associated with ‘the family’ as a social unit and, specifically, how same-gendered families (often rendered invisible and pathologised) are constructed within this material.C. Lubbe & J. Marnell (Eds.) 2013. Home affairs: rethinking lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender families in contemporary South Africa. A copy of the book can be obtained from: http://www.jacana.co.z

The social life of a virus

This brief provides a sociological perspective which is the study of how individuals behave in groups and how human behaviour is shaped by groups. The fact that our societies are complex and are made up of a collection of individual people, means that there is a certain connection between the structures and social problems of society and the behaviour of the people who shape it. Human behaviour is complex, far from robotic, but indeed malleable in the way we can respond to social realities and engage with the structures and social problems facing us, such as this COVID-19 pandemic.http://www.sajs.co.zaam2021Psycholog

Antropologiese aantekeninge by Opperman se 'Ringdans van die Hamerkoppe'

This article provides an anthropological reading of one of Opperman’s early poems, “Ringdans van die hamerkoppe” (Blom en Baaierd, 1956). The argument motivates a perspective on Opperman that emphasises his role as a poetethnographer who in this poem also displays elements of the poem-shaman in recuperating salient elements of the cultural world of the Zulu, as seen through the focalisation of the speaker in this text. The article motivates a reading that challenges initial reception of the text that viewed the text as a depiction of the tragedy of an old man, and opts for a perspective that recognises the multi-layered meanings that the text espouses. The article concludes that an anthropology, and an anthropological interpretation cannot disallow the rhetorical dimensions of the text.http://www.alv.org.za/index.php/stiletam2018Humanities Educatio

Pandemic governance: Developing a politics of informality.

South Africa had the privilege of learning from how other countries responded to the crisis engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this opportunity seems to have been lost as the South African government made the mistake of transposing a developed-world preventive response onto a largely developing-world populace. The government failed to map out how factors such as South Africa’s demographic composition, spatial architecture, the incidence of poverty and informality, and competing epidemics would interact synergistically and shape epidemiological outcomes. In this article shaped by sociological insights, we show how the application of governance systems can give rise to many unintended social consequences when the knowledge forms upon which they are based are not suitably tailored to meet the needs of the specific local context. We highlight how informality can play a valuable role in fighting the COVID crisis and suggest that, to truly succeed, the government should include rather than override informal principles of governance.Significance:We present a brief comparative analysis of the responses of different nation states to the COVID-19 pandemic. The insights contribute to the sociological literature as well as to other disciplines, highlighting how local contextual factors are (re)shaping the form of policy responses as well as their associated consequences. More specifically, we focus on the importance of adopting a political economy approach in the analysis of informality and motivate how and why this may be useful for consideration in areas related to policy development and governance more broadly