New spaces and old stories: the Luminance woman, black womanhood and the illusion of the “new” South Africa
- Authors: Alweendo, Ndapwa Magano Nelao
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Luminance stores (South Africa) , Dhlomo, Khanyi , Dlamini, Judy , Women, Black -- South Africa -- Social life and customes , Women, Black -- South Africa -- Social conditions , Clothing trade -- South Africa , Social classes -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/42619 , vital:25220
- Description: This study examines ideas of black womanhood in post-apartheid South Africa. The opening of the Luminance boutique in 2013, previously owned by South African businesswoman and media mogul Khanyi Dhlomo in Johannesburg’s ultra-exclusive Hyde Park Corner, has been articulated as representing a rupture in the public and private performance of black womanhood. Luminance has positioned itself as a provider of world-class style and beauty and has embraced a narrative of black women’s empowerment in the process. The study is based on narrative semistructured interviews conducted Johannesburg with black women who have shopped at the boutique and women who believe themselves as having a meaningful connection to the store. The literature on black women, both internationally and in South Africa, acknowledges that black women experience multiple and intersecting oppressions of race, class and gender, among others. Located within black feminist theory, the study argues that the Luminance woman does represent some rupture in the historic understanding of black womanhood in South Africa. This woman is an elite player in both the corporate world and the world of luxury consumption, and is certainly entering spaces to which black women have historically been denied access. However, this study argues that there is a danger in reducing this woman to an oversimplified character, allowing responses to her to ignore the complexities of her reality in favour of the simplicity of her story, and ignore the structural socioeconomic challenges that continue to shape the lives of all black women in postapartheid South Africa. In this regard, the Luminance woman, while on the surface appearing to be an empowering new iteration of womanhood that should inspire other black woman, contributes to the erasure of her particular marginal experiences, and the oppression of black women in general. The story of the Luminance women contributes to a narrative of individual hard work and determination that frames her as a respectable example of what the “new” South Africa has delivered for its citizens. This woman is a model example of a South African who has succeeded because she took advantage of the opportunities supposedly afforded to all in the post-1994 era. It is therefore argued that praise of the Luminance woman serves a dual purpose: to reinforce the myth of equal opportunity in South Africa, and to lessen the legitimacy of marginalised groups’ experiences of oppression, especially black women who continue to constitute the poor majority.
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- Date Issued: 2017
Race, class and inequality: an exploration of the scholarship of Professor Bernard Magubane
- Authors: Tanyanyiwa, Precious
- Date: 2011
- Subjects: Magubane, Bernard -- Knowledge and learning , South Africa -- Race relations , Sociology -- South Africa , Race -- South Africa , Equality -- South Africa , Research -- South Africa , South Africa -- Social policy , Social classes -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3324 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003112 , Magubane, Bernard -- Knowledge and learning , South Africa -- Race relations , Sociology -- South Africa , Race -- South Africa , Equality -- South Africa , Research -- South Africa , South Africa -- Social policy , Social classes -- South Africa
- Description: This thesis begins with the assumption that the theory of academic dependency provides an adequate framework within which the relationship between social science communities in the North and South can be understood. Present problems of social scientists in the South have very often been attributed to this dependence and it has been concluded that academic dependence has resulted in an uncritical and imitative approach to ideas and concepts from the West (Alatas, 2000). This dependence has also resulted in the general regression among social scientists based in the South and in a marginalisation of their works within the social science community no matter how significant and original they may be. The problematic invisibility of the works of prominent South African scholars is a dimension of a wider crisis of academic dependence, if unchecked this current trend will also reinforce academic dependence. From the nature of the problems generated by academic dependence, it is obvious that there is a need for an intellectual emancipation movement. This movement may take different forms that may range from but are not limited to a commitment to endogeneity which involves among other things, knowledge production that takes South African local conditions seriously enough to be the basis for the development of distinct conceptual ideas and theories. This requires transcending the tendency to use ‘the local’ primarily as a tool for data collection and theoretical framing done from the global north. Secondly, there is a need to take the local, indigenous, ontological narratives seriously enough to serve as source codes for works of distinct epistemological value and exemplary ideas within the global project of knowledge production. Endogeneity in the context of African knowledge production should also involve an intellectual standpoint derived from a rootedness in the African conditions; a centring of African ontological discourses and experiences as the basis of intellectual work (Adesina, 2008: 135). In this study, it is suggested that the recommendations highlighted above can only succeed if scholars make an effort to actually engage with locally produced knowledge. There is therefore a need to make greater efforts to know each other’s work on Africa. This demand is not to appease individual egos but it is essential for progress in scientific work. African communities will benefit from drawing with greater catholicity from the well–spring of knowledge about Africa generated by Africans. In the South African context, transcending academic dependence in the new generation of young academics requires engagement with the work of our local scholars who have devoted their lives to knowledge production. This thesis explores the scholarship of Professor Bernard Magubane by engaging with his works on race, class and inequality by locating his works within the wider debates on race, class and inequality in South Africa. The specific contributions of Professor Magubane to the enterprise of knowledge production are identified and discussed in relation to his critique of Western social science in its application to Africa. The making of Professor Magubane’s life, his career, scholarship and biography details are analysed with the intention of showing their influence on Magubane as a Scholar. The examination of Professor Magubane’s intellectual and biographical accounts help to explain the details, contexts and implications of his theoretical paradigm shifts. This helps prove that Professor Magubane’s experiences and theoretical positions were socially and historically constituted. The research from which this thesis derives is part of an NRF-funded project, on Endogeneity and Modern Sociology in South Africa, under the direction of Professor Jimi Adesina.
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- Date Issued: 2011