‘White excellence and black failure’: the reproduction of racialised higher education in everyday talk
- Authors: Robus, Donovan , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6254 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007872
- Description: Since the advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994, much effort has been expended on overcoming the institutionalised racism that characterised apartheid. The transformation of higher education, particularly with regard to the merging and incorporation of institutions, is such an example. This article is an analysis of discourses on race emerging in the talk of students and staff during the incorporation of a historically white satellite campus (Rhodes University East London) into a historically black university (University of Fort Hare). The argument, which relies on Essed’s notion of everyday racism, infused with insights from discursive psychology, is that higher education institutions areracialised through the intricate interweaving of macro-level processes and discourses that recur in everyday talk and practices. In their talk, the participants in the study persistently assigned racialised identities to the institutions (Rhodes is white and Fort Hare is black) and invoked a ‘white excellence/black failure’ discourse. ‘White excellence’ folds in on, and is reproduced by, the desirable, modern, urban space and an appeal to Euro-American standards. Institutions and individuals are positioned as being able to overcome ‘black failure’ by moving into white space and through intense personal labour.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
The new moral order and racism in South Africa post 11 September 2001
- Authors: Painter, D , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6215 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006266
- Description: In this paper we argue that globalisation imposes on ‘developing’ countries more than an economic order; they find themselves with the moral imperative to align themselves with the West against its Others, increasingly portrayed as Islamic fundamentalists. The 11 September terror attacks in the United States of America have pushed this process to a new level, with the attacks represented as no less than a barbaric attack on ‘civilisation’. Through an analysis of a newspaper article reporting on the disciplining of a Muslim woman in for wearing an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt to work in South Africa, we indicate how this moral representation of the 11 September events and the Islamic Other have unique local effects. In South Africa it creates yet more possibilities for racialising practices to continue without being framed in explicitly racial terms. We further reflect on the implications of these events, and the complex interplay of the global and the local they demonstrate, for critical psychology in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Child sexual abuse: South African research on incidence, prevalence and intervention (1984 - 1990)
- Authors: Levett, A , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 1991
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6283 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014347 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16826108.1991.9631452
- Description: This article was co-written with A Levett in association with the Child Guidance Clinic, University of Cape Town. , Full text available on publisher website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16826108.1991.9631452
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1991
A decade later: follow-up review of South African research on the consequences of and contributory factors in teen-aged pregnancy
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Tracey, Tiffany
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6276 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008276 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124631004000103
- Description: In this paper, we review South African research conducted in the last 10 years on the consequences of and contributory factors in teen-aged pregnancy. We discuss research into the rates of teen-aged pregnancy, the intentionality and wantedness of pregnancy, the disruption of schooling, health issues, consequences for the children, welfare concerns, knowledge and use of contraception, timing of sexual debut, age of partner, coercive sexual relations, cultural factors and health service provision. We compare this discussion to the reviews on the same topic appearing in the South African Journal of Psychology a decade ago. We find that there are several changes in focus in the research on pregnancy amongst young women. We conclude that, in general, there has been an improvement in the breadth of data available, mostly as a result of representative national and local surveys. A better teasing out of nuances around particular issues and a grappling with theoretical issues are also evident in recent research.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
Public reproductive health and ‘unintended’ pregnancies: introducing the construct ‘supportability’
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6313 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019881 , https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Description: In this Perspectives paper, I outline the limitations of the concept of ‘intentionality’ in public reproductive health understandings of pregnancy. ‘Intentionality’, ‘plannedness’, ‘wantedness’ and ‘timing’ place individual cognitions, psychology and/or behaviors at the center of public health conceptualizations of pregnancies, thereby leaving the underlying social and structural dynamics under-examined. I propose a model that places ‘supportability’ at the center of thinking about pregnancies and that allows for an analysis of the intersection of individual cognitions, emotions and behavior with micro-level interactive spaces and macro-level issues. , Full text access on Publisher website: https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/pubmed/fdv123
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2015
The intersection of culture and gender in constructions of ukuzila’ (spousal mourning) among AmaXhosa in the Eastern Cape:
- Authors: Ngqangweni, Hlonelwa , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143615 , vital:38267 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Mourning is a universal and culturally specific practice following the death of a significant other. The Xhosa equivalent of the mourning process is ukuzila. Very little has been written on the subject of ukuzila in spite of the detrimental effects of the practice on the widows’ health and safety, as well as the discriminatory nature of the practice. This paper presents the findings of a discourse analytic qualitative study conducted among isiXhosa speaking men and women in South Africa. The study revealed ukuzila as a practice put in place to show respect to the deceased. However, the showing of respect revealed a historically gendered cultural practice, imbued with power relations and centred on ‘visibility’. In light of this finding, the authors propose further research which includes exploring people’s willingness to change to a non-gendered practice of ukuzila, and alternate expressions of ukuzila that suit women rather than ‘culture’ and society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Teenage pregnancy and its 'negative' consequences: review of South African research - Part 1
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:21005 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5982 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/008124639902900101
- Description: Teenage pregnancy emerged as a social issue within the United States in the 1970s, and somewhat later in South Africa, In this article I review South African research and literature concerning the consequences of teenage pregnancy, because it is on this level that teenage pregnancy is formulated as a problem, The literature is reviewed against the backdrop of some international research in order to provide a basis for comparison, Research on the disruption of schooling, socio-economic disadvantage, obstetric outcomes, inadequate mothering, neglect and abuse, relationship difficulties and demographic concerns is reviewed, Various gaps in the South African literature are identified, These include an inadequate theoretical grounding, a lack of gender and historical analyses, and no exploration of the power relations within which teenage pregnancy occurs.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1999
‘… a huge monster that should be feared and not done’: lessons learned in sexuality education classes in South Africa
- Authors: Shefer, Tamara , Kruger, Lou-Marie , Macleod, Catriona I , Baxen, Jean , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6314 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020933 , http://www.mrc.ac.za/crime/aspj/2015/AhugeMonster.pdf
- Description: Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductive health, gender and sexual norms and relations. Yet, research has illustrated that such work may not only be failing to impact on more equitable sexual practices between young men and women, but may also serve to reproduce the very discourses and practices that the work aims to challenge. Cultures of violence in youth sexuality are closely connected to prevailing gender norms and practices which, for example, render women as passive victims who are incapable of exercising sexual agency and men as inherently sexually predatory. This paper analyses the talk of Grade 10 learners in nine diverse schools in two South African provinces, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, to highlight what ‘lessons’ these young people seem to be learning about sexuality in Life Orientation classes. We find that these lessons foreground cautionary, negative and punitive messages, which reinforce, rather than challenge, normative gender roles. ‘Scare’ messages of danger, damage and disease give rise to presumptions of gendered responsibility for risk and the requirement of female restraint in the face of the assertion of masculine desire and predation. We conclude that the role which sexuality education could play in enabling young women in particular to more successfully negotiate their sexual relationships to serve their own needs, reproductive health and safety, is undermined by regulatory messages directed at controlling young people, and young women in particular – and that instead, young people’s sexual agency has to be acknowledged in any processes of change aimed at gender equality, anti-violence, health and well-being.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Sistering and sexual socialisation: a discursive study of Xhosa women’s sisterly interactions concerning sex and reproduction
- Authors: Ndabula, Yanela , Macleod, Catriona I , Young, Lisa S
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/160301 , vital:40432 , DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2020.1785551
- Description: Considerable research has been devoted to understanding and promoting parent-child sexual socialisation. Less attention has been paid to experiences of sibling interactions concerning sex. Drawing on discursive psychology, this study explores how women report interacting about sex and reproduction in their sisterly relationships. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted, using Free Association Narrative Interview technique, with five Black isiXhosa-speaking, middle-aged and working class women in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Women’s micro-narratives of the process of abortion decision-making: justifying the decision to have an abortion
- Authors: Mavuso, Jabulile , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143893 , vital:38292 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: What is missing from abortion research is research that explores women’s narratives of the processes of abortion decision-making in a way that acknowledges the constraints placed on ‘choice’. This study sought to explore, using Foucauldian feminist post-structuralism and a narrative-discursive approach, women’s micro-narratives of the abortion decision-making process. Purposive sampling was used to recruit a total of 25 participants from three abortion facilities in the Eastern Cape. Participants were unmarried ‘Black’ women between the ages of 19 and 35, and were mostly unemployed. Narrative interviews were done with the women. Analysis revealed an over-arching narrative in which women described the abortion decision as something that they were ‘forced’ into by their circumstances. To construct this narrative, women justified the decision to have an abortion by drawing on discourses that normalise certain practices located within the husband-wife and parent-child axes and make the pregnancy a problematic, unsupported and unsupportable one. Gendered and generational power relations reinforced this and contributed to the obstruction of reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Teenage motherhood and the regulation of mothering in the scientific literature: the South African example
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6256 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007874
- Description: The mainstream literature on teenage pregnancy highlights teenagers' inadequate mothering as an area of disquiet. `Revisionists', such as feminist critics, point out that a confluence of negative social factors is implicated in teenagers' mothering abilities. Whether arguing that teenagers make bad mothers or defending them against this, the literature relies on the `invention of "good" mothering'. In this article I highlight the taken-for-granted assumptions concerning mothering (mothering as an essentialized dyad; mothering as a skill; motherhood as a pathway to adulthood; fathering as the absent trace) appearing in the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa. I indicate how these assumptions are implicated in the regulation of mothering through the positioning of the teenage mother as the pathologized other, the splitting of the public from the private, domestic space of mothering, and the legitimation of the professionalization of mothering. I explore the gendered implications of the representations of mothering in this literature.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision making in Zimbabwe:
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143882 , vital:38291 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The available research on abortion-decision-making tends to focus on the ‘factors’ or ‘influences’ that are seen to affect abortion decision-making. This approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpin the ‘process’ of abortion decision-making. Data reported on in this paper were collected from three sites in Zimbabwe. Narrative interviews were conducted with 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers. The women employed discursive resources around stigma, religion, health and culture in telling stories around abortion shame, abortion as justified and the fearful, secretive act of abortion. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the availability and embeddedness of social discourses and power relations that work to enable/constrain reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Reconsidering research ethics in ethnographic research: bearing witness to ‘irreparable harm’
- Authors: Barker, Kim , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143805 , vital:38284 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Research with persons who have experienced trauma requires careful consideration. In preparing the ethics protocol for an ethnographic study of an anti-rape protest, we thought carefully about how the first author would manage ethical decisions in accordance with the University ethics code. However, this process did not prepare us for the dynamic and reciprocal positioning the first author encountered in the field. Nor was she prepared for her sense of the ethical duty of response when entrusted with the narratives of women who had suffered ‘irredeemable harm’. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and examples from the research, we show how ethical decision-making in ethnographic research is always relational and dialogical; extending beyond our direct interactions with participants to the ways in which we approach our ‘data’. We argue that ethics cannot be reduced to a cognitive-rational process and propose ways to acknowledge and draw on the ‘affective’ and ‘transcendent’ in our ethical decision-making.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Gender differences in mathematics: A discourse analysis
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 1995
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6285 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014524 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124639502500308
- Description: Perspectives dealing with the study of gender and mathematics have failed generally to move beyond the individual/society divide. The contradictory nature of subjectivity and the operation and interpenetration of power and knowledge have not been taken into account. This article is based on the post-structuralist framework. The work of Walkerdine, which highlights the processes within the classroom which allow girls to succeed in mathematics but never actually be successful, is of interest. The methodology used is that of discourse analysis which makes clear both the positionings available to the participants as well as the power relations formed. The sample was drawn from a top-achieving Std 8 Higher Grade class in an affluent Model C school. This represents a theoretically salient sample as the literature points to ‘gender differences’ being most pronounced in the upper levels of mathematics education. The analysis clearly highlights the double-bind within which girls find themselves in the mathematics classroom. The apparent equality of opportunity and non-sexism is counteracted by the positioning of girls as hard working but without natural flair in mathematics. The characteristics that make it possible to achieve in mathematics are ascribed to males. The resistance to this powerful ‘disciplinary technology’ is the invoking of the feminist discourse. , This article is affiliated to the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Cape Town and WITS Rural Facility , Full text available on publisher website: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124639502500308
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1995
Deconstructing developmental psychology twenty years on : reflections, implications and empirical work
- Authors: Callaghan, Jane , Andenæs, Agnes , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6315 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020934 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353515583702
- Description: Editorial
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Psycho-medical discourse in South African research on teenage pregnancy
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Durrheim, Kevin
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6257 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007875
- Description: Catriona Macleod and Kevin Durrheim apply a Foucauldian analysis to the scientific literature on teenage pregnancy.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
Teenage pregnancy and its ‘negative’ consequences: review of South African research - Part 1
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6288 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014528 , http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/008124639902900101
- Description: Teenage pregnancy emerged as a social issue within the United States in the 1970s, and somewhat later in South Africa. In this article I review South African research and literature concerning the consequences of teenage pregnancy, because it is on this level that teenage pregnancy is formulated as a problem. The literature is reviewed against the backdrop of some international research in order to provide a basis for comparison. Research on the disruption of schooling, socio-economic disadvantage, obstetric outcomes, inadequate mothering, neglect and abuse, relationship difficulties and demographic concerns is reviewed. Various gaps in the South African literature are identified. These include an inadequate theoretical grounding, a lack of gender and historical analyses, and no exploration of the power relations within which teenage pregnancy occurs. , This article was written by Catriona Macleod in affiliation with the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Zululand
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1999
The management of risk: adolescent sexual and reproductive health in South Africa
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6302 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015958
- Description: Scientific discourse allows for the calculation of negative outcomes attendant on conception and birth during adolescence, thereby producing a discourse of risk. The management of risk allows for the deployment of governmental apparatuses of security. Security, as outlined by Foucault, is a specific principle of political method and practice aimed at defending and securing a national population. In this paper I analyse how techniques of security are deployed in the interactions between health service providers and young women seeking contraceptive and reproductive assistance at a regional hospital in South Africa, and how racialised and gendered politics are strategically deployed within these techniques. Security combines with various governmental techniques to produce its effects. The techniques used in this instance include pastoral care, liberal humanism, the incitement to governmental self-formation, and, in the last instance, sovereign power.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Transforming the research system : contribution of the post-structuralist theoretical framework
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 1994
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6284 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014349 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768359408439761
- Description: This article was written by Catriona Macleod as research officer for the University of the Witwatersrand Rural Facility. , Full text access available on the Publisher site: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03768359408439761
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1994
The conjugalisation of reproduction in South African teenage pregnancy literature
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6266 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008265 , https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0992-3525
- Description: The “conjugalisation of reproduction”, in which childbearing is legitimated only within a marital alliance, underlies some of the pathologisation of the single, female-headed household in the pre-democracy South African teenage pregnancy literature. I utilise a poststructural feminist framework that draws on elements of Derrida’s and Foucault’s work to analyse the conjugalisation of reproduction in South African research. The conjugalisation of reproduction relies on (1) the insidious “unwed” signifier which interpenetrates the term “teenage pregnancy”, allowing the scientific censure of non-marital adolescent re-production without the invocation of moralisation, and (2) the fixation of the husband-wife and parents-children axes of alliance as the main elements for the deployment of sexuality and reproduction in the form of the family. Pregnant teenagers are, in Derridean terms, undecidables: they are neither children (owing to their reproductive status) nor adults (owing to their age), but simultaneously both. Marriage is the authority that decides them, allowing them to join the ranks of adult reproductive subjects.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003