An interpretive analysis of the experiences of adults working as university support staff
- Authors: Zini, Thembela Nomonde
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Universities and colleges South Africa , Universities and colleges Employees , Universities and colleges Sociological aspects , Identity (Psychology) , Identity (Psychology) Social aspects , Work Psychological aspects , Work Social aspects , Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)
- Language: English
- Type: Masters theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/188888 , vital:44795
- Description: Work means different things to different people and the different meanings they make of their work has the unique ability of contributing to a sense of identity. Support staff have to negotiate their personal identities and social identities to develop a work identity in the complex South African context that has its unique challenges. Exploring how support staff make sense of their experiences, when it comes to their identities, reveals what identity work strategies they use. An interpretative phenomenological method of inquiry was employed as an initial research method to explore the aspects that impact on the identity formation of support staff at Rhodes University. The study aims to investigate how support staff have constructed a work identity through their constructions of their experiences. Six participants were recruited through a purposive sampling method and data were collected using semi-structured interviews. The study revealed that support staff use the following identity work strategies to negotiate their identities: Financial, Personality, Career mobility, Roles, Status and Esteem, Subjective wellbeing. These themes were derived from the narratives of the participants, using the emphases in the data and suggest that support staff use identity work strategies both outside and within the workplace, when constructing their work identities. The study illustrates that as people ascribe different meanings to work, they will define and negotiate their identities in the workplace based upon those meanings. Identity work is indeed challenging for support staff because they need to use identity strategies that are enhancing to their self-esteem. Identity work is a challenging task because of the many tensions and demands of modern society, as adults negotiate their needs to provide for families and to find ways to construct their job status in positive ways. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2021
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- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
Traversing Doctoral Borderlands: Black doctoral students’ experiences of identity construction in South Africa
- Authors: Hwami, Rudo Fortunate
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Doctoral students South Africa , College students, Black South Africa , Marginality, Social South Africa , Public spaces Social aspects , Culture Social aspects , Rhythm , Identity (Psychology) , Borderlands Theory
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/191062 , vital:45055 , 10.21504/10962/191062
- Description: Doctoral studies are described as a process of formation and becoming. This is an in-between space between unknowing and knowing, within and without the ivory tower of academia. In this in-between space the doctoral candidate takes the role of a novice and apprentice unlearning the student/unknowing past and learning to become a professional in academia. This project utilises the borderlands theory to understand the experiences of doctoral students as they undergo the process of becoming and intellectual identity formation. Whilst ‘journey’ and other metaphors that have been used to understand doctoral student experiences capture the process of becoming as a progression through the liminal stages – proposal, literature review, context, writing, reading etc. These stages presuppose temporality of being leading to stasis/completion. I argue that such conceptualisation of doctoral studies, although useful, depict one side of the story and provide a limited, monolithic, and homogenising understanding of the spatial configurations of doctoral space and intellectual identity formation. The dominant discourses of doctoral conceived and perceived space, liminal stages and understanding of doctoral student experiences, mask the more latent and intimate liminal stages of intellectual identity formation. Drawing from borderlands theory, I firstly argue for a holistic approach to understanding the spatiality of doctorate studies. Secondly, I argue that liminality is an everyday process integral to human existence where one is always in a state of ideological transition. An important state of liminality is the awareness of ‘Self’ in perpetual motion, caught between two worlds dominated/dominator and two ideologies of oppression/resistance. If this side of liminality is not made visible, institutional spaces, such as the doctorate, privileged with the power to disseminate and position onto-epistemologies as universal can be used to reproduce and reinforce exclusionary onto-epistemologies that subsequently impact intellectual identity formation. Using Lefebvre’s (1991) rhythmanalysis method, I use student experiences not as mere data for analysis, but as an act of envisioning, reinventing and coknowledge production to propose borderlands as a new metaphor to study doctoral spatial realities and the experiences of the students that traverse through it. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Politics and International Studies, 2021
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- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
Concerning Marya Schechtman’s narrative account
- Authors: Simuja, Clement
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Schechtman, Marya, 1960- Criticism and interpretation , Narrative inquiry (Research method) , Identity (Psychology) , Identity (Philosophical concept) , Self , Individuality
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190748 , vital:45024
- Description: The persistence of personal identity stands at the heart of many human practices, such as paying individuals for their work or holding people responsible for their actions. As such, it seems important that theories of personal identity are able to account for the practical implications of continuity of personal identity. Mindful of the practical importance of personal identity, Marya Schechtman (1994) argues that her narrative view only accounts for the four features that persons must possess. Any account of personal identity is supposed to make persons capable of possessing these features. She then posits her narrative self-constitution view as an account of personal identity she feels is capable of explaining the link between personal identity and certain features of persons. In this thesis project, I present how the narrative views, as described by Schechtman and others, are interpretive enterprises and that this leads them to a potentially devastating conclusion. The narratives must be constructed from something, and I argue that it is memory. But empirical facts about memory do not allow for it to persist in a quantitative way, but rather in a qualitative way, much like persons. Upon making this argument, I further argue that if mainstream psychological views is correct, this reduces the persistence of memory to resemblance relations. And memory is the building blocks of narrative. If this is the case, then narrative is also reduced to resemblance relations. Narrative, therefore, does not persist through time in a non-qualitative way, and one is better off accepting a psychological theory by virtue of parsimony. Ultimately, I argue that Schechtman and narrative theorists may save narrative views by adopting what I call as a ‘causal narrative view’. A causal narrative view will encapsulate all of the relevant features of the typical narrative view, including the emphasis on construction, but will also add the addendum that narrative states must be placed in a causal relation to each other. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Philosophy, 2021
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- Date Issued: 2021-10-29