The power behind the scenes: the Afrikaner Nationalist Women's Parties, 1915 to 1931.
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141795 , vital:38005 , DOI: 10.1080/02582479908671348
- Description: The Enlightenment expectation was that political identity based on ethnic nationalist sentiments would gradually give way to more ‘rational’ forms of association. That expectation has, in the late twentieth century, proved somewhat premature. The explosion of ethnic nationalist conflicts onto the international stage in the post-Cold War era has brought with it a renewed intellectual interest in the politics of nationalism and ethnicity. In response to the need for new avenues of inquiry amidst a vast and growing literature, Anthony Smith’s work on national identity appeals for a research agenda which treats nations and nationalism as cultural phenomena as well as forms of politics.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141795 , vital:38005 , DOI: 10.1080/02582479908671348
- Description: The Enlightenment expectation was that political identity based on ethnic nationalist sentiments would gradually give way to more ‘rational’ forms of association. That expectation has, in the late twentieth century, proved somewhat premature. The explosion of ethnic nationalist conflicts onto the international stage in the post-Cold War era has brought with it a renewed intellectual interest in the politics of nationalism and ethnicity. In response to the need for new avenues of inquiry amidst a vast and growing literature, Anthony Smith’s work on national identity appeals for a research agenda which treats nations and nationalism as cultural phenomena as well as forms of politics.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
Destined to come to blows?: race and constructions of “rational-intellectual” masculinity ten years after apartheid
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141619 , vital:37990 , DOI: 10.1177/1097184X05277694
- Description: In 1994, a democratic government came to power in South Africa for the first time in the country's history. But political transition is never a single event or moment. Rather, it is a continuous process that faces setbacks and contradictions. One of the questions we might ask about a society in transition is to what extent its gender order has changed or is changing. The present paper sets out to read the country's transformation drama through the lens of contested conceptions of South African masculinity. The article is focused on one particular version of masculinity which it terms “rational-intellectual man,” and the argument is that a legacy of racism and the persistence of racialized modes of reasoning continue to marginalise black men from this and other powerful, high-status forms of hegemonic masculinity.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141619 , vital:37990 , DOI: 10.1177/1097184X05277694
- Description: In 1994, a democratic government came to power in South Africa for the first time in the country's history. But political transition is never a single event or moment. Rather, it is a continuous process that faces setbacks and contradictions. One of the questions we might ask about a society in transition is to what extent its gender order has changed or is changing. The present paper sets out to read the country's transformation drama through the lens of contested conceptions of South African masculinity. The article is focused on one particular version of masculinity which it terms “rational-intellectual man,” and the argument is that a legacy of racism and the persistence of racialized modes of reasoning continue to marginalise black men from this and other powerful, high-status forms of hegemonic masculinity.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Labouring to love: romantic love and power in the construction of middle-class femininity
- Vincent, Louise, McEwen, Caryn
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , McEwen, Caryn
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141783 , vital:38004 , DOI: 10.1177/097152150501300102
- Description: South Africa is 10 years into its new democratic order. An aspect of the country's political transformation has been an official political commitment to gender trans-formation. While great strides have been made towards greater gender equality at the institutional and legal level of society, the present article suggests that highly unequal power relations between men and women continue to be perpetuated in unexpected ways among those whom we would most expect to be capable of resistance. This paper is about how subtle yet deeply embedded ideologies and practices within heterosexual relationships serve to keep highly educated, apparently empowered and liberated women ‘in their place’, ensuring that they do not fulfil their potential. Traditionally women were socialised into assuming their positions in the home as caregivers and unpaid household labourers. The hope of feminism was that education, economic empowerment and an ideology of ‘can do’ independence would liberate women. However, for many women, it is in the most intimate aspects of their lives—in their sexual relationships with men—that this hope continues to be thwarted.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , McEwen, Caryn
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141783 , vital:38004 , DOI: 10.1177/097152150501300102
- Description: South Africa is 10 years into its new democratic order. An aspect of the country's political transformation has been an official political commitment to gender trans-formation. While great strides have been made towards greater gender equality at the institutional and legal level of society, the present article suggests that highly unequal power relations between men and women continue to be perpetuated in unexpected ways among those whom we would most expect to be capable of resistance. This paper is about how subtle yet deeply embedded ideologies and practices within heterosexual relationships serve to keep highly educated, apparently empowered and liberated women ‘in their place’, ensuring that they do not fulfil their potential. Traditionally women were socialised into assuming their positions in the home as caregivers and unpaid household labourers. The hope of feminism was that education, economic empowerment and an ideology of ‘can do’ independence would liberate women. However, for many women, it is in the most intimate aspects of their lives—in their sexual relationships with men—that this hope continues to be thwarted.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Of no account?: South Africa's electoral system (non) debate
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141657 , vital:37994 , DOI: 10.1080/02589000500513796
- Description: Accountability can be summarised simply as ‘answerability’ (James and Hadland 2002:1) and is a vital cornerstone of representative democracy. Without accountability, an electorate, once having put into power a particular representative, has no recourse to explanations, justifications or reviews of how that person has performed and whether or not they have fulfilled the promises which secured their election in the first place. In a representative democracy mechanisms of accountability are necessarily multiple and must include both formal and informal dimensions. The electoral system is but one of these. Other key lynchpins in the accountability engine include the role of opposition parties, the committee system, the media, civil society, the courts, and what in South Africa are referred to, on the basis of the 1996 Constitution, as the ‘Chapter Nine Institutions’: the Public Protector, Human Rights Commission, Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Commission for Gender Equality, Auditor-General, and the Electoral Commission.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141657 , vital:37994 , DOI: 10.1080/02589000500513796
- Description: Accountability can be summarised simply as ‘answerability’ (James and Hadland 2002:1) and is a vital cornerstone of representative democracy. Without accountability, an electorate, once having put into power a particular representative, has no recourse to explanations, justifications or reviews of how that person has performed and whether or not they have fulfilled the promises which secured their election in the first place. In a representative democracy mechanisms of accountability are necessarily multiple and must include both formal and informal dimensions. The electoral system is but one of these. Other key lynchpins in the accountability engine include the role of opposition parties, the committee system, the media, civil society, the courts, and what in South Africa are referred to, on the basis of the 1996 Constitution, as the ‘Chapter Nine Institutions’: the Public Protector, Human Rights Commission, Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Commission for Gender Equality, Auditor-General, and the Electoral Commission.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Virginity testing in South Africa: re-traditioning the postcolony
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141511 , vital:37981 , DOI: 10.1080/13691050500404225
- Description: Umhlanga is a ceremony celebrating virginity. In South Africa, it is practiced, among others, by the Zulu ethnic group who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu Natal. After falling into relative disuse in the Zulu community, the practice of virginity testing made a comeback some 10 years ago at around the time of the country's first democratic election and coinciding with the period when the HIV pandemic began to take hold. In July 2005 the South African Parliament passed a new Children's Bill which will prohibit virginity testing of children. The Bill has been met with outrage and public protest on the part of Zulu citizens. Traditional circumcision rites are also addressed in the new bill but are not banned. Instead, male children are given the right to refuse to participate in traditional initiation ceremonies which include circumcision. This paper asks why the practice of virginity testing is regarded as so troubling to the new democratic order that the state has chosen to take the heavy‐handed route of banning it. The paper further asks why the state's approach to traditional male circumcision has been so different to its approach to virginity testing. Finally, the paper asks what these two challenging cases in the country's new democracy tell us about the nature of liberal democratic citizenship in South Africa 10 years after apartheid's formal demise.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141511 , vital:37981 , DOI: 10.1080/13691050500404225
- Description: Umhlanga is a ceremony celebrating virginity. In South Africa, it is practiced, among others, by the Zulu ethnic group who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu Natal. After falling into relative disuse in the Zulu community, the practice of virginity testing made a comeback some 10 years ago at around the time of the country's first democratic election and coinciding with the period when the HIV pandemic began to take hold. In July 2005 the South African Parliament passed a new Children's Bill which will prohibit virginity testing of children. The Bill has been met with outrage and public protest on the part of Zulu citizens. Traditional circumcision rites are also addressed in the new bill but are not banned. Instead, male children are given the right to refuse to participate in traditional initiation ceremonies which include circumcision. This paper asks why the practice of virginity testing is regarded as so troubling to the new democratic order that the state has chosen to take the heavy‐handed route of banning it. The paper further asks why the state's approach to traditional male circumcision has been so different to its approach to virginity testing. Finally, the paper asks what these two challenging cases in the country's new democracy tell us about the nature of liberal democratic citizenship in South Africa 10 years after apartheid's formal demise.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2006
Cutting tradition: the political regulation of traditional circumcision rites in South Africa's liberal democratic order
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141922 , vital:38016 , DOI: 10.1080/03057070701832890
- Description: The South African Xhosa ethnic group, the majority of whom live in the country's Eastern Cape province, are one of several ethnic groups in southern Africa that practise the ritual of circumcision as part of a rite admitting boys to manhood. Recent years have seen a rise in casualties among those participating in traditional circumcision rites. Since 1995 more than 6,000 boys have been admitted to Eastern Cape hospitals, more than 300 have died and 76 have had their genitalia amputated due to botched circumcisions. The state has responded by putting in place a variety of mechanisms to regulate the practice, most recently in the form of the 2005 Children's Bill which gives male children the right to refuse circumcision and makes those who circumcise a child against his will guilty of an offence punishable by imprisonment. Attempts by the state to regulate traditional practices (of which circumcision is just one and virginity testing is another) have been met with outrage and resistance in some quarters.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141922 , vital:38016 , DOI: 10.1080/03057070701832890
- Description: The South African Xhosa ethnic group, the majority of whom live in the country's Eastern Cape province, are one of several ethnic groups in southern Africa that practise the ritual of circumcision as part of a rite admitting boys to manhood. Recent years have seen a rise in casualties among those participating in traditional circumcision rites. Since 1995 more than 6,000 boys have been admitted to Eastern Cape hospitals, more than 300 have died and 76 have had their genitalia amputated due to botched circumcisions. The state has responded by putting in place a variety of mechanisms to regulate the practice, most recently in the form of the 2005 Children's Bill which gives male children the right to refuse circumcision and makes those who circumcise a child against his will guilty of an offence punishable by imprisonment. Attempts by the state to regulate traditional practices (of which circumcision is just one and virginity testing is another) have been met with outrage and resistance in some quarters.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Women’s rights get a dressing down: mini skirt attacks in South Africa
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141888 , vital:38013 , DOI: 10.18848/1447-9508/cgp/v06i06/42462
- Description: On Sunday the 17th of February 2008 25-year old Nwabisa Ngcukana was stripped, paraded naked while more than 100 onlookers jeered and laughed, doused in alcohol and sexually assaulted by taxi drivers and hawkers at the Noord Street taxi rank in Johannesburg1 (The Star 2008: 2). She was the fourth woman to be assaulted in this way at the rank on that evening. Three other women were stripped and sexually assaulted at the same taxi rank on the previous day. In each of these cases the fact that the women were wearing mini skirts was cited as the reason for the attack.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141888 , vital:38013 , DOI: 10.18848/1447-9508/cgp/v06i06/42462
- Description: On Sunday the 17th of February 2008 25-year old Nwabisa Ngcukana was stripped, paraded naked while more than 100 onlookers jeered and laughed, doused in alcohol and sexually assaulted by taxi drivers and hawkers at the Noord Street taxi rank in Johannesburg1 (The Star 2008: 2). She was the fourth woman to be assaulted in this way at the rank on that evening. Three other women were stripped and sexually assaulted at the same taxi rank on the previous day. In each of these cases the fact that the women were wearing mini skirts was cited as the reason for the attack.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
‘Boys will be boys’: traditional Xhosa male circumcision, HIV and sexual socialisation in contemporary South Africa
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141500 , vital:37980 , DOI: 10.1080/13691050701861447
- Description: Ritual male circumcision is among the most secretive and sacred of rites practiced by the Xhosa of South Africa. Recently, the alarming rate of death and injury among initiates has led to the spotlight of media attention and government regulation being focused on traditional circumcision. While many of the physical components of the ritual have been little altered by the centuries, its cultural and social meanings have not remained unchanged. This paper attempts to understand how some of these cultural and social meanings have shifted, particularly with respect to attitudes towards sex and the role that circumcision schools traditionally played in the sexual.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141500 , vital:37980 , DOI: 10.1080/13691050701861447
- Description: Ritual male circumcision is among the most secretive and sacred of rites practiced by the Xhosa of South Africa. Recently, the alarming rate of death and injury among initiates has led to the spotlight of media attention and government regulation being focused on traditional circumcision. While many of the physical components of the ritual have been little altered by the centuries, its cultural and social meanings have not remained unchanged. This paper attempts to understand how some of these cultural and social meanings have shifted, particularly with respect to attitudes towards sex and the role that circumcision schools traditionally played in the sexual.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Putting the ‘T’ into South African human rights: transsexuality in the post-apartheid order
- Vincent, Louise, Camminga, Bianca
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Camminga, Bianca
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141606 , vital:37989 , DOI: 10.1177/1363460709346108
- Description: Informed by narratives provided by self-identified South African transsexuals, whose lives span different periods of South Africa’s political and social history, this article seeks to explore how South Africa’s medical, legal and military establishments have exerted power over the transsexual body. A variety of studies outline the extent to which the apartheid state was a highly gendered state characterized by inflexible patriarchal norms and the dominance of violent and authoritarian forms of masculine expression. Hyper masculinization and militarization were explicit goals of the apartheid state. Deviance from the state’s prescribed gender norms was not simply socially unacceptable, it was, in many cases, punishable. South Africa’s post-1994 democratic Constitution, in contrast, explicitly outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But the democratic legal framework, which provides significant protections for freedom of sexual expression and freedom from discrimination for homosexuals has arguably had less of an impact on the lives of South Africa’s transsexual community. The state, even the post-apartheid state, has been loathe to move beyond the idea of a necessary correlation between the physical make-up of the body and the gender identity of a person in the way in which it has treated the idea of transsexualism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Camminga, Bianca
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141606 , vital:37989 , DOI: 10.1177/1363460709346108
- Description: Informed by narratives provided by self-identified South African transsexuals, whose lives span different periods of South Africa’s political and social history, this article seeks to explore how South Africa’s medical, legal and military establishments have exerted power over the transsexual body. A variety of studies outline the extent to which the apartheid state was a highly gendered state characterized by inflexible patriarchal norms and the dominance of violent and authoritarian forms of masculine expression. Hyper masculinization and militarization were explicit goals of the apartheid state. Deviance from the state’s prescribed gender norms was not simply socially unacceptable, it was, in many cases, punishable. South Africa’s post-1994 democratic Constitution, in contrast, explicitly outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But the democratic legal framework, which provides significant protections for freedom of sexual expression and freedom from discrimination for homosexuals has arguably had less of an impact on the lives of South Africa’s transsexual community. The state, even the post-apartheid state, has been loathe to move beyond the idea of a necessary correlation between the physical make-up of the body and the gender identity of a person in the way in which it has treated the idea of transsexualism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
Polygamy in the recognition of Customary Marriages Act:
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141809 , vital:38006 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2009.9676275
- Description: The Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (RCMA) 1998, recognises customary marriages which are “negotiated, celebrated or concluded according to any of the systems of indigenous African customary law which exist in South Africa” including polygamous marriages. The Act arises in the context of South Africa's Constitution which bans discrimination on grounds of culture and sexual orientation and allows for heterogeneity in its definitions of marriage and the family. A pluralist approach to family jurisprudence, however, is sometimes conceived of as setting up an irresolvable tension between the constitutional commitment to gender equality and protection for patriarchal prerogatives sanctioned by customary law. The fact that rights sometimes collide with one another is one of the reasons why it is impossible always to treat rights as absolute. When rights clash the question that arises is which of the rights that find themselves in tension with one another should give way and why?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141809 , vital:38006 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2009.9676275
- Description: The Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (RCMA) 1998, recognises customary marriages which are “negotiated, celebrated or concluded according to any of the systems of indigenous African customary law which exist in South Africa” including polygamous marriages. The Act arises in the context of South Africa's Constitution which bans discrimination on grounds of culture and sexual orientation and allows for heterogeneity in its definitions of marriage and the family. A pluralist approach to family jurisprudence, however, is sometimes conceived of as setting up an irresolvable tension between the constitutional commitment to gender equality and protection for patriarchal prerogatives sanctioned by customary law. The fact that rights sometimes collide with one another is one of the reasons why it is impossible always to treat rights as absolute. When rights clash the question that arises is which of the rights that find themselves in tension with one another should give way and why?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Seducing the people: populism and the challenge to democracy in South Africa
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141668 , vital:37995 , DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2011.533056
- Description: Recent ructions in South Africa's ruling African National Congress have been described from time to time in the media as signalling a dangerous shift towards ‘populism’. The article examines this contention. It argues that South Africa is witnessing a significant challenge to the founding precepts of constitutional democracy. This challenge emanates from the (populist) equation of democracy with ‘the will of the people’. The article unpacks some of the implications of reducing democracy to majoritarianism. It provides also an analysis of why populist appeals of various kinds have been so appealing to South African voters 15 years into democracy. The article argues that the challenges that are currently being experienced in relation to democratisation in South Africa have to do with the inherent tension between the animating ideology of democracy, which suggests that power resides with the people, and the practical functioning of democracy, which relies on the devolution of power to the representatives chosen by a section of the people who rely on order and predictability in the polity in order to govern in a workable way. Populist appeals, it is argued, exploit this tension. But what makes it possible for this strategy to succeed is the failure on the part of political elites to engage in the process of building democracy by way of inculcating respect for democratic values.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141668 , vital:37995 , DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2011.533056
- Description: Recent ructions in South Africa's ruling African National Congress have been described from time to time in the media as signalling a dangerous shift towards ‘populism’. The article examines this contention. It argues that South Africa is witnessing a significant challenge to the founding precepts of constitutional democracy. This challenge emanates from the (populist) equation of democracy with ‘the will of the people’. The article unpacks some of the implications of reducing democracy to majoritarianism. It provides also an analysis of why populist appeals of various kinds have been so appealing to South African voters 15 years into democracy. The article argues that the challenges that are currently being experienced in relation to democratisation in South Africa have to do with the inherent tension between the animating ideology of democracy, which suggests that power resides with the people, and the practical functioning of democracy, which relies on the devolution of power to the representatives chosen by a section of the people who rely on order and predictability in the polity in order to govern in a workable way. Populist appeals, it is argued, exploit this tension. But what makes it possible for this strategy to succeed is the failure on the part of political elites to engage in the process of building democracy by way of inculcating respect for democratic values.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
Shaking a hornets' nest: pitfalls of abortion counselling in a secular constitutional order–a view from South Africa
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141521 , vital:37982 , DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2011.627469
- Description: There exists an enormous gulf between the aspirations of South Africa's abortion legislation – among the most liberal in the world – and its implementation. One weakness in the provision of abortion services in South Africa is the absence of comprehensive abortion counselling services. On the face of it, the idea that counselling ought, as a matter of course, to be a significant component of a country's termination of pregnancy service provision, seems both straightforwardly sensible and politically innocent. This paper describes how abortion counselling has historically, in many different contexts, been saturated with questionable assumptions about women and their bodies. Counselling has more often than not been deployed, either as the formal policy of states or through informal mechanisms, as a means of curbing the right to abortion rather than deepening the meaning of that right. Differing approaches to counselling emerge as a reflection of contestations over reproductive and gender politics. Specifying an appropriate model for the provision of state-sponsored abortion counselling in the public health sector of a secular constitutional state provokes more of a hornet's nest of dilemmas than is sometimes supposed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141521 , vital:37982 , DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2011.627469
- Description: There exists an enormous gulf between the aspirations of South Africa's abortion legislation – among the most liberal in the world – and its implementation. One weakness in the provision of abortion services in South Africa is the absence of comprehensive abortion counselling services. On the face of it, the idea that counselling ought, as a matter of course, to be a significant component of a country's termination of pregnancy service provision, seems both straightforwardly sensible and politically innocent. This paper describes how abortion counselling has historically, in many different contexts, been saturated with questionable assumptions about women and their bodies. Counselling has more often than not been deployed, either as the formal policy of states or through informal mechanisms, as a means of curbing the right to abortion rather than deepening the meaning of that right. Differing approaches to counselling emerge as a reflection of contestations over reproductive and gender politics. Specifying an appropriate model for the provision of state-sponsored abortion counselling in the public health sector of a secular constitutional state provokes more of a hornet's nest of dilemmas than is sometimes supposed.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
South Africa’s Abortion Values Clarification Workshops: an opportunity to deepen democratic communication missed
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141981 , vital:38021 , DOI: 10.1177/0021909610396161
- Description: A rich literature exists on local democracy and participation in South Africa. While the importance of participation is routinely built into the rhetoric of government, debate has increasingly focused on the dysfunctionality of participatory mechanisms and institutions in post-apartheid South Africa. Processes aimed ostensibly at empowering citizens, act in practice as instruments of social control, disempowerment and cooptation. The present article contributes to these debates by way of a critique of the approach used by the South African state, in partnership with the non-governmental sector, in what are called abortion ‘values clarification’ (VC) workshops. This article examines the workshop materials, methodology and pedagogical tools employed in South African abortion VC workshops which emanate from the organization Ipas — a global body working to enhance women’s sexual and reproductive rights and to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries. VC workshops represent an instance of a more general trend in which participation is seen as a tool for generating legitimacy and ‘buy-in’ for central state directives rather than as a means for genuinely deepening democratic communication.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141981 , vital:38021 , DOI: 10.1177/0021909610396161
- Description: A rich literature exists on local democracy and participation in South Africa. While the importance of participation is routinely built into the rhetoric of government, debate has increasingly focused on the dysfunctionality of participatory mechanisms and institutions in post-apartheid South Africa. Processes aimed ostensibly at empowering citizens, act in practice as instruments of social control, disempowerment and cooptation. The present article contributes to these debates by way of a critique of the approach used by the South African state, in partnership with the non-governmental sector, in what are called abortion ‘values clarification’ (VC) workshops. This article examines the workshop materials, methodology and pedagogical tools employed in South African abortion VC workshops which emanate from the organization Ipas — a global body working to enhance women’s sexual and reproductive rights and to reduce abortion-related deaths and injuries. VC workshops represent an instance of a more general trend in which participation is seen as a tool for generating legitimacy and ‘buy-in’ for central state directives rather than as a means for genuinely deepening democratic communication.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
When breast is not best: young women and breast reduction surgery
- Lamb, Tessa, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Lamb, Tessa , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141832 , vital:38008 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2011.610978
- Description: Most cosmetic surgery patients in South Africa are younger than 21, and in this focus we examine narrative accounts from young South African women who have chosen to undergo cosmetic breast reduction surgery. Feminist debates on cosmetic surgery have focused on the question of whether to regard women who modify their bodies in this way as active agents engaged in liberatory ‘body projects’, or whether such projects are evidence of their subjection to oppressive stereotypes and beauty norms. The latter perspective is challenged here by the participants’ characterisation of breast reduction surgery as profoundly ‘freeing’. The article deals in particular with the conscious choice of participants to knowingly risk not being able to breastfeed children in future in order to achieve a body type which conforms to their understanding of youthful beauty and sexuality.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
- Authors: Lamb, Tessa , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141832 , vital:38008 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2011.610978
- Description: Most cosmetic surgery patients in South Africa are younger than 21, and in this focus we examine narrative accounts from young South African women who have chosen to undergo cosmetic breast reduction surgery. Feminist debates on cosmetic surgery have focused on the question of whether to regard women who modify their bodies in this way as active agents engaged in liberatory ‘body projects’, or whether such projects are evidence of their subjection to oppressive stereotypes and beauty norms. The latter perspective is challenged here by the participants’ characterisation of breast reduction surgery as profoundly ‘freeing’. The article deals in particular with the conscious choice of participants to knowingly risk not being able to breastfeed children in future in order to achieve a body type which conforms to their understanding of youthful beauty and sexuality.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2011
New lives for old: modernity, biomedicine, traditional culture and HIV prevention in Lesotho (a response to Nicola L. Bulled)
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141855 , vital:38010 , DOI: 10.1080/23269995.2013.805526
- Description: This is a reply to - Bulled, Nicola L. 2013. “New lives for old: modernity, biomedicine, traditional culture and HIV prevention in Lesotho.” Global Discourse. 3 (2): 284–299. http://0-dx.doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1080/23269995.2013.804700.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141855 , vital:38010 , DOI: 10.1080/23269995.2013.805526
- Description: This is a reply to - Bulled, Nicola L. 2013. “New lives for old: modernity, biomedicine, traditional culture and HIV prevention in Lesotho.” Global Discourse. 3 (2): 284–299. http://0-dx.doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1080/23269995.2013.804700.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Rehearsing or reversing harmful masculine scripts?: South African men's romance narratives
- Vincent, Louise, Chiwandire, Desire
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Chiwandire, Desire
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141844 , vital:38009 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2013.807081
- Description: In this Article we discuss the results of 42 in-depth qualitative interviews with young black South African men who self-identified as heterosexual and who reported that they were at the time of the interview or had at some time in their lives, experienced being ‘in love’ with a woman. South Africa, as is commonly pointed out, is in the throes of an epidemic of gender based violence. To declare oneself ‘in love’ potentially contradicts some of the core features of what Mogomotsi Mfalapitsa (IRIN, 2009) has referred to as ‘harmful masculinity’ and which he has argued is causally related to male violence against women. These features include emotional detachment, promiscuity, interest in casual sex rather than long-term engagement with a single partner, unwillingness to be ‘tied down’, the hierarchical ordering of gendered relations constructed as men's entitlement to women's ‘respect’ and the need to publically enact masculine heterosexuality. We are interested in whether, in these narratives, the research participants position themselves in opposition to these harmful precepts or, whether they confirm and reiteratively perform assumptions that can be construed as damaging to the prospects of generating more equitable, fair and loving relations between men and women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Chiwandire, Desire
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141844 , vital:38009 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2013.807081
- Description: In this Article we discuss the results of 42 in-depth qualitative interviews with young black South African men who self-identified as heterosexual and who reported that they were at the time of the interview or had at some time in their lives, experienced being ‘in love’ with a woman. South Africa, as is commonly pointed out, is in the throes of an epidemic of gender based violence. To declare oneself ‘in love’ potentially contradicts some of the core features of what Mogomotsi Mfalapitsa (IRIN, 2009) has referred to as ‘harmful masculinity’ and which he has argued is causally related to male violence against women. These features include emotional detachment, promiscuity, interest in casual sex rather than long-term engagement with a single partner, unwillingness to be ‘tied down’, the hierarchical ordering of gendered relations constructed as men's entitlement to women's ‘respect’ and the need to publically enact masculine heterosexuality. We are interested in whether, in these narratives, the research participants position themselves in opposition to these harmful precepts or, whether they confirm and reiteratively perform assumptions that can be construed as damaging to the prospects of generating more equitable, fair and loving relations between men and women.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
'Joining the academic life': South African students who succeed at university despite not meeting standard entry requirements
- Vincent, Louise, Idahosa, Grace E
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Idahosa, Grace E
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141745 , vital:38001 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC159177
- Description: At present the Swedish points system is one of the main determinants of an applicant either being granted or refused entry into many South African higher education institutions (HEIs). Using a grounded theory approach, this article interprets the experiences of participants whose school performance and therefore university 'entry points' were lower than the expected norm. Despite not meeting standard university entry requirements, these students succeeded at university, completing their degrees in the minimum time available and going on to higher degrees. The journey of these participants - from low entry points to academic success - suggests that points based on school performance are not necessarily the best way of identifying students' potential to succeed in the contemporary South African educational context. If their entry points were not a good indication of their ability to thrive at university, the article asks, what is it about these participants that accounts for their success? And what implications does this have for South African practice, not only with regard to admissions policies but also in relation to the responsibilities of HEIs to students once they are admitted?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Idahosa, Grace E
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141745 , vital:38001 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC159177
- Description: At present the Swedish points system is one of the main determinants of an applicant either being granted or refused entry into many South African higher education institutions (HEIs). Using a grounded theory approach, this article interprets the experiences of participants whose school performance and therefore university 'entry points' were lower than the expected norm. Despite not meeting standard university entry requirements, these students succeeded at university, completing their degrees in the minimum time available and going on to higher degrees. The journey of these participants - from low entry points to academic success - suggests that points based on school performance are not necessarily the best way of identifying students' potential to succeed in the contemporary South African educational context. If their entry points were not a good indication of their ability to thrive at university, the article asks, what is it about these participants that accounts for their success? And what implications does this have for South African practice, not only with regard to admissions policies but also in relation to the responsibilities of HEIs to students once they are admitted?
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Embracing racial reasoning: the DASO poster controversy and ‘Race’politics in contemporary South Africa
- Vincent, Louise, Howell, Simon
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Howell, Simon
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141933 , vital:38017 , DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2014.877651
- Description: We examine the response to a poster published by South Africa's official opposition's youth wing, the Democratic Alliance's Student Organisation (DASO) as part of a political campaign in 2012. From commentary that the poster's publication generated, we excavate some of the key discursive strategies used by commentators to negotiate the gulf between the constitutional value of non-racialism and the lived contemporary reality of race in South Africa. Many commentators situated themselves either as ‘colour-blind’, or reformulated ‘race’ as ‘class’ or ‘culture’. In making visible some of these strategies, and the attendant (re-)racialised narratives upon which they rely, we highlight the paradoxes that inhere in the idea of ‘non-racialism’ – a notion that implies that race must simultaneously be thought and ‘un-thought’. Racial categories contrived by apartheid have been somewhat rearranged and rearticulated, but nevertheless continue to operate today as organising principles.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Howell, Simon
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141933 , vital:38017 , DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2014.877651
- Description: We examine the response to a poster published by South Africa's official opposition's youth wing, the Democratic Alliance's Student Organisation (DASO) as part of a political campaign in 2012. From commentary that the poster's publication generated, we excavate some of the key discursive strategies used by commentators to negotiate the gulf between the constitutional value of non-racialism and the lived contemporary reality of race in South Africa. Many commentators situated themselves either as ‘colour-blind’, or reformulated ‘race’ as ‘class’ or ‘culture’. In making visible some of these strategies, and the attendant (re-)racialised narratives upon which they rely, we highlight the paradoxes that inhere in the idea of ‘non-racialism’ – a notion that implies that race must simultaneously be thought and ‘un-thought’. Racial categories contrived by apartheid have been somewhat rearranged and rearticulated, but nevertheless continue to operate today as organising principles.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Losing, using, refusing, cruising: first-generation South African women academics narrate the complexity of marginality
- Idahosa, Grace E, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Idahosa, Grace E , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141820 , vital:38007 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2014.874766
- Description: In this article we ask how senior academic women in South Africa narrate their experience of being ‘outside in’ the teaching machine. Wide research literature documents the gross underrepresentation of women in senior positions in the academy. It has been argued that intertwined sexist, patriarchal and phallocentric knowledges and practices in academic institutions produce various forms of discrimination, inequality, oppression and marginalisation. Academic women report feeling invisible and retreating to the margins so as to avoid victimisation and discrimination. Others have pointed to the tension between the ‘tenure clock’ and ‘biological clock’ as a source of anxiety. However, experiences of academic women are not identical. In the context of studies showing the importance of existing personal and social resources, prior experience and having mentors and role models in the negotiation of inequality and discrimination, we document the narratives of women academics who are the first in their families to graduate with a university degree.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Idahosa, Grace E , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141820 , vital:38007 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2014.874766
- Description: In this article we ask how senior academic women in South Africa narrate their experience of being ‘outside in’ the teaching machine. Wide research literature documents the gross underrepresentation of women in senior positions in the academy. It has been argued that intertwined sexist, patriarchal and phallocentric knowledges and practices in academic institutions produce various forms of discrimination, inequality, oppression and marginalisation. Academic women report feeling invisible and retreating to the margins so as to avoid victimisation and discrimination. Others have pointed to the tension between the ‘tenure clock’ and ‘biological clock’ as a source of anxiety. However, experiences of academic women are not identical. In the context of studies showing the importance of existing personal and social resources, prior experience and having mentors and role models in the negotiation of inequality and discrimination, we document the narratives of women academics who are the first in their families to graduate with a university degree.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Xenophobia, sovereign power and the limits of citizenship:
- Idahosa, Grace E, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Idahosa, Grace E , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141970 , vital:38020 , DOI: 10.1080/09744053.2014.914637
- Description: African foreigners in South Africa have frequently been the targets of violent and discriminatory practices, which occur in the enabling context of negative discourses concerning African foreigners that circulate in various spheres of public life. This study is interested in one particular field of interaction between African foreigners and the South African state, namely the public health sector. Discriminatory and, sometimes, violent practices towards African foreigners on the part of South African citizens are widely documented. Less discussed are the ways in which these practices of violence and discrimination are in fact state practices. We show this with reference to the treatment of African foreigners in the public health sector. We refer to this prejudicial treatment as health-care Xenophobia which is made possible by a wider set of discourses related to citizenship and the rights accruing to citizens which suggest the ‘non-rights’ of the non-citizen.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Idahosa, Grace E , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141970 , vital:38020 , DOI: 10.1080/09744053.2014.914637
- Description: African foreigners in South Africa have frequently been the targets of violent and discriminatory practices, which occur in the enabling context of negative discourses concerning African foreigners that circulate in various spheres of public life. This study is interested in one particular field of interaction between African foreigners and the South African state, namely the public health sector. Discriminatory and, sometimes, violent practices towards African foreigners on the part of South African citizens are widely documented. Less discussed are the ways in which these practices of violence and discrimination are in fact state practices. We show this with reference to the treatment of African foreigners in the public health sector. We refer to this prejudicial treatment as health-care Xenophobia which is made possible by a wider set of discourses related to citizenship and the rights accruing to citizens which suggest the ‘non-rights’ of the non-citizen.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014