Journalism students’ motivations and expectations of their work in comparative perspective:
- Hanusch, Folker, Mellado, Claudia, Boshoff, Priscilla A, Humanes, María Luisa, De León, Salvador, Pereira, Fabio, Márquez Ramírez, Mireya, Roses, Sergio, Subervi, Federico, Wyss, Vinzenz, Yez, Lyuba
- Authors: Hanusch, Folker , Mellado, Claudia , Boshoff, Priscilla A , Humanes, María Luisa , De León, Salvador , Pereira, Fabio , Márquez Ramírez, Mireya , Roses, Sergio , Subervi, Federico , Wyss, Vinzenz , Yez, Lyuba
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143425 , vital:38245 , DOI: 10.1177/1077695814554295
- Description: Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, this study provides much-needed comparative evidence about students’ motivations for becoming journalists, their future job plans, and expectations. Findings show not only an almost universal decline in students’ desire to work in journalism by the end of their program but also important national differences in terms of the journalistic fields in which they want to work, as well as their job expectations. The results reinforce the need to take into account national contexts when examining journalism education across the globe.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Hanusch, Folker , Mellado, Claudia , Boshoff, Priscilla A , Humanes, María Luisa , De León, Salvador , Pereira, Fabio , Márquez Ramírez, Mireya , Roses, Sergio , Subervi, Federico , Wyss, Vinzenz , Yez, Lyuba
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143425 , vital:38245 , DOI: 10.1177/1077695814554295
- Description: Based on a survey of 4,393 journalism students in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, this study provides much-needed comparative evidence about students’ motivations for becoming journalists, their future job plans, and expectations. Findings show not only an almost universal decline in students’ desire to work in journalism by the end of their program but also important national differences in terms of the journalistic fields in which they want to work, as well as their job expectations. The results reinforce the need to take into account national contexts when examining journalism education across the globe.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Capital or critique?: when journalism education seeks to influence the field
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Garman, Anthea
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143392 , vital:38242 , DOI: 10.1080/02560046.2016.1262437
- Description: Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily ‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the ‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143392 , vital:38242 , DOI: 10.1080/02560046.2016.1262437
- Description: Drawing on Bourdieu’s theories of field and capital, we examine the limitations that a journalism school at a prestigious university faces in making a meaningful contribution to the field within a developing country. In the postapartheid South African media landscape, journalism is under pressure both from global forces and a political imperative to address social justice. Given the heterogeneity of the journalistic field and the fact that what counts as capital in it is contested, the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University attempts to redefine the parameters by inculcating a particular approach to and philosophy of journalism practice. While Rhodes wants to educate excellent (professional) journalists, it is guided by an overt political mission to cultivate a journalism that is not necessarily ‘in sync’ with the wider field. Ironically, most undergraduates come from the economic and cultural elite, with specific intentions to accumulate the capital which Rhodes bestows. Students are confronted with their privilege and with alternative ideas about the purpose of journalism, and are asked to make choices and take up positions. We consider whether this critical praxis approach is able to influence the ‘state of play’ – or the distribution of power – within the field.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Bollywood Nights: Indian youth and the creation of diasporic identity in South Africa
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143494 , vital:38251 , DOI: 10.3138/topia.26.29
- Description: Bollywood’s popularity as a global cultural form has occurred at the same time as the valorization of difference in the South African political landscape. As the youngest members of the 19th-century labour diaspora, South African Indian youths are the inheritors of a conservative—yet adaptable—home culture amidst the marginalized identities of (post-)apartheid South Africa. Their desire to create an identity for themselves that encompasses their self-perception both as modern South African subjects and as guardians of their traditional home cultures is achieved through Bollywood, which speaks to its diasporic audiences through images of an idealized traditional yet modern India. While India is not a place of return for these youth, their reactivation of a diasporic identity through Bollywood’s representations of a successful Indian diasporic culture and their participation in South African Bollywood concerts and award ceremonies has provided an opportunity for young South African Indians to reimagine their diasporic Indian identity in ways that (re-)connect them to India and to an imagined global diaspora.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143494 , vital:38251 , DOI: 10.3138/topia.26.29
- Description: Bollywood’s popularity as a global cultural form has occurred at the same time as the valorization of difference in the South African political landscape. As the youngest members of the 19th-century labour diaspora, South African Indian youths are the inheritors of a conservative—yet adaptable—home culture amidst the marginalized identities of (post-)apartheid South Africa. Their desire to create an identity for themselves that encompasses their self-perception both as modern South African subjects and as guardians of their traditional home cultures is achieved through Bollywood, which speaks to its diasporic audiences through images of an idealized traditional yet modern India. While India is not a place of return for these youth, their reactivation of a diasporic identity through Bollywood’s representations of a successful Indian diasporic culture and their participation in South African Bollywood concerts and award ceremonies has provided an opportunity for young South African Indians to reimagine their diasporic Indian identity in ways that (re-)connect them to India and to an imagined global diaspora.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
The supernatural detective: witchcraft crime narratives in the Daily Sun
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143447 , vital:38247 , DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2013.833420
- Description: Reports of witchcraft crimes are a staple feature in the South African tabloid newspaper, the Daily Sun. Instead of dismissing these sensational and seemingly implausible narratives, this paper examines them as ‘fictions’ through the lens of theory developed for the analysis of detective fiction. It draws on Huhn's (1987) model of the readerly relationships established by the narrative forms of the classical detective story and the hard-boiled novel in order to show how the reportage, together with its expected reception, reveals subliminal tensions within working-class black culture. Ironically, such a reading illustrates how the brazen and emotive nature of the tabloid text, which signals for some its untrustworthiness, perhaps comes closer to telling a ‘truth’ about contemporary South African society than the most ‘objective’ reports.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143447 , vital:38247 , DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2013.833420
- Description: Reports of witchcraft crimes are a staple feature in the South African tabloid newspaper, the Daily Sun. Instead of dismissing these sensational and seemingly implausible narratives, this paper examines them as ‘fictions’ through the lens of theory developed for the analysis of detective fiction. It draws on Huhn's (1987) model of the readerly relationships established by the narrative forms of the classical detective story and the hard-boiled novel in order to show how the reportage, together with its expected reception, reveals subliminal tensions within working-class black culture. Ironically, such a reading illustrates how the brazen and emotive nature of the tabloid text, which signals for some its untrustworthiness, perhaps comes closer to telling a ‘truth’ about contemporary South African society than the most ‘objective’ reports.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Reporting indigenous knowledge: the choices they deserve the local is the global
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71176 , vital:29804 , http://doi:10.1006/jmbi.1995.0238
- Description: A few days ago, an interesting article dealing with community development and education came close to being published in a national newspaper. But the editor tossed it back at the surprised journalist, and told him to write it again. Here are some excerpts: Researchers here have recently been facilitating local people to rediscover traditional practices that have been lost through the processes of colonisation and changes in lifestyles. “We are very excited about the ways in which things are being discovered,” said Samuel Mann, research facilitator at the project. “People are beginning to reclaim some of the ways of knowing that still have meaning and relevance to modern everyday life. People are rediscovering the importance of Indigenous Knowledge.” Mba Ngcobo, one of the participants in the project, showed how he and other members of his community had built a grain pit using old traditional knowledge. “It works really well,” he said, “it is amazing how these old ways really work. Our ancestors had marvellous ways of doing things. We can really appreciate the skills that are slowly being lost to us.” Mann explained how the traditional pit storage method produced carbon dioxide that keeps the grain fresh and insect-free for months. “Carbon dioxide storage is now the preferred way of many milling and storage companies to keep grain. It keeps grain fresh without having to resort to insecticides.”
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71176 , vital:29804 , http://doi:10.1006/jmbi.1995.0238
- Description: A few days ago, an interesting article dealing with community development and education came close to being published in a national newspaper. But the editor tossed it back at the surprised journalist, and told him to write it again. Here are some excerpts: Researchers here have recently been facilitating local people to rediscover traditional practices that have been lost through the processes of colonisation and changes in lifestyles. “We are very excited about the ways in which things are being discovered,” said Samuel Mann, research facilitator at the project. “People are beginning to reclaim some of the ways of knowing that still have meaning and relevance to modern everyday life. People are rediscovering the importance of Indigenous Knowledge.” Mba Ngcobo, one of the participants in the project, showed how he and other members of his community had built a grain pit using old traditional knowledge. “It works really well,” he said, “it is amazing how these old ways really work. Our ancestors had marvellous ways of doing things. We can really appreciate the skills that are slowly being lost to us.” Mann explained how the traditional pit storage method produced carbon dioxide that keeps the grain fresh and insect-free for months. “Carbon dioxide storage is now the preferred way of many milling and storage companies to keep grain. It keeps grain fresh without having to resort to insecticides.”
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
“Face the music!”: the Daily Sun's representation of adolescent sex in the Jules High sex scandal
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143483 , vital:38250 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2013.834660
- Description: Rather than being merely a physiological stage, adolescence is variously constructed through social institutions. The media plays a significant role in such constructions, including that of adolescent sexuality. In the recent past there have been several cases of sexual acts involving adolescents that have received prominent media coverage as they have been considered shocking. The Jules High School sex scandal related to sex acts between a single adolescent girl and two adolescent boys. It was recorded on mobile phones by their peers and circulated on their mobile networks, or ‘went viral’ as the media continuously noted. The press coverage surrounding this incident and the legal process that ensued is the focus of this Article which undertakes a critical textual analysis of the coverage in the popular tabloid, the Daily Sun, in order to make explicit the contesting sets of discourses around adolescence and sexuality that were articulated in this popular public sphere. The Article uses a Foucauldian framework in order to probe the discourses of sexuality that are articulated and contested in this space. As the most widely read newspaper in South Africa it serves as a powerful site of definition of teen sexuality. The analysis suggests that, rather than allowing for teen sexuality, it is disavowed by villainising teen sex and responsibility for such ‘deviance’ is directed to various adult and social adult actors.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143483 , vital:38250 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2013.834660
- Description: Rather than being merely a physiological stage, adolescence is variously constructed through social institutions. The media plays a significant role in such constructions, including that of adolescent sexuality. In the recent past there have been several cases of sexual acts involving adolescents that have received prominent media coverage as they have been considered shocking. The Jules High School sex scandal related to sex acts between a single adolescent girl and two adolescent boys. It was recorded on mobile phones by their peers and circulated on their mobile networks, or ‘went viral’ as the media continuously noted. The press coverage surrounding this incident and the legal process that ensued is the focus of this Article which undertakes a critical textual analysis of the coverage in the popular tabloid, the Daily Sun, in order to make explicit the contesting sets of discourses around adolescence and sexuality that were articulated in this popular public sphere. The Article uses a Foucauldian framework in order to probe the discourses of sexuality that are articulated and contested in this space. As the most widely read newspaper in South Africa it serves as a powerful site of definition of teen sexuality. The analysis suggests that, rather than allowing for teen sexuality, it is disavowed by villainising teen sex and responsibility for such ‘deviance’ is directed to various adult and social adult actors.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
Sexy girls, heroes and funny losers: gender representations in children's TV around the world edited by Maya Gotz and Dafna Lemish
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143505 , vital:38252 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2013.839116
- Description: Gotz and Lemish have brought together in this volume a range of research which derives from the project they initiated in 2007 from the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television (IZI). Researchers in 24 countries around the world participated in this unique project, and the results, discussed at the 2008 and 2010 Prix Jeunesse International, prompted hopes that the producers of children's television would be persuaded to pay more concerted attention to issues of gender in their programming. Whether or not such a utopian outcome might be expected from this initiative is open to future question. For our immediate purposes however, the value of this collection is that it draws together in one volume some of the results from both the original quantitative survey and the subsequent qualitative analyses that examined specific themes emerging from the data.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143505 , vital:38252 , DOI: 10.1080/10130950.2013.839116
- Description: Gotz and Lemish have brought together in this volume a range of research which derives from the project they initiated in 2007 from the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television (IZI). Researchers in 24 countries around the world participated in this unique project, and the results, discussed at the 2008 and 2010 Prix Jeunesse International, prompted hopes that the producers of children's television would be persuaded to pay more concerted attention to issues of gender in their programming. Whether or not such a utopian outcome might be expected from this initiative is open to future question. For our immediate purposes however, the value of this collection is that it draws together in one volume some of the results from both the original quantitative survey and the subsequent qualitative analyses that examined specific themes emerging from the data.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
The transformers: journalism education
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141911 , vital:38015 , http://journals.co.za/content/rujr/2014/34/EJC159497
- Description: Universities are strange places. People come in as one kind of being, and leave quite different. They are places of transformation. One way in which they effect this transformation is to challenge our preconceived notions of the world, and our relationship to it. However, at the same time, universities are also places of privilege and so can be conservative – in the sense of conserving and fostering particular interests in their favour.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141911 , vital:38015 , http://journals.co.za/content/rujr/2014/34/EJC159497
- Description: Universities are strange places. People come in as one kind of being, and leave quite different. They are places of transformation. One way in which they effect this transformation is to challenge our preconceived notions of the world, and our relationship to it. However, at the same time, universities are also places of privilege and so can be conservative – in the sense of conserving and fostering particular interests in their favour.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
The gap between what 'ought' to be and what students want
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/70812 , vital:29747
- Description: There’s no curriculum! There’s no curriculum!” The young man in the focus group was so frustrated that he had to repeat himself, not just once, but several times. I had just asked the group what their feelings were about their second-year coursework. His sentiments were echoed by many of the students in the group, all of whom had passed the rigorous application process into second year at Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/70812 , vital:29747
- Description: There’s no curriculum! There’s no curriculum!” The young man in the focus group was so frustrated that he had to repeat himself, not just once, but several times. I had just asked the group what their feelings were about their second-year coursework. His sentiments were echoed by many of the students in the group, all of whom had passed the rigorous application process into second year at Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
Lives "on hold": the Daily Sun and the South African identity document
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143538 , vital:38255 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC195358
- Description: The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is the focus of this article, which examines stories published in the "Horror Affairs" column of the popular South African tabloid, the Daily Sun. These highly emotional stories tell of the despair and desperation felt by individuals at the lack of an ID book, which is blamed on the inefficiency of the state Department of Home Affairs. In order to explicate this relationship I make use of Agamben's notion of "bare life" and the camp in conjunction with Lacan's idea of the Symbolic Order to argue that if the Identity Document provides the means by which the individual is made to signify, the lack of an Identity Document threatens to reduce the individual to "bare life". By publishing the stories of those deprived of the visibility that the ID provides, the Daily Sun, I show, directly engages in this exchange, and, in contrast to Home Affairs, bestows its own even stronger gift of identity by the fact of appearance in its pages.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143538 , vital:38255 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC195358
- Description: The relationship between a personal identity and the state-issued Identity Document (ID) is the focus of this article, which examines stories published in the "Horror Affairs" column of the popular South African tabloid, the Daily Sun. These highly emotional stories tell of the despair and desperation felt by individuals at the lack of an ID book, which is blamed on the inefficiency of the state Department of Home Affairs. In order to explicate this relationship I make use of Agamben's notion of "bare life" and the camp in conjunction with Lacan's idea of the Symbolic Order to argue that if the Identity Document provides the means by which the individual is made to signify, the lack of an Identity Document threatens to reduce the individual to "bare life". By publishing the stories of those deprived of the visibility that the ID provides, the Daily Sun, I show, directly engages in this exchange, and, in contrast to Home Affairs, bestows its own even stronger gift of identity by the fact of appearance in its pages.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Secrets, lies and redemption:
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143381 , vital:38241 , DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2017.1285671
- Description: Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143381 , vital:38241 , DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2017.1285671
- Description: Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
Expurgating the Monstrous: an analysis of the South African Daily Sun's coverage of gang rape
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143436 , vital:38246 , DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2014.903286
- Description: The most widely read South African tabloid, the Daily Sun, covered the “Soweto gang rape” in 2012. These acts were recorded by the perpetrators on mobile phones and “went viral” as the media continuously noted. We draw on the concept of provider love that informs relations of intimacy in certain South African spaces, central to which is its materiality and the assumption that a “real” man is able to command material resources, a prerequisite for having both a girlfriend and sex. For working class and township youth these possibilities are constrained and their sense of being left behind is lived in gendered ways with violent masculinities becoming a marker of tough sexual masculinity. Informed by Foucauldian understandings of discourse, the paper undertakes a close reading of this coverage, including the reporting, editorials, and letters. If those arrested for rape are constituted as monstrous, the analysis indicates how the responses are similarly vengeful. These responses deny the forms of masculinity produced within these marginalised spaces and foreclose on other possibilities for understanding these violent acts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143436 , vital:38246 , DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2014.903286
- Description: The most widely read South African tabloid, the Daily Sun, covered the “Soweto gang rape” in 2012. These acts were recorded by the perpetrators on mobile phones and “went viral” as the media continuously noted. We draw on the concept of provider love that informs relations of intimacy in certain South African spaces, central to which is its materiality and the assumption that a “real” man is able to command material resources, a prerequisite for having both a girlfriend and sex. For working class and township youth these possibilities are constrained and their sense of being left behind is lived in gendered ways with violent masculinities becoming a marker of tough sexual masculinity. Informed by Foucauldian understandings of discourse, the paper undertakes a close reading of this coverage, including the reporting, editorials, and letters. If those arrested for rape are constituted as monstrous, the analysis indicates how the responses are similarly vengeful. These responses deny the forms of masculinity produced within these marginalised spaces and foreclose on other possibilities for understanding these violent acts.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Breaking the Rules: Zodwa Wabantu and postfeminism in South Africa
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2021
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/177408 , vital:42819 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i2.3830
- Description: Zodwa Wabantu, a South African celebrity recently made popular by the Daily Sun, a local tabloid newspaper, is notorious as an older working-class woman who fearlessly challenges social norms of feminine respectability and beauty. Her assertion of sexual autonomy and her forays into self-surveillance and body-modification, mediated by the Daily Sun and other tabloid and social media platforms, could be read as a local iteration of a global postfeminist subjectivity. However, the widespread social opprobrium she faces must be accounted for: Using Connell’s model of the gender order together with a coloniality frame, I argue that northern critiques of postfeminism omit to consider the forms of patriarchy established by colonialism in southern locales such as South Africa. The local patriarchal gender order, made visible within the tabloid reportage, provides the context within which the meaning of Zodwa Wabanu’s contemporary postfeminist identity is constructed. I examine a range of Zodwa Wabantu’s (self)representations in Daily Sun and other digital media in the light of this context, and conclude that a close examination of the local gender order assists in understanding the limits of postfeminism’s hegemony.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2021
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/177408 , vital:42819 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i2.3830
- Description: Zodwa Wabantu, a South African celebrity recently made popular by the Daily Sun, a local tabloid newspaper, is notorious as an older working-class woman who fearlessly challenges social norms of feminine respectability and beauty. Her assertion of sexual autonomy and her forays into self-surveillance and body-modification, mediated by the Daily Sun and other tabloid and social media platforms, could be read as a local iteration of a global postfeminist subjectivity. However, the widespread social opprobrium she faces must be accounted for: Using Connell’s model of the gender order together with a coloniality frame, I argue that northern critiques of postfeminism omit to consider the forms of patriarchy established by colonialism in southern locales such as South Africa. The local patriarchal gender order, made visible within the tabloid reportage, provides the context within which the meaning of Zodwa Wabanu’s contemporary postfeminist identity is constructed. I examine a range of Zodwa Wabantu’s (self)representations in Daily Sun and other digital media in the light of this context, and conclude that a close examination of the local gender order assists in understanding the limits of postfeminism’s hegemony.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
Liberatory violence or the gift: paths to decoloniality in Black Panther
- Mabasa, Xiletelo, Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Authors: Mabasa, Xiletelo , Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455509 , vital:75435 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a7
- Description: Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000: 533) terms' coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Us-ing a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship be-tween T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist re-spectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Ra-ther than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonial-ism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that re-mains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022
- Authors: Mabasa, Xiletelo , Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455509 , vital:75435 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a7
- Description: Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000: 533) terms' coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Us-ing a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship be-tween T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist re-spectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Ra-ther than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonial-ism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that re-mains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022
New mythologies: violence and colonialism in Hollywood blockbusters
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455521 , vital:75436 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2023.2272500
- Description: Countries create mythologies about themselves in their self-representations in film. This is nothing new. The United States of Amer-ica has done so with great success for over a hundred years through the Hollywood “machine.” 1 On the one hand, this mythology can serve as a form of propaganda that is accepted uncritically by many as “reali-ty.” On the other, it takes the form of wishful thinking which may in cer-tain ways be even more revealing than realism of the motivations be-hind a nation’s mythologizing. Here, Marvel comics present an apt ex-ample of how the United States’ selfimage takes shape in the public imagination: exceptional powers, huge muscles, dominion over man and nature through science. One of these heroes is even called Cap-tain America. In short, a fantasy of potential total control. We take for granted that this mythologizing concerns the country’s own powers, a form of public self-regard. This much is to be expected.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455521 , vital:75436 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2023.2272500
- Description: Countries create mythologies about themselves in their self-representations in film. This is nothing new. The United States of Amer-ica has done so with great success for over a hundred years through the Hollywood “machine.” 1 On the one hand, this mythology can serve as a form of propaganda that is accepted uncritically by many as “reali-ty.” On the other, it takes the form of wishful thinking which may in cer-tain ways be even more revealing than realism of the motivations be-hind a nation’s mythologizing. Here, Marvel comics present an apt ex-ample of how the United States’ selfimage takes shape in the public imagination: exceptional powers, huge muscles, dominion over man and nature through science. One of these heroes is even called Cap-tain America. In short, a fantasy of potential total control. We take for granted that this mythologizing concerns the country’s own powers, a form of public self-regard. This much is to be expected.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023
The Women of SunLand: Narratives of Non-Compliant Women in the Daily Sun Tabloid Newspaper, South Africa
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455534 , vital:75437 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2021.1987284
- Description: Post-apartheid, patriarchal gender relations and the violence they gen-erate continue to contradict the promise of the Bill of Rights contained in Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, which guarantees women a range of rights. How these contradictions are represented within popular media has implications for the achieve-ment of gender justice, for they offer ways of imagining the forms that such justice might take. One popular local publication is the Daily Sun, a tabloid newspaper. Rather than simply aligning itself with the gender status quo, as tabloids in other spaces are sometimes accused of do-ing, the Daily Sun attempts both to critique and to form its readers’ so-cial and gender identities as members of “SunLand”, the tabloid's imag-ined community. Using Connell's constructive model of the gender or-der, and interpretive methods in line with critical discourse analysis, in-cluding lexicalisation and narrative analysis, the author analyses the tabloid's 2011 coverage of women whose non-conforming and resistant femininities challenge patriarchal gender relations in township spaces. The findings suggest that while certain forms of non-compliant feminini-ties are condemned, others are validated and the violent masculinities they resist censored. That non-compliant femininities can be also vio-lent is a troubling feature of SunLand's gender order.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455534 , vital:75437 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2021.1987284
- Description: Post-apartheid, patriarchal gender relations and the violence they gen-erate continue to contradict the promise of the Bill of Rights contained in Chapter 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, which guarantees women a range of rights. How these contradictions are represented within popular media has implications for the achieve-ment of gender justice, for they offer ways of imagining the forms that such justice might take. One popular local publication is the Daily Sun, a tabloid newspaper. Rather than simply aligning itself with the gender status quo, as tabloids in other spaces are sometimes accused of do-ing, the Daily Sun attempts both to critique and to form its readers’ so-cial and gender identities as members of “SunLand”, the tabloid's imag-ined community. Using Connell's constructive model of the gender or-der, and interpretive methods in line with critical discourse analysis, in-cluding lexicalisation and narrative analysis, the author analyses the tabloid's 2011 coverage of women whose non-conforming and resistant femininities challenge patriarchal gender relations in township spaces. The findings suggest that while certain forms of non-compliant feminini-ties are condemned, others are validated and the violent masculinities they resist censored. That non-compliant femininities can be also vio-lent is a troubling feature of SunLand's gender order.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
Age is Nothing but a Number: Ben 10s, Sugar Mummies, and the South African Gender Order in the Daily Sun’s Facebook Page
- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Mlangeni, Ntombi L
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Mlangeni, Ntombi L
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455496 , vital:75434 , https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.706132
- Description: Stories about “Ben10” relationships between older women and their younger male lovers appear regularly in the Daily Sun, South Africa’s most popular tabloid newspaper. Daily Sun readers, who are typically township residents, engage vociferously over the rights and wrongs of such relationships on the tabloid’s Facebook page, and alternatively berate or support the older, working class women who feature in them. These women could be understood as “postfeminist” insofar as they are financially independent and sexually autonomous. Their actions echo those of the independent township women in the mid 20th century who, resisting patriarchal apartheid social engineering, brewed beer and rented rooms in order to assert their financial and sexual inde-pendence. In both cases, these women’s bold actions confront local hetero-patriarchal norms and call into question an ideal local patriarchal gender order. However, the meanings that are made by the readers of such women in Ben10 relationships today also reflect a social context characterised by a contestation over the meaning of rights, high rates of unemployment, gender-based violence and HIV, factors that curtail a premature diagnosis of postfeminist identity. Drawing on a textual anal-ysis of several articles and their Facebook comments, we argue that any assessment of postfeminism in southern spaces must account for how historical and contextual factors such as these constrain the reach of global postfeminism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Mlangeni, Ntombi L
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455496 , vital:75434 , https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2021.706132
- Description: Stories about “Ben10” relationships between older women and their younger male lovers appear regularly in the Daily Sun, South Africa’s most popular tabloid newspaper. Daily Sun readers, who are typically township residents, engage vociferously over the rights and wrongs of such relationships on the tabloid’s Facebook page, and alternatively berate or support the older, working class women who feature in them. These women could be understood as “postfeminist” insofar as they are financially independent and sexually autonomous. Their actions echo those of the independent township women in the mid 20th century who, resisting patriarchal apartheid social engineering, brewed beer and rented rooms in order to assert their financial and sexual inde-pendence. In both cases, these women’s bold actions confront local hetero-patriarchal norms and call into question an ideal local patriarchal gender order. However, the meanings that are made by the readers of such women in Ben10 relationships today also reflect a social context characterised by a contestation over the meaning of rights, high rates of unemployment, gender-based violence and HIV, factors that curtail a premature diagnosis of postfeminist identity. Drawing on a textual anal-ysis of several articles and their Facebook comments, we argue that any assessment of postfeminism in southern spaces must account for how historical and contextual factors such as these constrain the reach of global postfeminism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
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