Growing of trees in home-gardens by rural households in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo Provinces, South Africa:
- Shackleton, Charlie M, Paumgarten, Fiona, Cocks, Michelle L
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Paumgarten, Fiona , Cocks, Michelle L
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141360 , vital:37965 , DOI: 10.1080/13504500509469647
- Description: Trees provide a wide range of goods and services to rural households which, when incorporated into their livelihood strategies, help reduce their vulnerability to adversity. Governments and policy makers often ignore the contribution made by trees and consequently resources are focussed on cash crops and livestock. Villagers in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo Province, South Africa utilise a range of trees from home-gardens for various purposes, although predominantly for fruit and shade. Trees are either planted or actively retained in households' home-gardens. There were noticeable differences between the villages in the Eastern Cape and those in Limpopo Province, particularly with respect to the overall density of trees per hectare and the number of species per household, both being significantly greater in Limpopo Province. The five most preferred species were listed for each village, revealing a preference for exotic fruit trees in Limpopo Province and a mix of exotic fruit trees and shade trees in the Eastern Cape. Households also retained useful indigenous species, predominantly fruit-bearing species. A range of factors constrain tree growing in home-gardens and households engage in practices to grow and maintain their trees. Not all of these constraints and practices were significantly different between the various localities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Paumgarten, Fiona , Cocks, Michelle L
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141360 , vital:37965 , DOI: 10.1080/13504500509469647
- Description: Trees provide a wide range of goods and services to rural households which, when incorporated into their livelihood strategies, help reduce their vulnerability to adversity. Governments and policy makers often ignore the contribution made by trees and consequently resources are focussed on cash crops and livestock. Villagers in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo Province, South Africa utilise a range of trees from home-gardens for various purposes, although predominantly for fruit and shade. Trees are either planted or actively retained in households' home-gardens. There were noticeable differences between the villages in the Eastern Cape and those in Limpopo Province, particularly with respect to the overall density of trees per hectare and the number of species per household, both being significantly greater in Limpopo Province. The five most preferred species were listed for each village, revealing a preference for exotic fruit trees in Limpopo Province and a mix of exotic fruit trees and shade trees in the Eastern Cape. Households also retained useful indigenous species, predominantly fruit-bearing species. A range of factors constrain tree growing in home-gardens and households engage in practices to grow and maintain their trees. Not all of these constraints and practices were significantly different between the various localities.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
Health literacy assessment: relexicalising a US test for a South African population
- Hunt, Sally, Dowse, Roslind, La Rose, Christopher M
- Authors: Hunt, Sally , Dowse, Roslind , La Rose, Christopher M
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139131 , vital:37708 , DOI: 10.2989/SALALS.2008.26.2.7.571
- Description: The problems of illiteracy in health contexts have been well documented in the literature and include such serious repercussions as medication non-compliance and failure to seek medical help during the course of an illness. The Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) is a standardised health literacy test developed in the United States that has been previously administered and researched in South Africa (Lecoko, 2000). It is an objective vocabulary test, designed as a screening instrument to identify the health literacy levels of patients in clinics, which uses item recognition of 66 health-related words. Lecoko found that, in a South African setting, only 8 out of the 66 words in the US-developed test could be deemed acceptable. Therefore, the current study focused on the principled relexicalisation of the REALM, using words gathered from health information and promotional texts in local clinics, hypothesising that this would improve its applicability. After administration to a statistically similar group of respondents, the number of acceptable words on the test increased from eight to 38. Thus it is concluded that principled relexicalisation may be one way of improving the applicability of standardised health literacy tests to local populations and settings. However, the limitations of standardised tests may prove to be a significant barrier overshadowing the value of relexicalisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Hunt, Sally , Dowse, Roslind , La Rose, Christopher M
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139131 , vital:37708 , DOI: 10.2989/SALALS.2008.26.2.7.571
- Description: The problems of illiteracy in health contexts have been well documented in the literature and include such serious repercussions as medication non-compliance and failure to seek medical help during the course of an illness. The Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) is a standardised health literacy test developed in the United States that has been previously administered and researched in South Africa (Lecoko, 2000). It is an objective vocabulary test, designed as a screening instrument to identify the health literacy levels of patients in clinics, which uses item recognition of 66 health-related words. Lecoko found that, in a South African setting, only 8 out of the 66 words in the US-developed test could be deemed acceptable. Therefore, the current study focused on the principled relexicalisation of the REALM, using words gathered from health information and promotional texts in local clinics, hypothesising that this would improve its applicability. After administration to a statistically similar group of respondents, the number of acceptable words on the test increased from eight to 38. Thus it is concluded that principled relexicalisation may be one way of improving the applicability of standardised health literacy tests to local populations and settings. However, the limitations of standardised tests may prove to be a significant barrier overshadowing the value of relexicalisation.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
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
Some (more) features of conversation amongst women friends:
- Authors: Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139149 , vital:37709 , DOI: 10.2989/16073610509486400
- Description: This paper provides an analysis of a conversation between young women friends, which is analysed in terms of Coates’ (1988; 1997; 1999) work on the features of conversation amongst female friends. Coates identifies a number of features which, she says, are typical of conversation between (adult) female friends: a domestic setting, female participants, topics relating to people and feelings, and various formal features including smooth topic development, frequent minimal responses, supportive forms of simultaneous speech and epistemic modality (‘softening’ strategies, including tag questions) (Coates, 1988: 97). The overarching function, she claims, is one of solidarity-building and support: ‘the maintenance of good social relationships’ and ‘the reaffirming and strengthening of friendship’ (Coates, 1988: 98). While this last feature, the function of conversation between women friends, is borne out by the extract to be analysed, the participants in my study utilise different strategies to accomplish it and, in several respects, do not utilise the other features Coates claims to be typical. The research shows, through a detailed analysis of a nineminute extract from a conversation between three women friends, that the features assumed by Coates to be central conversational strategies in the building of female friendship are not the only ways for women to accomplish this function.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Hunt, Sally
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139149 , vital:37709 , DOI: 10.2989/16073610509486400
- Description: This paper provides an analysis of a conversation between young women friends, which is analysed in terms of Coates’ (1988; 1997; 1999) work on the features of conversation amongst female friends. Coates identifies a number of features which, she says, are typical of conversation between (adult) female friends: a domestic setting, female participants, topics relating to people and feelings, and various formal features including smooth topic development, frequent minimal responses, supportive forms of simultaneous speech and epistemic modality (‘softening’ strategies, including tag questions) (Coates, 1988: 97). The overarching function, she claims, is one of solidarity-building and support: ‘the maintenance of good social relationships’ and ‘the reaffirming and strengthening of friendship’ (Coates, 1988: 98). While this last feature, the function of conversation between women friends, is borne out by the extract to be analysed, the participants in my study utilise different strategies to accomplish it and, in several respects, do not utilise the other features Coates claims to be typical. The research shows, through a detailed analysis of a nineminute extract from a conversation between three women friends, that the features assumed by Coates to be central conversational strategies in the building of female friendship are not the only ways for women to accomplish this function.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
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