Interpreting press coverage of South Africa’s post-apartheid “obesity epidemic”:
- Vincent, Louise, Malan, Chantelle
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Malan, Chantelle
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141866 , vital:38011 , DOI: 10.1080/21604851.2015.1015397
- Description: This study examines news reporting on South Africa’s alleged “obesity” epidemic between 1997 and 2012. Results indicate that fatness is equated with disease, crisis, and dysfunction and the fat black body is singled out for particular attention as a social problem. News reporting on fat in South Africa uncritically takes up the views of sources with commercial interests who are presented as “experts” on fat. Their interpretations of the fat black body as a social problem are influenced by the imperative of new markets for products that are to be found principally in the ranks of the post-apartheid black middle class.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , Malan, Chantelle
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141866 , vital:38011 , DOI: 10.1080/21604851.2015.1015397
- Description: This study examines news reporting on South Africa’s alleged “obesity” epidemic between 1997 and 2012. Results indicate that fatness is equated with disease, crisis, and dysfunction and the fat black body is singled out for particular attention as a social problem. News reporting on fat in South Africa uncritically takes up the views of sources with commercial interests who are presented as “experts” on fat. Their interpretations of the fat black body as a social problem are influenced by the imperative of new markets for products that are to be found principally in the ranks of the post-apartheid black middle class.
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Multiple femininities in a'single sex'school: re-orienting Life Orientation to learner lifeworlds
- Mthatyana, Andisiwe T Z, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Mthatyana, Andisiwe T Z , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:38019 , http://hdl.handle.net/11660/3689
- Description: Life Orientation sexuality education in South Africa faces many pedagogical challenges, not least among which is that it is sometimes perceived as irrelevant to learners' real interests and concerns. Learners report that the content is repetitive and that they learn more from peers than from the reiterated lessons of risk and disease avoidance that permeate sex education messages. In this article we describe the world of the study site - a 'single sex' school - as consisting of diverse informal student sexual cultures in which repertoires for the development of learner sexual identities are developed, negotiated and transmitted. The study is based on detailed ethnographic immersion in the study site which generated rich data drawn from in-depth interviews, focus groups, observations and solicited narratives. We argue that even the enlightened, tolerant 'best practice' form of sexuality education that takes place at the study site fails to take diverse learner identities, lifeworlds and experiences seriously as a pedagogic starting point, but rather tends to homogenise learners and to impose on them what they need to learn. A more empowering form of sexuality education would take seriously how young people understand themselves as sexual subjects located in unequal ('raced' and classed) social contexts.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mthatyana, Andisiwe T Z , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:38019 , http://hdl.handle.net/11660/3689
- Description: Life Orientation sexuality education in South Africa faces many pedagogical challenges, not least among which is that it is sometimes perceived as irrelevant to learners' real interests and concerns. Learners report that the content is repetitive and that they learn more from peers than from the reiterated lessons of risk and disease avoidance that permeate sex education messages. In this article we describe the world of the study site - a 'single sex' school - as consisting of diverse informal student sexual cultures in which repertoires for the development of learner sexual identities are developed, negotiated and transmitted. The study is based on detailed ethnographic immersion in the study site which generated rich data drawn from in-depth interviews, focus groups, observations and solicited narratives. We argue that even the enlightened, tolerant 'best practice' form of sexuality education that takes place at the study site fails to take diverse learner identities, lifeworlds and experiences seriously as a pedagogic starting point, but rather tends to homogenise learners and to impose on them what they need to learn. A more empowering form of sexuality education would take seriously how young people understand themselves as sexual subjects located in unequal ('raced' and classed) social contexts.
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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:
- 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.
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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:
- 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.
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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:
- 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:
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