"I want to kill myself!": identity documents and mental health in the South African Daily Sun tabloid
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143549 , vital:38256 , ISBN , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: An Identity Document (ID) is needed by South Africans to study, apply for a pension or get married. However, Home Affairs, the state department responsible for issuing them, is poorly managed. The popular Daily Sun tabloid newspaper mediates for its five million working class readers the frustration caused by this incompetency in its “Horror Affairs” column. Readers tell their stories about (not) getting their IDs, stories often of suicide, depression and “giving up” on life. Using a Lacanian frame, and through a close reading of “Horror Affairs” texts, I argue that this tabloid plays a therapeutic role for its socially marginalised readers by mediating the “invisibility” engendered by the modernising state and its administrative technologies. Given the concern about high rates of mental health illness in South Africa, the research also demonstrates how popular culture forms can alert health care practitioners to issues which may otherwise go unnoticed.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143549 , vital:38256 , ISBN , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: An Identity Document (ID) is needed by South Africans to study, apply for a pension or get married. However, Home Affairs, the state department responsible for issuing them, is poorly managed. The popular Daily Sun tabloid newspaper mediates for its five million working class readers the frustration caused by this incompetency in its “Horror Affairs” column. Readers tell their stories about (not) getting their IDs, stories often of suicide, depression and “giving up” on life. Using a Lacanian frame, and through a close reading of “Horror Affairs” texts, I argue that this tabloid plays a therapeutic role for its socially marginalised readers by mediating the “invisibility” engendered by the modernising state and its administrative technologies. Given the concern about high rates of mental health illness in South Africa, the research also demonstrates how popular culture forms can alert health care practitioners to issues which may otherwise go unnoticed.
- Full Text:
A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision making in Zimbabwe:
- Chiweshe, Malvern T, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143882 , vital:38291 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The available research on abortion-decision-making tends to focus on the ‘factors’ or ‘influences’ that are seen to affect abortion decision-making. This approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpin the ‘process’ of abortion decision-making. Data reported on in this paper were collected from three sites in Zimbabwe. Narrative interviews were conducted with 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers. The women employed discursive resources around stigma, religion, health and culture in telling stories around abortion shame, abortion as justified and the fearful, secretive act of abortion. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the availability and embeddedness of social discourses and power relations that work to enable/constrain reproductive justice.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern T , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143882 , vital:38291 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The available research on abortion-decision-making tends to focus on the ‘factors’ or ‘influences’ that are seen to affect abortion decision-making. This approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpin the ‘process’ of abortion decision-making. Data reported on in this paper were collected from three sites in Zimbabwe. Narrative interviews were conducted with 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site) and semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers. The women employed discursive resources around stigma, religion, health and culture in telling stories around abortion shame, abortion as justified and the fearful, secretive act of abortion. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the availability and embeddedness of social discourses and power relations that work to enable/constrain reproductive justice.
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Accommodation and job assignment for impaired workers:
- Authors: Pearson, Jessie
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143661 , vital:38271 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Some compensation systems do not encourage permanently restricted workers disabled due to work-related injuries, to return to work. However, appropriate job placement of impaired workers has been shown to result in feelings of independence, usefulness and responsibility, as well as financial security. Physically impaired employees in many workplaces have experienced job discrimination because colleagues and supervisors assume that their work performance will be affected by physical limitations resulting from their disability. This theoretical paper discusses the possibilities of assigning workers to appropriate jobs based on their specific capabilities and limitations. The option of providing certain job accommodations in the form of workplace restructuring is also discussed.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Pearson, Jessie
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143661 , vital:38271 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Some compensation systems do not encourage permanently restricted workers disabled due to work-related injuries, to return to work. However, appropriate job placement of impaired workers has been shown to result in feelings of independence, usefulness and responsibility, as well as financial security. Physically impaired employees in many workplaces have experienced job discrimination because colleagues and supervisors assume that their work performance will be affected by physical limitations resulting from their disability. This theoretical paper discusses the possibilities of assigning workers to appropriate jobs based on their specific capabilities and limitations. The option of providing certain job accommodations in the form of workplace restructuring is also discussed.
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All about the abs: discourse of health in the negotiation of masculine body-image
- Authors: Plüg, Simóne
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143793 , vital:38283 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: This paper explores contemporary South African masculinities and how aspects of consumer culture interweave the self and body-image where “the prime purpose of the maintenance of the inner body becomes the enhancement of the appearance of the outer body” (Featherstone, 1991, p. 171). It details a study of young men in Durban, using a qualitative research design and a social constructionist theoretical framework to explore the discourses participants use when discussing their own and other male bodies. It highlights the ways in which consumerism, the media, and other social dynamics promote and silence different discourses around what constitutes a desirable man in 21st century South Africa. The paper presents a detailed exploration of the ‘healthy body’ discourse, discussing how it shaped men’s engagement in self-sculpting practices and provided a means by which the participants came to understand and manage their gendered identities.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Plüg, Simóne
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143793 , vital:38283 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: This paper explores contemporary South African masculinities and how aspects of consumer culture interweave the self and body-image where “the prime purpose of the maintenance of the inner body becomes the enhancement of the appearance of the outer body” (Featherstone, 1991, p. 171). It details a study of young men in Durban, using a qualitative research design and a social constructionist theoretical framework to explore the discourses participants use when discussing their own and other male bodies. It highlights the ways in which consumerism, the media, and other social dynamics promote and silence different discourses around what constitutes a desirable man in 21st century South Africa. The paper presents a detailed exploration of the ‘healthy body’ discourse, discussing how it shaped men’s engagement in self-sculpting practices and provided a means by which the participants came to understand and manage their gendered identities.
- Full Text:
Caring for a child with disabilities: a psychosocial case study
- Saville Young, Lisa, Berry, Jessie
- Authors: Saville Young, Lisa , Berry, Jessie
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143860 , vital:38289 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: This paper presents a psychosocial analysis of an interview with a mother of a child with disabilities. A psychosocial perspective (conceptualizing the subject as both discursively and psychically constituted) has been argued for recently in critical disability studies by Goodley (2011) who advocates for psychoanalysis’ rich vocabulary for affective processes to explore the emotional elements of disablism, where disablism refers to ways in which society discriminates against people with disabilities (‘barriers out there’). While rejecting the use of psychoanalytic theory to pathologise and individualise people with disabilities, Goodley argues that how “oppression is felt psychically, subjectively and emotionally” (p.716) (‘barriers in here’) should not be overlooked, alongside subjectivity as always socially, politically, culturally and economically produced. This psychosocial analysis of a carer’s perspective thickens our understanding of how the caregiver is a social being, both not disabled but at the receiving end of disablism, and an interpersonal subject who may also be an ‘agent’ or ‘carrier’ of disablism.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Saville Young, Lisa , Berry, Jessie
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143860 , vital:38289 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: This paper presents a psychosocial analysis of an interview with a mother of a child with disabilities. A psychosocial perspective (conceptualizing the subject as both discursively and psychically constituted) has been argued for recently in critical disability studies by Goodley (2011) who advocates for psychoanalysis’ rich vocabulary for affective processes to explore the emotional elements of disablism, where disablism refers to ways in which society discriminates against people with disabilities (‘barriers out there’). While rejecting the use of psychoanalytic theory to pathologise and individualise people with disabilities, Goodley argues that how “oppression is felt psychically, subjectively and emotionally” (p.716) (‘barriers in here’) should not be overlooked, alongside subjectivity as always socially, politically, culturally and economically produced. This psychosocial analysis of a carer’s perspective thickens our understanding of how the caregiver is a social being, both not disabled but at the receiving end of disablism, and an interpersonal subject who may also be an ‘agent’ or ‘carrier’ of disablism.
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Condoms in pockets and HIV-free certificates: mother-daughter communication about sex and risk in a time of AIDS epidemic in South Africa
- Authors: Wilbraham, Lindy
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143693 , vital:38274 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Responsive to the perceived high risks of sexual coercion, unwanted pregnancy and HIV-infection of girls in particular, several South African sexual health promotion campaigns have used media targeting parents (mothers in particular) to instruct them on how sex should be talked about with young people to ‘risk-proof’ them. Such an instrumentalist public health discourse posits this intergenerational communication as an ‘ongoing discussion’ of events, feelings, issues and risk-safe practices around heterosexual sex negotiation. A Foucauldian view finds these conversational imperatives pitched against much-talked-about resistances to talking about sex; and the saturation with risk of ambivalent mothers and silent daughters. Mother-daughter communication about sex and sexualities – as an uneasy western ideal of attachment parenting – has tangled roots in psychoanalytic theory and feminisms where sex as the core of modern subjectivity is normalized, capacities for intimacy are trained, and affiliative sexuality is modelled in ways that balance the rights and responsibilities of sexual agency/citizenship. This paper begins with two narrative fragments from a sexual health campaign that addressed mothers and daughters, and recounts how these ‘stories’ produced derisive laughter when introduced into group discussions with young/older women. The paper follows two lines of exploration. Firstly, is western idealized fabrication of inter-subjectivity between mothers and daughters desirable and feasible in post-apartheid conditions of epidemic in South Africa? And secondly, what if the narratives of lives and experiences we offer by way of health education materials provoke uncertainties, gaps and interrogations about sex, mothering and communication, instead of offering homilies and solutions?
- Full Text:
- Authors: Wilbraham, Lindy
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143693 , vital:38274 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Responsive to the perceived high risks of sexual coercion, unwanted pregnancy and HIV-infection of girls in particular, several South African sexual health promotion campaigns have used media targeting parents (mothers in particular) to instruct them on how sex should be talked about with young people to ‘risk-proof’ them. Such an instrumentalist public health discourse posits this intergenerational communication as an ‘ongoing discussion’ of events, feelings, issues and risk-safe practices around heterosexual sex negotiation. A Foucauldian view finds these conversational imperatives pitched against much-talked-about resistances to talking about sex; and the saturation with risk of ambivalent mothers and silent daughters. Mother-daughter communication about sex and sexualities – as an uneasy western ideal of attachment parenting – has tangled roots in psychoanalytic theory and feminisms where sex as the core of modern subjectivity is normalized, capacities for intimacy are trained, and affiliative sexuality is modelled in ways that balance the rights and responsibilities of sexual agency/citizenship. This paper begins with two narrative fragments from a sexual health campaign that addressed mothers and daughters, and recounts how these ‘stories’ produced derisive laughter when introduced into group discussions with young/older women. The paper follows two lines of exploration. Firstly, is western idealized fabrication of inter-subjectivity between mothers and daughters desirable and feasible in post-apartheid conditions of epidemic in South Africa? And secondly, what if the narratives of lives and experiences we offer by way of health education materials provoke uncertainties, gaps and interrogations about sex, mothering and communication, instead of offering homilies and solutions?
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Counsellors’ constructions of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and their interventions with women suffering such IPV:
- Fleischack, Anne, Macleod, Catriona I, Böhmke, Werner
- Authors: Fleischack, Anne , Macleod, Catriona I , Böhmke, Werner
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143716 , vital:38276 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: South African research reveals a high prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) yet little research exists regarding IPV during pregnancy. In this paper we present data collected through narrative interviews with eight counsellors from two NGOs working with women experiencing IPV during pregnancy. Using a narrative-discursive analytical lens, attention was given to the construction of subject positions and power relations between the men and women in the counsellors’ narratives. Men were largely positioned as subscribing to violent patriarchal behaviour whilst women were mostly positioned as nurturing, and as victims. The counsellors saw IPV during pregnancy as occurring for a variety of reasons, including conflicts around abortion, and male partners finding the women physically unattractive. It was noted that IPV during pregnancy is managed by women in complex ways. Counsellors’ emphasis on individual counselling and leaving the IPV relationship suggests that women are ultimately responsible for their own wellbeing and success.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Fleischack, Anne , Macleod, Catriona I , Böhmke, Werner
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143716 , vital:38276 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: South African research reveals a high prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) yet little research exists regarding IPV during pregnancy. In this paper we present data collected through narrative interviews with eight counsellors from two NGOs working with women experiencing IPV during pregnancy. Using a narrative-discursive analytical lens, attention was given to the construction of subject positions and power relations between the men and women in the counsellors’ narratives. Men were largely positioned as subscribing to violent patriarchal behaviour whilst women were mostly positioned as nurturing, and as victims. The counsellors saw IPV during pregnancy as occurring for a variety of reasons, including conflicts around abortion, and male partners finding the women physically unattractive. It was noted that IPV during pregnancy is managed by women in complex ways. Counsellors’ emphasis on individual counselling and leaving the IPV relationship suggests that women are ultimately responsible for their own wellbeing and success.
- Full Text:
Exploring patterns of Facebook usage, social capital, loneliness and well-being among a diverse South African student sample:
- Young, Charles S, Strelitz, Larry N
- Authors: Young, Charles S , Strelitz, Larry N
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143705 , vital:38275 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There has been much debate over whether the use of social network sites isolate people and truncate their relationships or alternatively, provide beneficial connections with others. This debate has been framed by a growing international literature which explores the triadic relationship between the intensity of use of Facebook to the maintenance of social capital and in turn the relationship between social capital and wellbeing and loneliness. A random list of 1168 Rhodes University students was drawn from the total student body and invited to participate in an online survey. In total, 491 students completed the survey (42% response rate). Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate that intensity of Facebook usage adds a very small contribution to social capital, is very weakly associated with loneliness, and is not associated with wellbeing. Results contrast with international studies that fail to recognise the extent to which race and class cleavages impact on access to and use of social media.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Young, Charles S , Strelitz, Larry N
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143705 , vital:38275 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There has been much debate over whether the use of social network sites isolate people and truncate their relationships or alternatively, provide beneficial connections with others. This debate has been framed by a growing international literature which explores the triadic relationship between the intensity of use of Facebook to the maintenance of social capital and in turn the relationship between social capital and wellbeing and loneliness. A random list of 1168 Rhodes University students was drawn from the total student body and invited to participate in an online survey. In total, 491 students completed the survey (42% response rate). Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrate that intensity of Facebook usage adds a very small contribution to social capital, is very weakly associated with loneliness, and is not associated with wellbeing. Results contrast with international studies that fail to recognise the extent to which race and class cleavages impact on access to and use of social media.
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Exploring the emancipatory potential of nursing practice in relation to sexuality: a systematic literature review of nursing research 2009-2014
- Nhamo-Murire, Mercy, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Nhamo-Murire, Mercy , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143650 , vital:38270 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Nurses play an important role in disseminating health information and in the provision of counselling concerning sexuality healthcare settings. There is some evidence, however, that nurses do not always consider issues relating to sexualities in their general practice, and when they do, may feel some discomfort in addressing sexuality. In this paper we report on a systematic review of research on nursing practice in relation to sexualities that appeared in nursing journals in the Web of Science database from 2009-2014. Thirty nine articles, which were published in English and reported on nursing practice in relation to sexualities, were thematically analysed. We focus on what research has been done and how this research may be used in the development of emancipatory nursing practice in relation to sexualities. Despite increasing attention being paid to social justice issues in nursing, the implications of this for nursing practice needs further exploration.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Nhamo-Murire, Mercy , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143650 , vital:38270 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Nurses play an important role in disseminating health information and in the provision of counselling concerning sexuality healthcare settings. There is some evidence, however, that nurses do not always consider issues relating to sexualities in their general practice, and when they do, may feel some discomfort in addressing sexuality. In this paper we report on a systematic review of research on nursing practice in relation to sexualities that appeared in nursing journals in the Web of Science database from 2009-2014. Thirty nine articles, which were published in English and reported on nursing practice in relation to sexualities, were thematically analysed. We focus on what research has been done and how this research may be used in the development of emancipatory nursing practice in relation to sexualities. Despite increasing attention being paid to social justice issues in nursing, the implications of this for nursing practice needs further exploration.
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Gay men and fatherhood in South Africa: a discursive study
- Morison, Tracy, Lynch, Ingrid, Reddy, Vasu
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Lynch, Ingrid , Reddy, Vasu
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143782 , vital:38282 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There is little South African research on gender and sexual minorities’ reproductive decision-making and, to date, no published work explicitly focused on gay men. Motivated by the virtual absence of gay men in research, as well as their marginalisation more generally, we undertook a qualitative investigation of gay men’s thoughts, feelings and perspectives of fatherhood, fatherhood decisions, and experiences of pathways to parenthood. Framed by a reproductive justice perspective, the aim of the study was not only to generate new knowledge, but also to inform policy, services, and advocacy. In this paper we present some of the findings from our discursive analysis of participants’ accounts of their own experiences of the pathway to parenthood or remaining ‘childfree’. We locate our analysis within the broader South African context and show how the entanglement of various social identity markers - particularly gender, race, and class - come to bear on participants’ experiences.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Morison, Tracy , Lynch, Ingrid , Reddy, Vasu
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143782 , vital:38282 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There is little South African research on gender and sexual minorities’ reproductive decision-making and, to date, no published work explicitly focused on gay men. Motivated by the virtual absence of gay men in research, as well as their marginalisation more generally, we undertook a qualitative investigation of gay men’s thoughts, feelings and perspectives of fatherhood, fatherhood decisions, and experiences of pathways to parenthood. Framed by a reproductive justice perspective, the aim of the study was not only to generate new knowledge, but also to inform policy, services, and advocacy. In this paper we present some of the findings from our discursive analysis of participants’ accounts of their own experiences of the pathway to parenthood or remaining ‘childfree’. We locate our analysis within the broader South African context and show how the entanglement of various social identity markers - particularly gender, race, and class - come to bear on participants’ experiences.
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Health Psychology and the framing of abortion in Africa: a critical review of the literature
- Macleod, Catriona I, Chiweshe, Malvern T, Mavuso, Jabulile M-J J
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Chiweshe, Malvern T , Mavuso, Jabulile M-J J
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143871 , vital:38290 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite 97% of abortions performed in Africa being classifiable as unsafe, there has been virtually no engagement in knowledge production about abortion in Africa from psychologists, outside of South Africa. Taking a feminist health psychology approach, we conducted a systematic review of published research on this topic featured in PsycINFO over a six year period. We analysed the 39 articles included in the review in terms of countries in which the research was conducted, types of research, issues covered, framings, and main findings. The results show that apart from a public health framing, perspectives that foreground contextual, social, cultural, gendered perspectives dominate. While abortion services, unsafe abortion and the incidence of abortion were well researched, so too were attitudes and public discourses on abortion. Clinical psychological, reproductive justice or rights and medical framings received little attention. We outline the implications of this knowledge base for feminist health psychology in Africa.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Chiweshe, Malvern T , Mavuso, Jabulile M-J J
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143871 , vital:38290 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite 97% of abortions performed in Africa being classifiable as unsafe, there has been virtually no engagement in knowledge production about abortion in Africa from psychologists, outside of South Africa. Taking a feminist health psychology approach, we conducted a systematic review of published research on this topic featured in PsycINFO over a six year period. We analysed the 39 articles included in the review in terms of countries in which the research was conducted, types of research, issues covered, framings, and main findings. The results show that apart from a public health framing, perspectives that foreground contextual, social, cultural, gendered perspectives dominate. While abortion services, unsafe abortion and the incidence of abortion were well researched, so too were attitudes and public discourses on abortion. Clinical psychological, reproductive justice or rights and medical framings received little attention. We outline the implications of this knowledge base for feminist health psychology in Africa.
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How can conversational analysis contribute to ‘doing’ critical work?: extending the methodological conversation
- Authors: du Toit, Ryan
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143904 , vital:38293 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Conversation analysis (CA) has been criticised as being overly obsessed with the intricate details of conversation and bracketing off the wider socio-structural power relations in which conversation is embedded. Many scholars regard CA as a methodology that is incompatible with, and thus incapable of doing, critical work. This paper seeks to contribute to the methodological conversation by proposing a dual analytical methodology that merges understandings of talk from CA and critical discursive approaches, and attends to both the conversational (turn-by-turn) context as well as the discursive resources that inhabit talk. This is accomplished through a triangulatory activity that takes different conceptualizations of ‘context’ into consideration and investigates how subject positions are worked up on a micro- (turnby-turn) and macro-level. The authors illustrate this approach using institutional talk collected at a UK diabetes clinic and from interviews investigating how employers talk about their domestic workers in South Africa.
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- Authors: du Toit, Ryan
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143904 , vital:38293 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Conversation analysis (CA) has been criticised as being overly obsessed with the intricate details of conversation and bracketing off the wider socio-structural power relations in which conversation is embedded. Many scholars regard CA as a methodology that is incompatible with, and thus incapable of doing, critical work. This paper seeks to contribute to the methodological conversation by proposing a dual analytical methodology that merges understandings of talk from CA and critical discursive approaches, and attends to both the conversational (turn-by-turn) context as well as the discursive resources that inhabit talk. This is accomplished through a triangulatory activity that takes different conceptualizations of ‘context’ into consideration and investigates how subject positions are worked up on a micro- (turnby-turn) and macro-level. The authors illustrate this approach using institutional talk collected at a UK diabetes clinic and from interviews investigating how employers talk about their domestic workers in South Africa.
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Just saying “No” is not enough: a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of anti-rape poster campaigns
- Böhmke, Werner, Bennie, Rachel, Minnie, Chantel, Moore, Sarah-Ann, Pilusa, Mikaylah, Pollock, James
- Authors: Böhmke, Werner , Bennie, Rachel , Minnie, Chantel , Moore, Sarah-Ann , Pilusa, Mikaylah , Pollock, James
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143727 , vital:38277 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Sexual violence is a serious social concern, especially in South Africa. Explanations for high levels of sexual violence often point to normative cultural expectations regarding gendered behaviour. Consequently, attempts to address sexual violence frequently take the form of public health initiatives aimed at increasing awareness of the problem, encouraging reporting and, much more recently, addressing the social attitudes believed to be held by perpetrators of this violence. A common format for such initiatives is anti-rape poster campaigns. This paper argues, through applying Foucauldian discourse analysis to a series of posters, that very often the messages conveyed by these initiatives are addressed at the prohibition of behaviours associated with sexual violence. The analysis shows that this strategy may not be sufficient, and instead argues that alternative strategies - aimed at inviting audiences to take up an ethical position - may be more effective at producing change.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Böhmke, Werner , Bennie, Rachel , Minnie, Chantel , Moore, Sarah-Ann , Pilusa, Mikaylah , Pollock, James
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143727 , vital:38277 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Sexual violence is a serious social concern, especially in South Africa. Explanations for high levels of sexual violence often point to normative cultural expectations regarding gendered behaviour. Consequently, attempts to address sexual violence frequently take the form of public health initiatives aimed at increasing awareness of the problem, encouraging reporting and, much more recently, addressing the social attitudes believed to be held by perpetrators of this violence. A common format for such initiatives is anti-rape poster campaigns. This paper argues, through applying Foucauldian discourse analysis to a series of posters, that very often the messages conveyed by these initiatives are addressed at the prohibition of behaviours associated with sexual violence. The analysis shows that this strategy may not be sufficient, and instead argues that alternative strategies - aimed at inviting audiences to take up an ethical position - may be more effective at producing change.
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Knowledge production about voluntary childlessness as a family form: a systematic review of trends
- Authors: Lynch, Ingrid
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143604 , vital:38266 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There has been a steady increase in research concerned with non-traditional reproductive decision-making, including research investigating voluntarily childlessness. Existing reviews of this body of scholarship focus on dominant themes over time including: the demographic incidence of voluntary childlessness, different pathways to voluntary childlessness, motivations for being childfree, physical and mental health consequences of being childfree and stigmatisation of childfree individuals and responses to stigma. We extend previous systematic literature reviews to attend to sociohistorical and geopolitical aspects of knowledge production about voluntary childlessness. Our dataset comprised 195 peer-reviewed articles that were coded and analysed to explore inter alia the main topic under investigation, country context, sample characteristics and methodology. We discuss the findings in relation to the socio-historical contexts of knowledge production, highlighting implications for current understandings of families, reproductive decision-making and reproductive justice.
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- Authors: Lynch, Ingrid
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143604 , vital:38266 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: There has been a steady increase in research concerned with non-traditional reproductive decision-making, including research investigating voluntarily childlessness. Existing reviews of this body of scholarship focus on dominant themes over time including: the demographic incidence of voluntary childlessness, different pathways to voluntary childlessness, motivations for being childfree, physical and mental health consequences of being childfree and stigmatisation of childfree individuals and responses to stigma. We extend previous systematic literature reviews to attend to sociohistorical and geopolitical aspects of knowledge production about voluntary childlessness. Our dataset comprised 195 peer-reviewed articles that were coded and analysed to explore inter alia the main topic under investigation, country context, sample characteristics and methodology. We discuss the findings in relation to the socio-historical contexts of knowledge production, highlighting implications for current understandings of families, reproductive decision-making and reproductive justice.
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Media framing of recent LGBT rights debates: the contrasting cases of South Africa, Uganda and the USA
- Authors: Dugmore, Harry
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143849 , vital:38288 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: This paper compares key moments in the debates about LGBT rights, and the media coverage related to these key moments, in South Africa, Uganda and the USA. No country permitted same-sex marriage by the turn of millennium in 2000. Today, 15 countries do, as do two-thirds of states in the USA. By contrast, in some African countries, legislative regimes and social attitudes are shifting retrogressively, with the introduction of punitive laws against both ‘homosexual acts’ and the ‘promotion’ of same-sex relationships. While the drivers of progressive shifts in liberal democracies - such as LGBT activism, the impact of AIDS, and changes in the stances of professional health organisations - have also been at least partially present in many African countries, it is puzzling why these factors have not prevented an increase in repression in many African countries. As this paper outlines, the new laws have had immediate and dire impacts on the health of LGBT communities in the affected countries.
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- Authors: Dugmore, Harry
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143849 , vital:38288 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: This paper compares key moments in the debates about LGBT rights, and the media coverage related to these key moments, in South Africa, Uganda and the USA. No country permitted same-sex marriage by the turn of millennium in 2000. Today, 15 countries do, as do two-thirds of states in the USA. By contrast, in some African countries, legislative regimes and social attitudes are shifting retrogressively, with the introduction of punitive laws against both ‘homosexual acts’ and the ‘promotion’ of same-sex relationships. While the drivers of progressive shifts in liberal democracies - such as LGBT activism, the impact of AIDS, and changes in the stances of professional health organisations - have also been at least partially present in many African countries, it is puzzling why these factors have not prevented an increase in repression in many African countries. As this paper outlines, the new laws have had immediate and dire impacts on the health of LGBT communities in the affected countries.
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Medical practitioners and conscientious objection to the provision of termination of pregnancy services:
- Chiwandire, Desire, Vincent, Louise
- Authors: Chiwandire, Desire , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143838 , vital:38287 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The 1996 Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act decriminalized abortion in South Africa and the South African Medicines Control Council in 2000 approved the dispensing of emergency contraceptive methods by pharmacists to women without a doctor’s prescription. This legislation has been hailed as among the most progressive in the world with respect to women’s reproductive justice. However, the realization of these rights in practice has not always met expectations, in part due to medical practitioners’ ethical objections to termination of pregnancy and the provision of related services. The aim of this study was to interpret the varying ways in which medical practitioners frame termination of pregnancy services, their own professional identities and that of their patients/clients. A Sample of 58 doctors and 59 pharmacists were drawn from all nine provinces of South Africa. Data were collected using an anonymous confidential internet-based self-administered questionnaire. Participants were randomly recruited from online listings of South African doctors and pharmacists practicing in both private and public sectors. Data were analysed using theoretically derived qualitative content analysis.
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- Authors: Chiwandire, Desire , Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143838 , vital:38287 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: The 1996 Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act decriminalized abortion in South Africa and the South African Medicines Control Council in 2000 approved the dispensing of emergency contraceptive methods by pharmacists to women without a doctor’s prescription. This legislation has been hailed as among the most progressive in the world with respect to women’s reproductive justice. However, the realization of these rights in practice has not always met expectations, in part due to medical practitioners’ ethical objections to termination of pregnancy and the provision of related services. The aim of this study was to interpret the varying ways in which medical practitioners frame termination of pregnancy services, their own professional identities and that of their patients/clients. A Sample of 58 doctors and 59 pharmacists were drawn from all nine provinces of South Africa. Data were collected using an anonymous confidential internet-based self-administered questionnaire. Participants were randomly recruited from online listings of South African doctors and pharmacists practicing in both private and public sectors. Data were analysed using theoretically derived qualitative content analysis.
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Pecha Kucha 1: Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143915 , vital:38294 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite enabling legislation and policies in the areas of sexualities and reproduction in South Africa, multiple challenges persist, including: forced sexual debut, sexual coercion and violence; HIV infection; hate crimes against lesbian women and gay men; unwanted and unsupportable pregnancies. While it is acknowledged that interventions (e.g., sexuality education programmes, the promotion of antenatal care use and the promotion of non-discrimination) have the potential to improve men’s and women’s sexual and reproductive lives. There are also multiple ways in which such programmes and the surrounding public discourses concerning sexuality and reproduction can serve in often unintended and unwitting ways to perpetuate oppressive heteronormative, gendered, racialised and class-based power relations. The Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme focuses on how particular discourses, narratives, and practices promote inclusion or exclusion, belonging or marginalisation, equity or inequity, justice or injustice, access to, or denial of, sexual and reproductive rights.
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- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143915 , vital:38294 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Despite enabling legislation and policies in the areas of sexualities and reproduction in South Africa, multiple challenges persist, including: forced sexual debut, sexual coercion and violence; HIV infection; hate crimes against lesbian women and gay men; unwanted and unsupportable pregnancies. While it is acknowledged that interventions (e.g., sexuality education programmes, the promotion of antenatal care use and the promotion of non-discrimination) have the potential to improve men’s and women’s sexual and reproductive lives. There are also multiple ways in which such programmes and the surrounding public discourses concerning sexuality and reproduction can serve in often unintended and unwitting ways to perpetuate oppressive heteronormative, gendered, racialised and class-based power relations. The Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme focuses on how particular discourses, narratives, and practices promote inclusion or exclusion, belonging or marginalisation, equity or inequity, justice or injustice, access to, or denial of, sexual and reproductive rights.
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Pecha Kucha 2: Race and gender politics in cross-dressing, dressing-up, and drag
- Authors: Marx, Jacqueline
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143926 , vital:38295 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Sexuality is often less discernible than other markers of identity such as race and gender, which means that its perceptibility is often contingent on strategies that make it visible. Visibility is an especially important dimension in the shaping of lesbian and gay identities because people are generally assumed to be heterosexual. Making gay and lesbian identities visible is also an important political issue for people who have, historically, been threatened by the violence of public erasure. It is this aspect of gay and lesbian subjectivity – the politics of visibility – that is the topic of this presentation. We focus on gender and race politics in dressing-up, cross-dressing and drag performances - practices which make gay and lesbian sexualities visible, and consider the role that race and gender play in diminishing and exacerbating visibility.
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- Authors: Marx, Jacqueline
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143926 , vital:38295 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Sexuality is often less discernible than other markers of identity such as race and gender, which means that its perceptibility is often contingent on strategies that make it visible. Visibility is an especially important dimension in the shaping of lesbian and gay identities because people are generally assumed to be heterosexual. Making gay and lesbian identities visible is also an important political issue for people who have, historically, been threatened by the violence of public erasure. It is this aspect of gay and lesbian subjectivity – the politics of visibility – that is the topic of this presentation. We focus on gender and race politics in dressing-up, cross-dressing and drag performances - practices which make gay and lesbian sexualities visible, and consider the role that race and gender play in diminishing and exacerbating visibility.
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Pecha Kucha 3: Memories, photographs, and archives: On historicising ‘puberty’ in the present
- Authors: Pinto, Pedro
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143937 , vital:38296 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: In 1997, Valerie Walkerdine incited researchers to use memory and fantasy as devices to explore the gendered meanings of being a child and becoming adult. Since we all once were children, we are in the ambiguous – and therefore productive – position of being both informants and ethnographers of childhood experiences. Whilst drawing on a historical investigation on puberty science, this presentation is a hybrid experiment: it combines my memories of growing up in Portugal in the early 1980s and photographs of children taken in clinical interventions from the late nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth. In articulating these materials and their different temporalities, my purpose is to explore the techniques and the power relations in which pubertal development came to being thought of, and disciplined, in contemporary societies. In doing so, I invite the possibility of historicising experience as a strategy to critically analyse our medicalised present.
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- Authors: Pinto, Pedro
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143937 , vital:38296 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: In 1997, Valerie Walkerdine incited researchers to use memory and fantasy as devices to explore the gendered meanings of being a child and becoming adult. Since we all once were children, we are in the ambiguous – and therefore productive – position of being both informants and ethnographers of childhood experiences. Whilst drawing on a historical investigation on puberty science, this presentation is a hybrid experiment: it combines my memories of growing up in Portugal in the early 1980s and photographs of children taken in clinical interventions from the late nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth. In articulating these materials and their different temporalities, my purpose is to explore the techniques and the power relations in which pubertal development came to being thought of, and disciplined, in contemporary societies. In doing so, I invite the possibility of historicising experience as a strategy to critically analyse our medicalised present.
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Precocious little monsters and the birth of puberty science: tracing early puberty as a health matter
- Pinto, Pedro, Macleod, Catriona I
- Authors: Pinto, Pedro , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143626 , vital:38268 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Over the last two decades, early puberty has been increasingly portrayed in scientific and popular arenas as an alarming health issue. Changes in pubertal timing are frequently accorded a range of medical and moral dangers, suggesting individual degeneracy and social crisis. In our presentation – the first output of a Foucauldian genealogical investigation on pubertal knowledge in medical journals – we show that today’s problematisations of early puberty are rooted in the figure of the child monster, as produced in early nineteenth century medical discourse. Drawing on doctors’ clinical encounters with the pubescent body as represented in medical journals during that period, we argue that puberty, understood as a scientific construct, has been ‘praecox’ since the beginning. From this genealogical viewpoint, we explore the ways in which our present ‘pubertal complex’ talks to an old medical dilemma: the confusion of maturity and immaturity within the young body.
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- Authors: Pinto, Pedro , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143626 , vital:38268 , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
- Description: Over the last two decades, early puberty has been increasingly portrayed in scientific and popular arenas as an alarming health issue. Changes in pubertal timing are frequently accorded a range of medical and moral dangers, suggesting individual degeneracy and social crisis. In our presentation – the first output of a Foucauldian genealogical investigation on pubertal knowledge in medical journals – we show that today’s problematisations of early puberty are rooted in the figure of the child monster, as produced in early nineteenth century medical discourse. Drawing on doctors’ clinical encounters with the pubescent body as represented in medical journals during that period, we argue that puberty, understood as a scientific construct, has been ‘praecox’ since the beginning. From this genealogical viewpoint, we explore the ways in which our present ‘pubertal complex’ talks to an old medical dilemma: the confusion of maturity and immaturity within the young body.
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