Destined to come to blows?: race and constructions of “rational-intellectual” masculinity ten years after apartheid
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141619 , vital:37990 , DOI: 10.1177/1097184X05277694
- Description: In 1994, a democratic government came to power in South Africa for the first time in the country's history. But political transition is never a single event or moment. Rather, it is a continuous process that faces setbacks and contradictions. One of the questions we might ask about a society in transition is to what extent its gender order has changed or is changing. The present paper sets out to read the country's transformation drama through the lens of contested conceptions of South African masculinity. The article is focused on one particular version of masculinity which it terms “rational-intellectual man,” and the argument is that a legacy of racism and the persistence of racialized modes of reasoning continue to marginalise black men from this and other powerful, high-status forms of hegemonic masculinity.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141619 , vital:37990 , DOI: 10.1177/1097184X05277694
- Description: In 1994, a democratic government came to power in South Africa for the first time in the country's history. But political transition is never a single event or moment. Rather, it is a continuous process that faces setbacks and contradictions. One of the questions we might ask about a society in transition is to what extent its gender order has changed or is changing. The present paper sets out to read the country's transformation drama through the lens of contested conceptions of South African masculinity. The article is focused on one particular version of masculinity which it terms “rational-intellectual man,” and the argument is that a legacy of racism and the persistence of racialized modes of reasoning continue to marginalise black men from this and other powerful, high-status forms of hegemonic masculinity.
- Full Text:
Labouring to love: romantic love and power in the construction of middle-class femininity
- Vincent, Louise, McEwen, Caryn
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , McEwen, Caryn
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141783 , vital:38004 , DOI: 10.1177/097152150501300102
- Description: South Africa is 10 years into its new democratic order. An aspect of the country's political transformation has been an official political commitment to gender trans-formation. While great strides have been made towards greater gender equality at the institutional and legal level of society, the present article suggests that highly unequal power relations between men and women continue to be perpetuated in unexpected ways among those whom we would most expect to be capable of resistance. This paper is about how subtle yet deeply embedded ideologies and practices within heterosexual relationships serve to keep highly educated, apparently empowered and liberated women ‘in their place’, ensuring that they do not fulfil their potential. Traditionally women were socialised into assuming their positions in the home as caregivers and unpaid household labourers. The hope of feminism was that education, economic empowerment and an ideology of ‘can do’ independence would liberate women. However, for many women, it is in the most intimate aspects of their lives—in their sexual relationships with men—that this hope continues to be thwarted.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Vincent, Louise , McEwen, Caryn
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141783 , vital:38004 , DOI: 10.1177/097152150501300102
- Description: South Africa is 10 years into its new democratic order. An aspect of the country's political transformation has been an official political commitment to gender trans-formation. While great strides have been made towards greater gender equality at the institutional and legal level of society, the present article suggests that highly unequal power relations between men and women continue to be perpetuated in unexpected ways among those whom we would most expect to be capable of resistance. This paper is about how subtle yet deeply embedded ideologies and practices within heterosexual relationships serve to keep highly educated, apparently empowered and liberated women ‘in their place’, ensuring that they do not fulfil their potential. Traditionally women were socialised into assuming their positions in the home as caregivers and unpaid household labourers. The hope of feminism was that education, economic empowerment and an ideology of ‘can do’ independence would liberate women. However, for many women, it is in the most intimate aspects of their lives—in their sexual relationships with men—that this hope continues to be thwarted.
- Full Text:
Of no account?: South Africa's electoral system (non) debate
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141657 , vital:37994 , DOI: 10.1080/02589000500513796
- Description: Accountability can be summarised simply as ‘answerability’ (James and Hadland 2002:1) and is a vital cornerstone of representative democracy. Without accountability, an electorate, once having put into power a particular representative, has no recourse to explanations, justifications or reviews of how that person has performed and whether or not they have fulfilled the promises which secured their election in the first place. In a representative democracy mechanisms of accountability are necessarily multiple and must include both formal and informal dimensions. The electoral system is but one of these. Other key lynchpins in the accountability engine include the role of opposition parties, the committee system, the media, civil society, the courts, and what in South Africa are referred to, on the basis of the 1996 Constitution, as the ‘Chapter Nine Institutions’: the Public Protector, Human Rights Commission, Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Commission for Gender Equality, Auditor-General, and the Electoral Commission.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Vincent, Louise
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141657 , vital:37994 , DOI: 10.1080/02589000500513796
- Description: Accountability can be summarised simply as ‘answerability’ (James and Hadland 2002:1) and is a vital cornerstone of representative democracy. Without accountability, an electorate, once having put into power a particular representative, has no recourse to explanations, justifications or reviews of how that person has performed and whether or not they have fulfilled the promises which secured their election in the first place. In a representative democracy mechanisms of accountability are necessarily multiple and must include both formal and informal dimensions. The electoral system is but one of these. Other key lynchpins in the accountability engine include the role of opposition parties, the committee system, the media, civil society, the courts, and what in South Africa are referred to, on the basis of the 1996 Constitution, as the ‘Chapter Nine Institutions’: the Public Protector, Human Rights Commission, Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities, Commission for Gender Equality, Auditor-General, and the Electoral Commission.
- Full Text:
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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