Bhaskar and collective action: Using laminations to structure a literature review of collective action and water management
- Authors: Burt, Jane C
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436978 , vital:73321 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter describes the use of Bhaskar’s lamination to make sense of the vast literature on collective action. The liter-ature review in the chapter was part of a broader study that in-vestigated collective action as essential for attaining the princi-ples of equity and sustainability set out in the post-apartheid South African Water Act. A laminated analysis of the literature revealed important insights such as: when dealing with collec-tive action we need to appreciate that all the levels of reality are acting simultaneously on a given context and cannot be resolved in isolation; collective action is inhibited or con-strained at different levels and scales by different things; and collective action is not suspended in a fixed context and can-not be encouraged by following a set formula. These insights point to the importance of learning to adapt as a core principle of collective action. Drawing on this research and experience of how collective action can be supported or inhibited gives insight into understanding our current limitations in supporting collective action and in understanding the kinds of collective action encounters that are occurring in catchments in South Africa. These understandings have implications for how we consider learning, and the potential contributions of learning-led change.This chapter describes the use of Bhaskar’s lamination to make sense of the vast literature on collective action. The liter-ature review in the chapter was part of a broader study that in-vestigated collective action as essential for attaining the princi-ples of equity and sustainability set out in the post-apartheid South African Water Act. A laminated analysis of the literature revealed important insights such as: when dealing with collec-tive action we need to appreciate that all the levels of reality are acting simultaneously on a given context and cannot be resolved in isolation; collective action is inhibited or con-strained at different levels and scales by different things; and collective action is not suspended in a fixed context and can-not be encouraged by following a set formula. These insights point to the importance of learning to adapt as a core principle of collective action. Drawing on this research and experience of how collective action can be supported or inhibited gives insight into understanding our current limitations in supporting collective action and in understanding the kinds of collective action encounters that are occurring in catchments in South Africa. These understandings have implications for how we consider learning, and the potential contributions of learning-led change.
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Biodiversity and nutrition
- Authors: Hunter, D , Burlingame, B , Remans, Roseline , Borelli, Teresa , Cogill, Bruce , Coradin, Lidio , Golden, C D , Jamnadass, Ramni H , Kehlenbeck, K , Kennedy, G , Kuhnlein, H V , McMullin, S , Myers, S , Silva, A J R , Saha, M , Scheerer, L , Shackleton, Charlie M , Neves Soares Oliviera, C , Termote, Celine , Teofili, C , Thilsted, Shakuntala H , Valenti, R
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434014 , vital:73026 , ISBN 978 92 4 150853 7 , https://hdl.handle.net/10568/67423
- Description: Malnutrition remains one of the greatest global health challenges we face and women and children are its most visible and vulnerable victims. Agricultural production is theoretically able to feed the world’s population in terms of calories (FAOSTAT, 2014), yet it is estimated that half the world’s population still suffers from one or more forms of malnutrition. In all its forms, malnutrition is closely linked to disease – as both a cause and effect – and it is the single largest contributor to the global burden of disease (WHO 2012a).
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Black-boxing and the politics of parliamentary oversight in South Africa
- Authors: Siebörger, Ian , Adendorf, Ralph D
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433497 , vital:72976 , ISBN 978-9027206565 , https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.65
- Description: We investigate a parliamentary committee meeting overseeing a randomly chosen state-owned entity, in order to track the processes of knowledge production that occur in parliamentary oversight. The entity’s representatives use “epistemological condensation” (Maton 2014:130) to present the information they give to the MPs as incontestable, effectively “black-boxing” it. “Black-boxing” (Latour 1987) is a process which presents knowledge in such a way that very little room is left for questioning it. The committee members also use “epistemological rarefaction” (Maton 2014:130) to open the black box of the presentation and question its contents, challenging the practices of the entity.
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Dialectical critical realism and cultural historical activity theory (CHAT): Exploring and expanding learning processes in sustainable agriculture workplace contexts
- Authors: Mukute, Mutizwa
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436996 , vital:73322 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: Sustainable agriculture (its learning, practice and development) is becoming increasingly important in Africa and globally be-cause of its potential to reduce social ecological risks while simultaneously enhancing related sustainability and resilience. Against this background, the objectives of the study forming the basis of this chapter were to explore and expand the learn-ing and practice of sustainable agriculture in three research sites in southern Africa. This paper focuses on how the author worked with critical realism to underlabour Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to address the research objectives. Us-ing a multiple case study approach, the author worked with 80 farmers, extension workers, sustainable agriculture facilitators and researchers and organic marketers to explore and expand their learning and practice of three kinds of sustainable agricul-ture: permaculture, organic farming and the Machobane Farm-ing System (MFS). In particular the author made use of critical realism’s dialectics, multiple layers of reality and causal expla-nation, double hermeneutics, and modes of inference to deep-en data generation, analysis and use. Working with critical real-ism enabled the study to: (a) pay attention to causal mecha-nisms and power relations; (b) provide explanatory critique; (c) achieve in-depth ‘exploration’ through inductive, abductive and retroductive analysis; and (d) overcome the constructivist limi-tations of CHAT. Critical realism also enabled the mobilization of research participants’ agency and reflexivity to respond to the socio-ecological issues and risks that they were facing. The author concluded that critical realism can be effectively used to underlabour constructivist and epistemological theo-ries for ontological depth; and to help understand and tackle contemporary social ecological issues.
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Ecologically sustainable harvesting of non-timber forest products: Disarming the narrative and the complexity
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Pandey, Ashok K , Ticktin, Tamara
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433670 , vital:72993 , ISBN 9781317916130 , https://www.routledge.com/Ecological-Sustainability-for-Non-timber-Forest-Products-Dynamics-and-Case/Shackleton-Pandey-Ticktin/p/book/9781138618251
- Description: As introduced at the outset of this book, the need for ecologically sustainable harvesting systems for tens of thousands of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) around the world is a requirement for the conservation of the species concerned, and the lives, livelihoods and economies that depend on those species. Ecological sustainability is not simply a ‘nice to have’, a marketing ploy or a conservation fad. Unsustainable harvesting leads to the decline, sooner or later, of NTFP gene pools, populations and species and hence the livelihoods, and species and ecosystem services dependent upon them. Often the negative impacts on peoples’ lives and incomes are not immediately apparent because they may substitute the diminishing returns from one species by harvesting another species, such as favoured firewood species for less preferred species (Madubansi and Shackleton 2007). However, the second, third or more substitute yields lower returns in quality or quantity (or both) than the most preferred species and so a trajectory of dwindling returns looms, either of the benefits obtained, or increased costs to access the benefits. On the other hand, the concept of an ecologically sustainable yield is relatively easy to grasp (Ticktin Chapter 3). All biological resources are renewable. If the rate of harvest is less than the rate of renewal, then the NTFP species or population should persist in the long term. This simplistic picture needs to be fine-tuned to ensure that there are no exacerbatory or synergistic impacts associated with the direct effects of harvesting (such as changes in browsing patterns or fire behaviour)(Ticktin and Shackleton 2011, Ticktin Chapter 3). Additionally, the effects at broader scales, ie beyond just the target species, need to be also taken into account, such as on pollinators, decomposers, nutrient cycles and the like (Ticktin 2004). But in principle, the definition and measurement of an ecologically sustainable yield is well within the means of modern science for the majority of plant and animal NTFP species.
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Exploring contradictions and absences in mobilizing ‘learning as process' for sustainable agricultural practices
- Authors: Pesanayi, Tichaona
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437008 , vital:73323 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: Water is a fascinating, life-giving being. It flows. It cuts into the earth to create its passage by finding the places where the earth will give. As it meanders it passes through many different contexts, whether at a fastrush-full-blown flood or the trickle of an underground desert stream. It does not demand that the space it moves through is homogenous. It adapts to whatever terrain it finds itself journeying through. Human creatures, dependent as they are on water for their own beings and for life, flock to water like flies to food. We build our cities, our factories and homes on the banks and corners of rivers and draw and drink and use (and abuse) water. We throw in and we take out and the river keeps going until sometimes it doesn’t. Then we worry. Sometimes it is not the lack of flow that worries us but the fact that when we drink it babies become sick, some die and this causes a stir. In South Africa this security, or lack of it, is embedded in the political historical landscape of this land. Water is classified as scarce. Our rainfall is low in comparison to other countries. In South Africa, during apartheid this scarce resource was not avail able in equal measure to all. The rulers of apartheid South Africa were farmers and miners. They were of British decent, sent to farm the new colony. They were also descended from first colonial settlers arriving from the Nether-lands and then Germany, known colloquially as the Boers. South Africa was divided and redivided until in 1948 the Boers gained independence from British rule and finished the job that the British had started by legalizing the separation of races. Farming was still core to the Boer way of life and this is reflect-ed in the laws that dictated resource use and management, such as the 1956 Water Act No. 54 (RSA, 1956) which gave riparian rights to those that owned land. Water was also subsi-dized to boost the economy, particularly for the large mines, and parastatals such as Eskom (Byrnes, 1996). Water was not only used to ensure that the economy of white South Africa flourished, it also was the landmark of division.
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Exploring critical realist insights into transformative environmental learning processes in contexts of social-ecological risk
- Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437045 , vital:73326 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: Environment and sustainability are continually recognized for significance to the future of planetary well-being. But the com-plex, cross-cutting transversal nature and associated ‘new-ness’1 of environment and sustainability concerns within edu-cation and training systems raise a number of challenges for education and training systems. In this chapter I explore how critical realist dialectics can help to more fully explain the ab-sence of intermediate pathways in the environment and sus-tain able development ‘sector’ in South Africa and through this analysis raise opportunities for creating more seamless envi-ronmental learning pathways into green jobs, enhancing social justice potential and public good concerns. The chapter situ-ates the discussion within the South African policy discourse of meaningful learning pathways (DHET, 2010) through a study of two priority scarce skills occupations in the environmental sector (environmental scientist and environmental technician). This is used as an example to illustrate systemic disjunctures that demonstrate how environmental learning pathways in and for sustain able development emerge. Using a critical realist lens to understand the absences that denote a relationship away from being allows the chapter to conceptualize absence as central to the real and hence to being (Lotz-Sisitka and Ramsarup, 2012; Bhaskar, 1993). Privileging absence allows me to develop a vantage point that connects being to becom-ing and hence underlines the intent for change inherent within this research. Norrie (2010, p. 28) states that ‘understanding change as a process of absenting of absences as well as the absenting of those structural constraints that keep absences in place . . . lies at the core of change’.
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Introduction: the need to understand the ecological sustainability of non-timber forest products harvesting systems
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Ticktin, Tamara , Pandey, Ashok K
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433683 , vital:72994 , ISBN 9781317916130 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315851587-2/introduction-charlie-shackleton-tamara-ticktin-ashok-pandey
- Description: The importance of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in rural livelihoods in developing countries has become widely acknowledged over the last decade or so within the research and, increasingly, policy arenas, on the basis of numerous studies from around the world. Indeed, there has been a tenfold increase in the annual number of research papers published over the last 20 years (Figure 1.1). Most of these studies are from developing countries, but they do include developed countries (e.g. Kim et al. 2012, Poe et al. 2013, Sténs and Sandström 2013). Additionally, most are from rural areas, albeit with a smattering from urban settings (e.g. Kilchling et al. 2009, Poe et al. 2013, Kaoma and Shackleton 2014), although with increasing urbanization this distinction is blurred with significant markets for rural NTFPs imported into towns and cities (Lewis 2008, Padoch et al. 2008, McMullin et al. 2012). Two pertinent findings of many of these studies is that NTFPs generally contribute in many different ways to local livelihoods (see Chapter 2) and that when translated into income terms many households earn a significant proportion of their income (cash and/or non-cash) from NTFPs (Shackleton et al. 2007, Angelsen et al. 2014). In other words, they are not simply minor products of little value, but rather they are vital components of livelihoods, and in some instances, of local and regional economies. This requires that they, and the land on which they are found, are managed in a responsible manner to ensure that these livelihood benefits continue to accrue to rural, and often impoverished, people.
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Key critical realist concepts for environmental educators
- Authors: Price, Leigh
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437022 , vital:73324 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter describes aspects of critical realism that are rele-vant to environmental educators. Critical realism acts an un-derlabourer for the sciences and the practices of human emancipation. In its underlabouring role, critical realism chal-lenges the Humean assumption that correlations (constant conjunctions) are the only way to know causation and offers an alternative, which is that causation is based on the layered, deep nature of reality (the real, actual and empirical). Critical realism explains how higher levels of being are emergent from lower levels; therefore society (structure) is emergent from the activities of people (agency). Environmental educators should take an interest in structure and agency, not least because cer-tain approaches offer questionable power strategies to people and particularly governments. One consequence of the critical realist version of causation is that it becomes possible to en-visage an environmental ethics that is based on an axiology that is neither absolutist nor relativist. To provide a full enough account of causation to achieve one’s purposes, Bhaskar has suggested a model, the seven laminations of scale. Bhaskar also differentiates between the transitive and intransitive realms and explains that there are questionable ideological advantages to failing to make this distinction. The intransi-tive/transitive realms have implications for our use of catego-ries: critical realism explains how we can use categories to prevent oppression. Critical realism also argues against a purely positive, rather than a negative, account of the dialectic: thus change is absenting the constraints on absenting ab-sences. Contrary to a frequent assumption made by both non-critical realists and critical realists alike, critical realism is not a return to positivism.
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Multiple roles of non-timber forest products in ecologies, economies and livelihoods
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433970 , vital:73015 , ISBN 9781315818290 , https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315818290
- Description: The global climate models agree fairly well with each other for the next 20 years or so, with a predicted additional increase of 0.3-0.7oC in global mean surface air temperature, giving a total warming of 1.0-1.5oC (somewhat higher over land) (IPCC, 2013). Globally, rainfall is expected to increase, but some regions (such as most of the Mediterranean) will get drier and confidence in detailed rainfall predictions in most parts of the world is low. In the longer term, predictions vary greatly even for temperatures, depending on the choice of climate model and the assumptions made about future greenhouse gas emissions and carbon-cycle feedbacks. Temperatures over land are expected to increase by 3-6oC by 2100, compared with 2000, but the range of plausible values is considerably wider.
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Non-timber forest products in livelihoods
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/433699 , vital:72995 , ISBN 9781317916130 , https://www.routledge.com/Ecological-Sustainability-for-Non-timber-Forest-Products-Dynamics-and-Case/Shackleton-Pandey-Ticktin/p/book/9781138618251
- Description: That people from around the world have incorporated numerous plant and animal products into their lives, economies, cultures, traditions and histories is well known, and is the subject of a multitude of academic and non-academic documents across many disciplines. Historically, the use of these products has underlain trade between cultures and continents and the domestication of many present day crops and breeds (Laws 2011), so much so, that most urban citizens in the developed world have forgotten the original wild origins of current day staples in foods (eg corn, potatoes, rice, tomatoes, oranges, melons, sugar, coffee, tea, spices), medicines (aspirin, codeine, quinine, strychnine), fibres (cotton, sisal, coir, hemp), resins (lacquer, gum Arabic, rubber, turpentine), dyes (cochineal, indigo, saffron), intoxicants (tobacco, mushrooms, cannabis, opium) and artefacts. While such staple foods, medicines and the like used by the ‘western’urban consumer have become domesticated and are now almost exclusively produced in farming systems or replaced by synthetic substitutes, thousands of other animal, plant and fungi species are still widely used by peoples around the world.
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Some implications of MetaReality for environmental educators
- Authors: Price, Leigh
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437034 , vital:73325 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter seeks to illuminate the use of dialectical critical realism in a PhD study that was conducted to explore and expand learning processes in sustain able agriculture work-place contexts (Mukute, 2010). The study was conducted in three case study sites in Leso-tho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. About 80 people in three study sites participated in the multiple case study research. In Zimbabwe the study was located in Hwedza District, St Margaret Primary School and its community that learns, practises and facilitates the learn-ing of Permaculture within the Schools and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE). In South Africa the study took place in Durban urban and peri-urban areas where a communi-ty of organic farmers, facilitators and entrepreneurs co-ordinated the marketing of their produce through Isidore Farm and Earth Mother Organic and support each other to learn and practise organic farming. In Lesotho the study took place in the Mafeteng and Mohale’s Hoek districts where the focus was on farmers who learn and practise the Machobane Farming System (MFS) and were supported in this by the Rural Self Development As-sociation (RSDA) and the Machobane Agricultural Develop-ment Foundation (MADF ). The other research participants were agricultural extension workers who tend to promote high external input agriculture, sustain able agriculture researchers and organic produce marketers.
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Standard Practices
- Authors: Amendt, Jens , Anderson, G , Campobasso, Carlo P , Dadour, I R , Gaudry, E , Hall, Martin J R , Moretti, T C , Sukontason, K L , Villet, Martin H
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/442821 , vital:74036 , ISBN , https://www.routledge.com/Forensic-Entomology-International-Dimensions-and-Frontiers/Tomberlin-Benbow/p/book/9780367575885
- Description: The use of forensic entomology has become established as a global science. Recent efforts in the field bridge multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, microbiology, chemistry, genetics, and systematics as well as ecology and evolution. The first book of its kind, Forensic Entomology: International Dimensions and Frontiers provides an inclusive summary of worldwide research on this body of knowledge that integrates aspects of a wide range of scientific realms. The book first reviews the history of forensic entomology, its accomplishments, and future challenges in nations around the world. It then provides perspectives of other scientific disciplines that are shaping the questions being addressed in the field.
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Steel Valley and the absence of environmental justice in the new South Africa: Critical realism's kinship with environmental justice
- Authors: Munnik, Victor
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437067 , vital:73328 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: In this chapter I report work with critical realist perspective and tools to examine and review prevailing dispositions on indige-nous and institutional knowledge (Western science) in envi-ronmental learning. I open with a review of some of the macro social processes that have come to inscribe assumptions of incommensur able difference between the two kinds of knowledge. Whilst the previous hegemony of positivism would have resulted in the dismissal of much indigenous knowledge as mere superstition, contemporary intellectual perspectives (poststructural and hermeneutical) have shaped a proliferation of worldview modelling that has resulted in a macro-level ex-emplifying of indigenous knowledge as different from and op-posing Western science (Cobern and Aikenhead, 1998; Ai-kenhead, 2006). Here, the lack of adequate mediating tools has given rise to a problematic inscription of assumed differ-ence between the knowledge of indigenous peoples and that of scientific institutions. Furthermore, despite an overt emanci-patory intention in worldview discourses, the marginalization of indigenous peoples and knowledge remains. I then move into the micro arena with a case study of learning interactions in the South African science curriculum. Specifically, I explore some patterns of exclusion in relation to the manner in which stu-dents are able to gain access to the knowledge of scientific institutions. The experience and evidence reported is of a pre-liminary nature but the insights and emerging models of pro-cess provide a useful perspective on how assumed incom-mensurability of knowledge can be tenuous. The study suggests that a critical engagement with both indigenous knowledge and Western science can reveal integrative synergies.
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The emergence of environmental ethics discourses in laminated, open systems: Some educational considerations
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437094 , vital:73330 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: The contemporary social-ecological condition is characterized by powerful changes in the way that we relate to each other and to the environment. This has led to increased ecological vulnerability, which is also accompanied by ongoing, and in-creased societal vulnerability. Nevertheless there remain op-portunities for developing new social-ecological relations, and for social-ecological learning and change. This would seem to require a strong project of recovering ontology, and a challeng-ing and broadening of dominant ways of knowing (Mignolo, 2000) that also tend to commit what Bhaskar describes as the ‘epistemic fallacy’, or the ‘the analysis or reduction of being to knowledge of being’ (Bhaskar, 2010, p. 1). In response, Bhaskar (ibid.) suggests critical realism as an alternative that embodies a ‘compatibility of ontological realism, epistemologi-cal relativism and judgmental rationality’. This includes a ‘re-vindication of ontology’ and the possibility of recognizing and accounting for structure, difference and change in the world in ways that escape ontological actualism and ontological mono-valence or ‘the generation of a purely positive account of reali-ty’ (ibid., p. 15).
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Working with critical realist perspective and tools at the interface of indigenous and scientific knowledge in a science curriculum setting
- Authors: O'Donoghue, Rob B
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437081 , vital:73329 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
- Description: This chapter uses basic and dialectical critical realism to exam-ine and review prevailing dispositions on indigenous and insti-tutional knowledge (Western science) in environmental educa-tion processes. It examines some of the macro social pro-cesses that have inscribed assumptions of incommensurable differences between the two kinds of knowledge. It notes that whereas a previous hegemony of positivism would have re-sulted in the dismissal of much indigenous knowledge as mere superstition, contemporary intellectual perspectives (poststruc-tural and hermeneutical) have shaped a proliferation of worldview modelling that has resulted in a macro-level exempli-fying of indigenous knowledge as different and opposing Western science. Here, the lack of adequate mediating tools has given rise to a problematic inscription of assumed differ-ence between the knowledge of indigenous peoples and that of scientific institutions. Furthermore, despite an overt emancipatory intention in worldview discourses, the marginalization of indigenous peoples and knowledge remains.
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'We must start with our own children’: reflectively researching intergenerational leadership for social justice, education, and sustainability
- Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437207 , vital:73353 , ISBN 978-9086862528 , https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-802-5_1
- Description: This paper was prepared today, 13 December 2013, for this book on ‘Intergenerational learning and transformative leader-ship for sustainable futures’, to be released in November 2014 at a World Conference to mark the end of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UN-DESD) in Nago-ya, Japan. The UNDESD was born in Johannesburg in 2002; it was an outcome of the Johannesburg Implementation Plan formulated by world leaders at the World Summit on Sustaina-ble Development, hosted by the South African government, building on the earlier Rio Earth Summit. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela attended the opening of the World Summit on Sus-tainable Development soon after he left office as the first dem-ocratically elected President of the Republic of South Africa. He passed away a week ago today, on 5 December 2013, at the age of 95. His life story is well known. I write here about his words ‘We must start with our own children’.
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A reflection on the use of case studies as a methodology for social learning research in sub Saharan Africa
- Authors: Cundill, Georgina , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Mukute, Mutizwa , Belay, Million , Shackleton, Sheona , Kulundu, Iinjairu
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436636 , vital:73288 , ISBN 1573-5214 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2013.04.001
- Description: A recent review has highlighted that the methodology most commonly employed to research social learning has been the individual case study. We draw on four examples of social learning research in the environmental and sustainability sci-ences from sub-Saharan Africa to reflect on possible reasons behind the preponderance of case study research in this field, and to identify common elements that may be significant for social learning research more generally. We find that a com-mon interest in change oriented social learning, and therefore processes of change, makes case studies a necessary ap-proach because long term process analyses are required that are sensitive to social-ecological contexts. Common elements of the examples reflected upon included: a focus on initiating, tracking and/or understanding a process of change toward sustainability; long term research; an action research agenda that involves reflecting on data with research participants; and temporal, process based analysis of data coupled with in-depth theoretical analysis. This paper highlights that there is significant scope for exploratory research that compares case studies of social learning research to generate a deeper un-derstanding of social learning processes, and their relationship to human agency and societal change.
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Adolescent pregnancy: A feminist issue
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434360 , vital:73051 , ISBN 978-1-4899-8025-0 , https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-8026-7_6
- Description: Pregnancy and mothering are enduring and central concerns of feminism. DiQuinzo (1999) sums this up in stating that “mothering is both an important site at which the central concepts of feminist theory are elaborated and a site at which these concepts are challenged and reworked.” Stephens (2004) argues, ‘…reproduction and mothering are central to theories of patriarchy and women’s unequal position in Western society…Childbirth can paradoxically be seen as both a cause of women’s subordinate position in society and a means of empowerment.’ Yet, despite the pivotal nature of pregnancy and mothering in feminist literature, there has been surprisingly little direct engagement by feminists in the area of ‘adolescent pregnancy.’ The engagement that there has been is a whisper in relation to the plethora of public health, medical, and psychological writings on ‘adolescent pregnancy.’ The feminists who have engaged with ‘adolescent pregnancy’ have, from their initial engagement and to varying degrees, tried to undermine simple interpretations of ‘adolescent pregnancy’ as a social problem and to link micro- and macro-level gender relations to occurrence of, and responses to, ‘adolescent pregnancy.’ Thus, for example, in the 1980s, Chilman (1985) asserted, ‘Sexism particularly afflicts programs and policies for these young people [unmarried teenage parents] as well as the behaviors that lead up to their becoming unmarried parents.’ In the 1990s, Pillow (1997), using a combination of feminist and postmodern theory, argued that ‘teen research and policy interventions can be understood as entrenched in the dilemmas of modernism, resulting often in normative assumptions that reflect our paradoxical attitudes and practices concerning female sexuality.’ More recently, Wilson and Huntington (2005) observed ‘adolescent pregnancy’ at a time when rates of fertility among young women are decreasing in ‘Western’ societies is ‘underpinned by changing social and political imperatives regarding the role of women in these countries.’
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Climate Change and Environmental Challenges in Southern African Development Community (SADC): Responses in the Age of Globalisation
- Authors: Chikunda, Charles , Mandikonza, Caleb
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437249 , vital:73363 , ISBN 9789462098367 , https://brill.com/display/book/9789462098367/BP000009.xml
- Description: There is evidence that one of the greatest controversies facing Africa today is how to make sense of the two leading global intentions of the 21st century: sustainable development and globalisation. These two paradigms appear to have some op-posing tendencies within them, some of which are contestable. Globalisation advocates for liberalisation; reduction or elimina-tion of state regulations on the market, free reign, and a high degree of rights to the large corporations that dominate the market. Globalisation also entails the cross flow of knowledge and knowledge forms.
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