Mindsets of change agents for development: a case study of the Sundays River Valley, Eastern Cape
- Authors: Bezuidenhout, Theo Gerhardus
- Date: 2024-04
- Subjects: Social change , Sustainable development -- South Africa , Well-being , Economic development -- Social aspects
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/64874 , vital:73937
- Description: Societal development in underdeveloped areas is a process of enhancing and improving the quality of life in communities, with a focus on meeting their social, economic, environmental, and political needs. Despite ideological efforts and growing interest in movements, mobilisations and communities promoting social change, little research has been done on the mindsets of change agents. Margaret Archer’s (1988), Morphogenetic Approach to social development has been used in this case as a theoretical framework emphasising that social change and development occur through interactions between individuals and their social environments. This approach focusses on the importance of feedback loops, where changes in the environment and the reactions of individuals to these changes both influence and are influenced by one another. Through reflective learning, semistructured interviews and document analysis, the dissertation explored research questions concerning different perspectives of change agents in the Sundays River Valley. The theories examined provide options of theoretical frameworks which can be used to assess and evaluate the work and role of change agents to participate in societal development. This is important in the Sundays River Valley context as, up to now, there has been no shortage or lack of development plans and policies for the area. Rather, what has been absent is the theoretical frameworks to provide the context and meaning for change agents to participate in societal development and occupy their role in the various development plans and policies. Collaborative development and participation acknowledge that solving complex social problems requires the efforts of multiple organisations, individuals, and generations. To enable societal development requires social trust and cooperation of multiple stakeholders, including government, community members, businesses, development agencies, non-governmental organisations and educational institutions. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences, School of Economics, Development and Tourism , 2024
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- Date Issued: 2024-04
“Around Hip Hop” : rethinking and reconstructing urban youth identities in South Africa - a case study of Fingo Village, Makhanda
- Authors: Futshane, Luniko
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Hip-hop South Africa Makhanda , Urban youth South Africa Makhanda , Youth development South Africa Makhanda , Social change , Multiculturalism , Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406760 , vital:70305
- Description: The main objective of this thesis is to investigate how conscious hip hop culture is used to reconstruct and influence urban youth identities in South Africa, in the case of Fingo Village, Makhanda. In addition, it aims to understand how the South African conscious hip hop scene, appropriated from the West, can be used to shape the identities of the urban youth, instead of the materialistic commercial/mainstream gangsta rap that is currently dominating popular culture and media today. Kellner’s (1995: 10) multicultural critical approach is appropriate for this thesis, as it “provides a critical multiculturalist politics and media pedagogy that aims to make people sensitive to the relations of power and domination which are encoded in cultural texts, such as those of television and film, or new technologies and media such as Internet, and social networking”. Moreover, in the words of Cvetkovich and Kellner (cited in Dolby, 2010:11), this dissertation “investigates the increasing influence of global popular culture and its possibility to equip the urban youth with new sources of identification”, as well as opportunities for social change. In Makhanda, rappers, community activists, B-Boy crews, graffiti artists, spoken-word poets, photographers, and journalists all assembled in Fingo Village for the social event Around Hip Hop, at the multipurpose Fingo square, between 2011 and 2019. Today, Around Hip Hop is an arts based organization that produces hip hop mixtapes, short documentaries, and educational events aimed at creating a cross-cultural exchange and increasing awareness of South African politics. Around Hip Hop has hosted various events, dialogues, and performances where hip hop is used as a cultural expression, which continuously creates spaces for the urban youth to rethink and reconstruct their identities; not only as artists, but as audience members as well. Events, such as The Return of the Cypher, Intyatyamo Elityeni, and Business beyond Fingo Festival all form part of Around Hip Hop. The Return of the Cypher is an open music event, where rappers, usually gathered in a circular formation with one or more artists performing in the middle, showcase their skills. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight local hip hop artists in Makhanda, in order to investigate how conscious hip hop is used to rethink and reconstruct urban youth identities. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Sociology, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
A morphogenetic study of ESD inclusion in Namibia’s Senior Primary English curriculum: a case study of the Khomas Region
- Authors: Malua, Anelly Ndapewa
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Sustanable development -- Study and teaching -- Namibia , Environmental education -- Namibia , English language -- Study and teaching (Elementary) -- Namibia , Schools -- Namibia -- Curricula , Social change
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142865 , vital:38124
- Description: Education policies are designed to structure and direct the content and process of the education that citizens receive. This includes the advancement of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) policy in formal school curricula. If effectively implemented, ESD can be a significant educational intervention in southern African countries’ development trajectories. ESD incorporates the environmental, social and economic pillars of Sustainable Development and it has the potential to curb issues such as poverty reduction, climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. This qualitative case study investigated factors that have historically shaped, and currently shape, the emergence of ESD implementation in the Senior Primary English curriculum in the Khomas Region of Namibia. As a critical realist enquiry, the study sought to go beyond interpretations of the empirical to identify causal mechanisms in the domains of ‘the actual’ and ‘the real’. The study was guided by Margaret Archer’s theory of Morphogenesis / Morphostasis and her methodological tool of ‘analytical dualism’. The case record consisted of educational documents, teacher questionnaires and semistructured interviews. The morphogenetic approach highlighted how the implementation of ESD through the Senior Primary English curriculum from 1990 to 2018 was conditioned by the interplay of social and cultural structures and mechanisms and human agency, particularly teachers’ agency. The study revealed that although ESD implementation has emerged in the Senior Primary English curriculum, its emergence is not synchronous with the structural and agential entities. The findings point to a policy-structure mismatch which has relevance for policy makers, practitioners and other ESD stakeholders. The significance of this study is that it stands to fill a research gap regarding ESD implementation in Namibia’s Senior Primary English curriculum. The study makes recommendations for tangible ways to strengthen ESD practice in Senior Primary English teaching in Namibia such as increasing professional development opportunities to orientate teachers to ESD, strengthening networks that can build teacher agency in relation to ESD, and promoting a theme-based approach to ESD practice in English Language teaching.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Exploring affordances and hindrances when indigenous knowledge is integrated in the topic on waves and sound in a Grade 10 Physical Sciences township class
- Authors: Manyana, Xolani Justice
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Physical sciences -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- South Africa , Physical sciences -- Study and teaching (Secondary) -- South Africa -- Case studies , Ethnoscience -- Study and teaching -- South Africa , Schools -- South Africa -- Curricula , Social change
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142889 , vital:38173
- Description: The lack of interest and hence the decline in the number of learners doing Science in schools, is attributed in part to the decontextualised ways in which Science is taught. As an attempt to address this challenge, the new South African National Curriculum Policy Statement (CAPS) encourages Science teachers to use culturally responsive pedagogies through integrating local or indigenous knowledge (IK) in Science lessons to make it accessible and relevant to learners. But, it does not explicitly state how Science teachers should go about enacting this. It is against this caveat that this study aimed at finding out indigenous practices and knowledge in the community and from two community members that could be integrated into the topic on waves and sound in Grade 10 Physical Sciences lessons with the view to establishing its influence (or not) on learners’ conceptions and dispositions towards Science. The study was conducted at Buyelembo Combined School (pseudonym), a township school in the Sarah Baartman District, in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. The research participants were 18 Grade 10 Physical Sciences learners, two Physical Sciences teachers and two community members. Data were generated using the learners’ group activity, discussions and presentations, observations (participatory observations and lesson observations), stimulated recall interviews and reflections. A thematic and inductive-deductive approach to data analysis was employed to come up with sub-themes and themes. Underpinned by an interpretivist perspective and informed by Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, a qualitative case study approach was adopted. Additionally, Ogunniyi’s Contiguity Argumentative Theory (CAT) was used as an analytical framework. The five cognitive states of CAT were employed to analyse data during the social interactions to surface any contradictions. The findings from this study revealed that there are indigenous practices and knowledge in relation to the sea that can be integrated into the topic on waves and sound in Grade 10 Physical Sciences lessons. However, regarding relevance of those indigenous practices and knowledge to science, the study revealed that the learners found no relevance at all but discussions and argumentation were enhanced. In addition, findings from this study revealed that the learners’ conceptions, dispositions, and sense-making in science were influenced positively through using hands-on practical activities when teaching Science concepts. Lastly, the study revealed that the use of mother tongue by the community members, learners and the teachers together with the language of learning and teaching promoted learner talk. Based on the findings of this study, I recommend that there is a need to support teachers on how to integrate indigenous practices and knowledge in their teaching, particularly when teaching Physical Sciences.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Social needs as a driver of social innovation
- Authors: Dunn, Nicole Luciélle
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Social change , Social evolution Social entrepreneurship Community development -- Social conditions
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/21823 , vital:29782
- Description: Social innovation has been contextualised as a new way of resolving deeply entrenched development issues. The identification and resolution of social needs is said to be the driving force of social innovation. With features such as sustainability and scalability, social innovation has the potential to change the way we perceive and engage with development in the future. This research takes a critical look at how the social needs as a means to an end of social innovation, is identified. Previous research did not investigate the methodology of how these needs were identified and the question then arose as to how responsive the corresponding resolutions could be in resolving the need. Interviews were conducted with the founders of organisations that were considered socially innovative. Each founder was asked to detail the processes that took place in the social need identification that their respective organisation sought to resolve along with their personal journey towards becoming a founder, to gain a rich understanding of what shaped their approach to need identification. Organisations that were most critically responsive to the social needs identified were those that either 1) personally experienced deprivation of a social need in their own lives, or 2) had extensive engagement and exposure to individuals who had personally experienced the deprivation of a social need. It was evident that both the identification and corresponding resolution of social needs for social innovation require an approach that holds experiencers of the deprivation at the nucleus of the resolution. This methodology needs to be incorporated in the theory of social innovation and implemented in practice.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Smashing the crystal ball: post-structural insights associated with contemporary anarchism and the revision of blueprint utopianism
- Authors: Alexander, Tarryn Linda
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Social change , Utopian socialism -- Philosophy , Utopias -- Philosophy , Anarchism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3311 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003099 , Social change , Utopian socialism -- Philosophy , Utopias -- Philosophy , Anarchism
- Description: This thesis is an exploration of the images which define revolution's meaning. It suggests a possible shifting of emphasis from the scientific imaginary which centres on identifying the correct way to totalising revolution, towards a post-structuralist-anarchistic imaginary which privileges prefigurative radicalisations of social relations in the here and now. It looks specifically at how the field of post-structuralism intertwines with historically anarchist concepts to generate an horizon of social change animated by experimental and open-ended transformations. While the thesis offers positive characterisations of the types of contemporary movements, tactics and principles which embody the change from closed to open utopianism, it is chiefly a commentary on the role of theory in depicting the complexity of relations on the ground and the danger of proposing one totalising pathway from one state of society to another. It asks the reader to consider, given the achievements of movements and given the insights of post-structuralism, whether it is still worthwhile to proclaim certainty when sketching the possibilities for transcendence toward emancipation, an aim, which in itself, is always under construction. I engage this by firstly establishing a practical foundation for the critique of endpoints in theory by exploring the horizontal and prefigurative nature of a few autonomous movements today. Secondly I propose the contemporary theory of post-structuralist anarchism as concomitant with conclusions about transformation made in the first chapter. Finally I recommend a few initial concepts to start debate about the way forward from old objectivist models of transformation. The uncertainties of daily life, crumbling of economic powers and rapid pace of change in the twenty-first century have opened up fantastic spaces for innovative thought. Reconsidering old consensus around what constitutes a desirable image of revolution is of considerable importance given today's burgeoning bottom-up political energy and the global debate surrounding the possibilities for bottom-up revolutionisation of society. I submit that theories which portray stories of permanent, pure and natural end-points to revolution are deficient justifications for radical action.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Urban community development: an understanding of social change and identity in a social housing estate in post-apartheid South Africa
- Authors: Packery, Rajendra
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Communities , Social change , Community development -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , M Soc Sc
- Identifier: vital:11967 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/241 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/d1001312 , Communities , Social change , Community development -- South Africa
- Description: This study focuses on the lives of people living in a social housing estate which was a joint venture between the Housing Association of South Africa (HASA), a Netherlands based foundation and the Buffalo City Municipality. This type of social housing estate is a relatively new concept in post-apartheid South Africa and a first for the City of East London. Apartheid spawned the separation of different groups of people into racial enclaves. It also created barriers between races, advantaged certain races over others and created fear, hatred and general distrust among different racial groups in South Africa. The dislocation of apartheid was accompanied by rapid urbanization and ‘reconstruction’ of infrastructure and inter-racial relationships. The opening up of the country’s borders in compliance with Globalisation made South Africa a melting pot to people of different cultures. South African cities became fragmented and fear and strangeness was everywhere. Housing or the lack of it has been a constant problem that the new post apartheid government has grappled with. The solution of building RDP housing estates has not solved this burgeoning problem. But even more importantly it has failed to reorganize urban life in South Africa. In approaching this study I look at how these new social housing estates have reorganized urban life. I explore the concepts of community, home, generation, gender, material culture and ‘new’ urbanization to provide a framework for my study. This study is a qualitative study based in the city of East London in the Eastern Cape. It is a community study which attempts to go inside the home to unlock some of the intricacies of urban life. Ethnography is the research key used to unlock these intricacies.In conclusion, this study attempts to examine a non-western narrative of community life. Are these housing estates a solution to South Africa’s housing problem? Do they conform only to western narratives of urban life? What kind of citizens do these housing estates produce? These are some of the questions that this study hopes to answer.
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- Date Issued: 2009