Civil society and state-centred struggles
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/71231 , vital:29821 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2012.641723
- Description: This article is about civil society and state-centred struggles in contemporary Zimbabwe. I first identify and outline three current understandings of civil society. Two understandings (one Liberal, one Radical) are state-centric and exist firmly within the logic of state discourses and state politics. A third understanding, also Radical, is society-centric and speaks about politics existing at a distance from the state and possibly beyond the boundaries of civil society. This civil society-state discussion frames the second section of the article, which looks specifically at Zimbabwe. It details civil society as contested terrain (from the late 1990s onwards) within the context of a scholarly debate about agrarian transformation and political change. This debate, which reproduces (in theoretical garb) the key political society (or party) fault-lines within Zimbabwean society, has taken place primarily within the restricted confines of state-centred discourses.
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Marx, Weber and NGOs:
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144738 , vital:38375 , DOI: 10.1080/21528586.2007.10419171
- Description: This article offers a sociological understanding of intermediary NGOs in the modern world. In does so by drawing on certain epistemological insights of Marx and Weber, and this entails methodologies of both deconstruction and reconstruction. In arguing against a sociological behaviourism that pervades the NGO literature, the article conceptualises intermediary NGOs as a ‘social form’ embodying contradictory relations. For analytical purposes, the contradiction between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ is brought to the fore.
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Quality of life in Grahamstown, East London and Mdantsane: preliminary result
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D , Bekker, Simon , Lambie, Eileen
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144756 , vital:38376 , DOI: 10.1080/02580144.1981.10428933
- Description: A quality of life survey amongst residents of three Eastern Cape towns, viz. Grahamstown, East London, and Mdantsane, shows that the attitudes to home and neighbourhood which urban residents in the Eastern Cape develop, are fashioned in large part by both the residential “group area” in which these urban dwellers live, and by their socio-economic status. White residents, overwhelmingly, are satisfied with their diets, their municipality, their homes. They feel safe in their homes and are satisfied that police protection is available if needed. For black residents fear of poverty and unemployment, of physical violence, and dissatisfaction with an inadequate diet is widespread. Indian and coloured urban residents who are generally perceived as minorities in Grahamstown and East London, occupy an intermediate position. Their residential areas are sited close to predominantly low income black residential areas. Higher income Indian and coloured households show lower rates of dissatisfaction with diet, housing, and municipal services than the black community.
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