1,721,005 research outputs found
“Half a man?” Still a human: Narratives on the impact of a spinal cord injury on coloured men living with paraplegia
Get PDFThere is an overwhelming body of research in the Global North that focuses on the narratives of the impact of a spinal cord injury on men living with paraplegia, while existing research in South Africa and the Global South lacks knowledge on these narratives. This study explored the narratives on the impact of a spinal cord injury on fifteen coloured men living with paraplegia on the Cape Flats. This study adopted a life story approach, as a primary research methodology, and examined how these men constructed and told their life stories, how meanings and experiences of living with paraplegia were conveyed, and how they negotiated
the intersection of disability, masculinity, race, class and sexuality in their lives. A participatory action research (PAR) methodology, photo-voice, was used as a complimentary methodology which depicted how these men visually represented the way they think main-stream society sees them and the way they see themselves. Drawing on Frank’s (1995) work on narratives and illness, this study used two life stories and theoretically shows how life stories with a central focus on paraplegia as a spinal cord injury are constructed and narrated. Through a narrative thematic analysis, themes and sub-themes highlighted the complexities and tensions in the construction and performance of masculinities after the injury. The following themes emerged from the narratives: feelings of shame and infantilization, a loss of independency, dehumanizing social perceptions of being a man living with a disability, vulnerability to violence, and challenges in sexual intercourse and intimacy. The narratives also show that a
man in this context can develop a positive sense of self through learning to live independently, strategies to prevent violence, redefining sex, and redefining what it means to be a man and ‘disabled’
Empowering minds, body and soul: An evaluative case-study of the perceptions of the extent of women empowerment within a Higher Certificate in Education in Adult Education course at UCT
Get PDFThe Adult Education sector in South Africa (SA) occupies a crucial space in higher education (HE) in terms of securing access and opportunities for a diverse group of non-traditional students to further their development. Amongst this diversity are highly marginalized subgroupings of adult learners, especially black working-class women. Participation of these women within HE requires serious attention given the low social ranking that this group continues to occupy in all spheres. Evidence drawn from Adult Education research suggests that not enough attention has been given to this group of learners with respect to how they are impacted by issues of geographic, cultural and racial diversity in the Adult Education setting. This study undertaken here reports on transformative dimensions underlining Adult Education pedagogy, with a specific focus on the concept of empowerment and how this is attained by RPL learners. A qualitative case-study methodology using a critical interpretive perspective grounded in phenomenological enquiry, was used to develop contextual understandings of four disadvantaged adult female learners' experiences of their transitions into HE. The focus is on these learners' perceptions of the forms of empowerment they have gained from their participation in a Higher Certificate in Education in Adult Education (HCEAE) course, and the extent to which such empowerment has impacted positive change in their lives, even beyond the course. The argument made in this qualitative study is that the active participation of marginalized black women in Adult Education, does lead to the attainment of multiple levels of self-empowerment. Such empowerment is realized when the objectives of national educational provisions, operationalized through Adult Education legislature, are correctly aligned with the transformative and social justice mission of Adult Education theory and practice. Proper alignment yields desirable outcomes in terms of enabling transformative learning environments that engender experiences of self-empowerment, agency and control. To this effect, an evaluative study was conducted of the Higher Certificate in Education in Adult Education (HCEAE) course offered by the University of Cape Town. The findings in this study demonstrate that factors such as race, geographic setting and cultural location, impact experiences of empowerment amongst adult learners. Furthermore, it is evident that such experiences of empowerment is a multi-layered and dynamic process which occur at cognitive, personal and social levels that can only be realized through praxis. The bringing together of educational policy, theory, and practice in proactive and productive ways in this study, also offers the potential for designing new hybrid frameworks for assessing the extent to which Adult Education provisions successfully achieve their transformative function, beyond the educational setting
Power and performativity in prison: exploring male sex workers' experiences and performances of gender and sexuality pre/during/post-incarceration
Get PDFThis study explores the narratives of men who become male sex workers after being in prison. This study looks at prison as a fluid space for sexual expression and gender performativity, which is ironic given the view of prison as punitive and repressive. Sex within the South African prison system is silenced and taboo particularly within the Number prison gang where sex is heavily regulated, ritualized and fiercely guarded. The research question asks how do men who are or become male sex workers construct and perform their gendered and sexual identities in prison and on the street? This qualitative study employs the organizing metaphor of dramaturgy to explore how prison as a social setting (stage) impacts on the gendered and sexual performances of men (actors) who have been incarcerated. Drawing on Foucault's theories of the repressive hypothesis and peripheral sexualities (1990), Butler's theory of performativity (1990) and Gagnon and Simon's scripting theory (1973) this study illustrates theoretically how prison sex culture and male sex work can be theorized from a feminist standpoint perspective. This feminist study is located in the social constructionist paradigm. It is underpinned by grounded theory and narrative methodology to explore the narratives of men who have been incarcerated and continue into sex work post-release. Biographical interviews were conducted with 15 men who were participants in a male sex work support group. Findings revealed two overarching themes in the narratives that explain how men construct and perform their gendered and sexual identities in prison. Renegotiation was the process where the subject engaged in an internalized monologue with self, constantly exploring and (re)constructing the gendered and sexual self in response to the shifting contexts of prison and the streets. Negotiation was the process where the subject engaged in an external dialogue with others. Through interactions with others, they were able to perform gender and sexuality publicly. By framing it within the discourse of dramaturgy, this study shows an alternative view of prison sex culture. (Re)imagining prison as the 'stage', prisoners as the 'actors', prison rituals as the 'script' and identity performances as the 'act', we can begin to envision an alternative script and narrative of prison unfolding
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Unpacking the notion of ‘criticality’ in liberatory praxis: A critical pedagogy perspective
Get PDFThis paper is informed by the field of socially just pedagogies. A critical pedagogy perspective grounded in a transformative and liberatory praxis is employed to discuss why the notion of criticalityis fundamental to classroom engagement, especially within historically white South African universities. Although widely adopted, the meanings attached to criticality varies. This paper focusses on criticality as used within critical pedagogy and argues that it ushers in a humanising classroom pedagogy that facilitates dialogic relationships and promotes student agency and critical social consciousness. Through employing a qualitative case study methodology, this research draws on data extracted from two courses on identity. Acritically reflective gaze is adopted to examine the impact of criticality in these spaces. Criticality embedded in dialogic praxis was found to aid the development of agency and raise critical awareness about socially just societies. Teachers’ responsibilities for being agents of change, was also highlighted
Writing Your World Week 3 Video 10 - Giving feedback on Ada’s paragraph
No full textThis video focuses on Ada's paragraph construction. The video starts by recapping the sentence structure for the paragraphs. It then defines Ada's writing style and goes on to explain her use of personal narratives to support her ideas. The video then analyses Ada's sentence by sentence. It points out the strength and weakness in her sentences. The video then shows her sentences and paragraphs could be re-arranged. There is a focus on the flow and coherence within the paragraphs. The video then discusses how Ada can improve her writing. This is video 10/12 in week 3 of the Writing your World course
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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