3 research outputs found
Beautiful Justice: The Role of Aesthetic Beauty in Restoring Transcendent Connection
No full textThis article seeks to illuminate how colonial and apartheid systems dispossessed people of colour in South Africa of the natural and cultural beauty inherent in their ancestral, socio-cultural and/or lived environments. It underscores how these systems forced people into survival conditions that hindered their capacity to cultivate beauty in their surroundings, cultural practices, and inner lives. Beauty, which often plays a central role in fostering psycho-spiritual development and connection, was systematically disrupted, distorted, and undermined. Within the arts therapies, there lies a unique potential to address these intergenerational disruptions by facilitating experiences of beauty as a pathway to restorative healing and justice
Enrich the narrative, empower the leader: the role of narradrama in enriching the narratives of women in corporate leadership
No full textResearch report submitted to the Wits School of Arts University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the field of Drama Therapy, August 2017This research aimed to explore problem-saturated narratives about self-efficacy in
leadership amongst a group of women leaders from corporate organisations in
Johannesburg, and the effectiveness of narradrama (Dunne, 2009) a drama therapy
method, in enriching these narratives. Analysis points to the pervasiveness of gendered
notions of men and women in society and how this plays out in the contexts of corporate
organisations.
The rationale for this study was that if corporate leadership is an historically socio-culturally
male-dominated and gender-stereotyped domain from which women have been excluded,
and in which traits stereotypically associated with women were undervalued, then
dominant narratives embedded in this domain could be that women are not effective
leaders, and that they do not belong. This could negatively affect perceived self-efficacy in
leadership among women, and indirectly, efforts to address gender disparity in the context
of corporate leadership.
Sociocultural development theory (Vygotsky, 1978), and empowerment theory (Rappaport,
1987, Zimmerman, 2000), both of which assert the primacy of the sociocultural context in
learning and development, theoretically informed the research. Thematic analysis was used
to identify key themes.
The research showed that problem-saturated narratives about leadership self-efficacy did
exist and that narradrama proved effective in fostering enriched narrative possibilities
amongst participants.XL201
Editorial: Psycho-Spiritual Practices in Arts Therapies in Africa and the Global South
No full textThe late Zulu sangoma and keeper of African wisdom, Credo Mutwa, once reflected on a profound moment of healing that challenged his understanding of therapeutic intervention. Having exhausted Western medical approaches to address his psychological distress following a violent attack in 1937, it was his grandfather, a man dismissed by missionaries as an ‘ungodly heathen’, who ultimately restored him to health (Mutwa, 1964). This experience led Mutwa (1964) to question why those dismissed by missionaries as ‘ungodly heathens’ possessed healing knowledge that Western medicine lacked. This poignant reflection encapsulates the central tension that this special issue of the South African Journal of Arts Therapies seeks to address
