What we can and cannot learn from the history of world population

Mankind is passing through an exceptional phase of accelerated population growth that generates anxiety about the future. How many billion people will share the limited resources of our globe a century from now? What will be the consequences of globalization for human behaviour? How will individuals react to emerging new constraints? What will be the consequences of climate change for human society? Obviously enough, history cannot offer operational answers to these crucial questions. Nevertheless, history offers some interesting insights into demographic behaviour experienced in the past that could be replicated in the future, with the variations and adaptations dictated by the changing contexts. In other words, there are constants and structures in human behaviour, and there are robust mechanisms in the functioning of demographic systems that are of some help in preparing us to deal with the future.     

Coming-Out Confessions: Negotiating the Burden of Lesbian Identity Politics in South Africa

For lesbians, “coming out” or disclosing one’s sexual orientation has come to be seen as a marker of self-acceptance, actualization, and the imperative first step in the authentication of a liberated subjectivity and social identity. However, other critical schools of thought, largely informed by Foucault’s middle writings, have argued that “coming out” is merely a confessional response to an incitement to discourse about sex. This study explored constructions of coming out by a group of self-identified lesbians in South Africa. Data were collected via eight semistructured interviews and subjected to discourse analysis. Although the coming-out stories appear to conform to some discursive practices characterizing confessional modes of response to incitements to speak, they are also de-emphasized as central to the constitution of selfhood. The changing conditions of possibility for the production of sexual subjectivity in contemporary South Africa seem to disrupt understandings of coming out as either solely a confessional or liberatory practice.     

Poverty,Consent, and Choice in Early Marriage: Ethnographic Perspectives from Urban Tanzania

The assumed inability of adolescents to voluntarily consent to marriage is a key definition of child marriage. Using ethnography, this study approaches consent, self-determination, and fulfillment as dependent on the ability to make choices, not only between actual alternatives but also between perceived alternatives. In contexts of severe poverty, more attention is needed to the lack of viable alternatives open to families, and their motives in this context. In this study, 171 persons were interviewed in two majority-Muslim neighborhoods in Dar es Salaam. Some girls reported wanting to marry early, since poverty forces them to become adults capable of supporting themselves at roughly age 15–16, regardless of the personal wishes of their parents or guardians. Prior research tends to assume that early marriage prevents girls from continuing their education. This study suggests that educational opportunities are often closed off to girls before marriage. Policy recommendations given here are that organizations can more effectively address early marriage by (1) shifting the focus from legislation to urban poverty alleviation, (2) creating more employment opportunities for the poorest women in the city, (3) campaigning for more gender-equal attitudes in the informal employment sector, and (4) reducing financial costs of secondary schooling for adolescents.     

The “baboon boy” of the Eastern Cape and the making of the human in South Africa

Abstract

This paper examines the early twentieth century story of Lucas, the so-called “baboon boy” of the Eastern Cape, in order to unpack some of the mechanisms (social, ideological, racial and physical) that underlie the shaping of the idea of the human in a local context. By exhuming the material details in Lucas’s story, I aim to establish a form of relation between past and present that enables a deeper understanding of the tensions underscoring contemporary public discourse around the formation of the human in South Africa. First, I draw on Agamben’s notion of the anthropological machine to contextualise my thoughts on the mechanics of ideation that underpin the creation of legitimate forms of the human. Then I situate my argument according to Baucom’s articulation of the conflict in postcolonial and ecocritical thought between the historical need for redress and the universalising demands of the Anthropocene. After considering Lucas’s story, I close by referring to the recent public opinion fracas surrounding the discovery of the fossilised remains of a new subspecies of human, Homo naledi, in order to demonstrate the continued relevance for contemporary social thought of the stuff that lies submerged in the story of the “baboon boy.”     

Making sense of the politics of sanitation in Cape Town

Abstract

The paper examines the history and politics of sanitation and urban belonging and citizenship in Cape Town. It traces the cultural histories of waste and odour in order to reveal the embedding of liberal citizenship, as well as technology, in the body. We do this to make sense of why and how toilets and waste have become recent objects and instruments of struggle in Cape Town, and elsewhere. The paper shows that these political struggles did not arise from nowhere; their emergence is the outcome of historically and materially sustained contradictions that are fundamental to liberal governance.     

Politics of innovation and development: The role of industry associations in integrating political,bureaucratic, industrial and health systems in India and South Africa

Integrating political, bureaucratic, industrial and healthcare systems has been a major challenge for politics of innovation and development policy in low‐ and middle‐income countries. This challenge has so far been understood in terms of separate industrial and health‐related innovation policies without paying adequate attention to the institutional roles of biopharmaceutical and other umbrella associations. This article seeks to examine such roles in the developmental contexts of South Africa and India. The argument put forward is that, in both countries, biopharmaceutical and umbrella associations have evolved from lobbying organizations to institutional partners who influence the politics of innovation and development—and therefore the degree of integration and fragmentation—of political, bureaucratic, industrial innovation and health systems.     

Respect in intergenerational relationships: Young adult women’s motivations

Care and respect are two sides of the same coin, yet very little is known about respect shown by younger women in relation to people aged 60 and older. This study sets out to explore what motivates young adult women to respect older people. Twenty-five post-graduate women from a tertiary education institution in South Africa participated in the Mmogo-method®, a projective visual data-collection method, to produce textual and visual data. These were analysed using sequential and visual analysis. Findings reported combinations of motivational types for respect of older people, on a continuum from extrinsic (socialised normative values) to intrinsic (personal choice and empathy), and from conditional to unconditional, namely: extrinsic/conditional; extrinsic/unconditional; self-motivated/conditional and self-motivated/unconditional. Respect as an impact on relational interactions between people is either constructive and encouraging or damaging and disparaging. Interpersonal risks are associated with motivation and this could affect future interactions and manifestations of intergenerational respect.     

The concept of a child within sub‐Saharan African migrant homes: Reconciling culture and child rights

As international migration increases, the Australian socio‐cultural and political context in which sub‐Saharan African migrant families are settling is causing tension between traditional sub‐Saharan African migrant definitions of child and childhood experiences and host nation definitions particularly when compared with the child protection system. This paper seeks to explore and highlight the fundamental values and differences that determine perceptions and treatment of children within traditional sub‐Saharan African communities. Using a qualitative design, this study was influenced by acculturation theory. Four major themes emerged from the analysis: (a) culture and the sub‐Saharan African child, (b) moulding good children, (c) family functioning and relationships, and (d) host context: perceptions of Australian mainstream parenting. The study found that in order to successfully make decisions that are in the best interest of sub‐Saharan African migrant children that come to the attention of the child protection system, discussions about children rights can only yield good outcomes when the child's socio‐cultural environment is considered.     

Anarchist/syndicalist and independent Marxist intersections in post-apartheid struggles,South Africa: the WSF/ZACF current in Gauteng, 1990s–2010s

ABSTRACT

South Africa has a long-established independent left, outside the big traditions of nationalism and Marxism-Leninism. Post-apartheid its fortunes have varied considerably, as space opened up for movements to the left of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, but opportunities declined as the state increased its legitimacy, penetration of civil society, and systems of patronage. This paper looks at cooperation, competition and convergence on the independent left, with particular reference to independent Marxists (mainly the well-established Trotskyist tradition) and revolutionary anarchists and syndicalists (a movement that revived in the 1990s). These intersections have taken place in study groups, popular education, student struggles, and post-apartheid social movements and unions, and indicate the vitality and fragility of the independent left, and the ongoing importance of cooperation and overlaps, as well as of long-standing divisions over theory and strategy. Particular attention is paid to Keep Left, the Socialist Group, the Democratic Socialist Movement, and the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front.