Louise Vincent | Rhodes University (original) (raw)

Papers by Louise Vincent

South African Review of Sociology, May 4, 2014

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Feb 1, 2006

South Africa is 10 years into its new democratic order. An aspect of the country's political ... more South Africa is 10 years into its new democratic order. An aspect of the country's political transformation has been an official political commitment to gender trans-formation. While great strides have been made towards greater gender equality at the institutional and legal level of society, the present article suggests that highly unequal power relations between men and women continue to be perpetuated in unexpected ways among those whom we would most expect to be capable of resistance. This paper is about how subtle yet deeply embedded ideologies and practices within heterosexual relationships serve to keep highly educated, apparently empowered and liberated women ‘in their place’, ensuring that they do not fulfil their potential. Traditionally women were socialised into assuming their positions in the home as caregivers and unpaid household labourers. The hope of feminism was that education, economic empowerment and an ideology of ‘can do’ independence would liberate women. However, for many women, it is in the most intimate aspects of their lives—in their sexual relationships with men—that this hope continues to be thwarted.

Journal of Southern African Studies, Jan 2, 2014

ABSTRACT

Sexualities, May 13, 2014

On 28 November 2006, South Africa’s legislature passed the Civil Union Act (No. 17, 2006), which ... more On 28 November 2006, South Africa’s legislature passed the Civil Union Act (No. 17, 2006), which legalised same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. While South Africa was fifth in the world to recognise the right of people of the same sex to marry, the country is by no means free of homophobic attitudes. However, we argue that an examination of the discourses embedded in the public discussion of gay marriage shows that the post-1994 period has not simply been a case of homophobia as usual. The altered context has given rise to the need for new ways of homophobic discourse to position itself. The rights enshrined in the Constitution represent a powerful set of ideas about the distinction between the democratic state and its apartheid predecessor. These ideas provide the dominant framework for political debate in the current context and it is therefore within this overarching framework that anti-gay sentiments must find a way to express themselves that has legitimacy. Our finding is that the reinscription of homophobia in an era of the ascendancy of human rights discourse has been chiefly in terms of three potent legitimising tropes – homosexuality as ‘unAfrican’, ‘unGodly’, and ‘unnatural’. It is only by deepening our understanding of the terms in which homophobia is being articulated in the current period that we can develop effective counter discourses

Culture, Health & Sexuality, Feb 1, 2012

The Journal of Legislative Studies, Mar 21, 2004

This paper argues that while quotas can quite easily be used rapidly to address the problem of in... more This paper argues that while quotas can quite easily be used rapidly to address the problem of insufficient numbers of women in representative political institutions, effec- tive representation requires us to pay attention to far more than merely the numbers of women present. This ...

African Journal of Disability, Sep 8, 2017

1.Teletype device allows deaf people to type their messages instead of speaking, often abbreviate... more 1.Teletype device allows deaf people to type their messages instead of speaking, often abbreviated as TTY. Background: South Africa's Constitution guarantees everyone, including persons with disabilities, the right to education. A variety of laws are in place obliging higher education institutions to provide appropriate physical access to education sites for all. In practice, however, many buildings remain inaccessible to people with physical disabilities. Objectives: To describe what measures South African universities are taking to make their built environments more accessible to students with diverse types of disabilities, and to assess the adequacy of such measures. Method: We conducted semi-structured in-depth face-to-face interviews with disability unit staff members (DUSMs) based at 10 different public universities in South Africa. Results: Challenges with promoting higher education accessibility for wheelchair users include the preservation and heritage justification for failing to modify older buildings, ad hoc approaches to creating accessible environments and failure to address access to toilets, libraries and transport facilities for wheelchair users. Conclusion: South African universities are still not places where all students are equally able to integrate socially. DUSMs know what ought to be done to make campuses more accessible and welcoming to students with disabilities and should be empowered to play a leading role in sensitising non-disabled members of universities, to create greater awareness of, and appreciation for, the multiple ways in which wheelchair user students continue to be excluded from full participation in university life. South African universities need to adopt a systemic approach to inclusion, which fosters an understanding of inclusion as a fundamental right rather than as a luxury.

Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nov 1, 2008

Politikon, May 1, 2004

This article argues that in the dominant discourse of the academy a questionable binary between r... more This article argues that in the dominant discourse of the academy a questionable binary between reason and emotion holds sway. This binary is profoundly gendered with the emotional and bodily situated on the feminine side of the binary while reason and intellect are on the male side. Moreover, the binary is not neutral. The expression of emotion is viewed as undermining the capacity for reason and intellect. The article attempts to disrupt the false logic of this binary, arguing that our passions and emotions are necessarily implicated in processes of learning, knowledge production, pedagogy and truth seeking. If we wish to achieve the goal of engaged, critically thinking students which many of us claim to want to achieve, we need to speak, in Freire's terms, ‘true words’ which involves acknowledging the role of love, anger, fear and all the other aspects of our identity as academics and of the identity of our students which impact on our interaction in the academy.

Journal of Asian and African Studies, May 4, 2011

Higher education research and development, Mar 8, 2017

The post-apartheid higher education transformation project is faced with the challenge of recruit... more The post-apartheid higher education transformation project is faced with the challenge of recruiting and retaining black academics and other senior staff. But when we shift the focus from participation rates to equality-inequality within historically white universities (HWUs), then the discourse changes from demographic equity and redress to institutional culture and diversity. HWUs invoke the need to maintain their position as leading higher education institutions globally, and notions of 'quality' and 'excellence' have emerged as discursive practices, which serve to perpetuate exclusion. The question then arises as to which forms of capital comprise the Gold Standard at HWUs? Several South African universities have responded to the challenge of recruiting and retaining black academics by initiating programmes for the 'accelerated development' of these candidates. The Accelerated Development Programme (ADP) on which this investigation is based was located at one HWU. The paper draws on interviews with 18 black lecturers who entered the academic workforce through the university's ADP. Employing a theoretical framework of social and cultural reproduction, we examine how racialised, classed and gendered assumptions remain deeply entrenched in the values, norms and practices of historically white measured universities in South Africa. The findings suggest that it is difficult for even the most conscious and personally invested agents to interrupt the naturalised norms and values that form part of the existing institutional culture. Agents struggle to interrupt normalised practices because of the highly valued currency of capital possessed by dominant actors in the form of white-middleclass habitus, disguised as academic experience and 'excellence'.

African Journal of Disability, Jan 29, 2019

The purpose of this study was to examine challenges faced by learners with disabilities in instit... more The purpose of this study was to examine challenges faced by learners with disabilities in institutions of higher learning. The research adopted a qualitative approach using a sample of 32 disabled persons in four provinces in Zimbabwe. Data were collected through unstructured indepth interviews. The results of the study indicate that the term "disability" is a "disabling word" that had limited people with disability to make progress in their lives. Despite their effort to live positively, disabled persons suffer a glut of challenges, which include stigmatization, social exclusion and inaccessibility of facilities and failure to cope with fast moving technology. Disability is used as a 'dividing curtain' between those with "disabilities" and those without."The term has promoted the "them and us dichotomy". Many people with disabilities are called by nature of their disability instead of their real names especially the visually impaired and physically challenged. This affects people with disability in education, employment arena and their interaction with the wider society.

Asian Women, Jun 1, 2005

This article draws on solicited diary entries detailing the lives and loves of eight young underg... more This article draws on solicited diary entries detailing the lives and loves of eight young undergraduate women at an elite institution of higher education in South Africa. The research participants are occupants of a privileged place in society with access to education, and a middle-class lifestyle, have control over their reproductive functioning, are not wives, mothers or homemakers, and potentially have access to fulfilling, status-rich and materially rewarding occupations which make independence both of their parental families and of male partners a real possibility. Theirs then, is a world of information, choice and opportunity and if of anyone at all in society we would predict the emergence of a critical gender consciousness, it might be of these women. One way of gauging the extent of the emergence of a critical consciousness among women is to examine the extent to which, in the stories they tell about their intimate relationships, they depart from, or conform to both the content and structure of the traditional romance genre and in particular, to the positioning of themselves in their stories as passive, submissive, dependent subjects while their partners are dominant and active. The present article argues that far from the democratisation of intimacy, the young, seemingly privileged and empowered women in the study remain locked into romantic narratives of love with their concomitant passive construction of femininity. In a social context characterised by putative sexual emancipation, these young women find themselves in the unenviable position of having to play a game of liberated sexual and gender politics while at the same time living a reality of feminine oppression.

African Sociological Review / Revue Africaine de Sociologie, 2017

Research on transformation of higher education institutions shows that the underrepresentation, r... more Research on transformation of higher education institutions shows that the underrepresentation, recruitment and retention of blacks and women in senior posts is still the major challenge facing the project of transforming higher education, particularly in Historically White Universities (HWUs). Several South African universities have responded to this challenge by initiating programmes for the 'accelerated development' of black academic staff. In this project we were interested to examine the wider implications of such programmes for transforming/reproducing existing institutional cultures. Focusing on one particular HWU and the participants in its Accelerated Development Programme (ADP) we asked whether or not the programme could be thought to have contributed to the interruption or reproduction of the existing dominant institutional culture of the university. The paper is based on interviews with 18 black lecturers who entered the academic workforce through the university' s ADP. Employing Pierre Bourdieu' s theoretical framework of social and cultural reproduction, we discuss how difficult it is to interrupt the naturalised norms and values that form part of the existing institutional culture of a university.

Third World Quarterly, Nov 27, 2018

Social relations, institutional arrangements and cultures bequeathed by South Africa's system of ... more Social relations, institutional arrangements and cultures bequeathed by South Africa's system of apartheid continue be felt in the present despite the country's formal transition to democracy 25 years ago. Race, class and gender inequities continue to structure South African society in ways that have proven intransigent to change, leading to growing frustration and widespread public dissatisfaction expressed in multiple arenas including worker strikes, service delivery and university student protests. While it is clear that social structures inherited from the past are difficult to change, it is also the case that change does happen. In this paper, we discuss the findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study with 10 academics at one historically White university in South Africa, who have been agents of change within their particular context. We show how participants engaged in struggles to counter resistance to their efforts. In doing so they demonstrate what we call 'strategic competence'-the ability to act in ways that not only draw on personal resources but recognise the resources, contradictions and opportunities offered within the existing limitations of the social structure. Strategic competence thus emerges as a central feature of agency, enabling individuals to stretch the boundaries of what is possible.

African Identities, Feb 24, 2017

Abstract The call for the ‘transformation’ of higher education in South Africa is one instance of... more Abstract The call for the ‘transformation’ of higher education in South Africa is one instance of a wider effort, since the country’s first democratic election in 1994, to surmount an apartheid and colonial legacy of institutionalised racism. In 2015 and 2016 nationwide protests led to universities being shut down as students and staff expressed frustration institutions that continue to be experienced as racist and ‘untransformed’. In this study we report on interviews conducted with senior white academics at one South African university shortly before these protests began. Given that our participants are people of influence in their respective university departments, we asked, in in-depth open-ended interviews, what contribution they saw themselves making to ‘transformation’. We argue that the talk of these participants could be described as what authors in the field call 'racetalk', Talk is understood here as a form of social practice, the analysis of which helps us to understand how racism is reproduced in mundane ways which, taken together, account for the persistence of pervasive institutionalised racism in South African higher education that appears impervious to policy and regime change.

Africa review, Oct 22, 2014

Agenda (Durban), Jan 2, 2014

Higher education research and development, Feb 27, 2019

Scholars writing on agency argue that normally, individuals who experience social structures as c... more Scholars writing on agency argue that normally, individuals who experience social structures as comfortable will tend to want to reproduce them while those who experience these structures as oppressive will want to change them. This is a bleak outlook because it suggests that those in positions of power and influence are less likely to seek to overhaul the very system of rewards and punishments that benefits them. However, there are exceptions to this pattern: instances where those who experience the structures as comfortable, nevertheless, work at transforming them. This article introduces an alternative perspective to current transformation discourses by seeking to understand why such exceptions exist. It argues that critical engagement is an important dimension of such transformation, and examines how it interacts with reflexivity to shape individual choices and reformulate interest. Drawing on a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with 10 academics who have been identified as agents of change at one university in South Africa, we reveal how individuals are able to shift their understanding of what is or is not in their interest in a context where raced, gendered and classed interests are deeply embedded in the fabric of the society. In such contexts, reflexivity and critical personal engagement with one's context can lead to a shift in interest and then consciousness as the individual comes to see and experience things from a different vantage point, opening up the possibility for a changed relationship with the social structure and its constraints and determining influence.

The international journal of critical cultural studies, 2018

For postcolonial societies, addressing the impact of the previous oppressive system in a bid to a... more For postcolonial societies, addressing the impact of the previous oppressive system in a bid to attain equity and social justice necessitates transformation in various spheres and sectors of society. As cradles of learning, research, and knowledge development, higher education institutions are one such sphere with a particular duty to contribute to, and embody, social transformation. However, almost 25 years after the country’s first democratic elections, the institutional cultures and structures of many South African universities still bear the imprimatur of past inequities. Existing research suggests that the success of transformation policies is influenced by the extent to which individual staff members exercise agency to effect transformative practices. But what determines whether an individual becomes an agent of change? This paper draws on the experiences of ten academic staff members who have taken actions that can be said to have contributed to shifting in important ways relations and/or practices at one university in South Africa. It adopts a hermeneutic phenomenological lens to understand the lived experiences of participants of having agency and undertaking transformative actions