3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Whiteness re-aligned : naratives of white residents from Munsieville, Krugersdorp(2017) Mabaso, NkululekoThis research project is concerned with meanings of whiteness that are produced at its margins (the margins of whiteness). I challenge the dominant thesis of Whiteness Studies which theorises about whiteness as a social construct that is homogeneous and monolithic. Instead, I suggest that whiteness is best conceptualised as a structure. To this end I highlight the experiences of white people who do not embody the hegemonic and normalised form of whiteness. My primary method is an ethnography of white residents of the informal settlement in Munsieville, Krugersdorp. The participants in my study live in an area that is predominantly occupied by black people, most of whom are economically and socially better-off. Along with ethnographic observations, I used interviews to collect data. These were useful for providing a glimpse of the participants’ life histories. Most of them ‘inherited’ their poverty from their parents, the generation of ‘poor whites’ who lived under the colonial and apartheid eras. Historically, the participants were direct beneficiaries of the apartheid policies that were meant to assist ‘poor white’ people. This history shapes their feelings of nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ and of vulnerability in post-1994 South Africa. These feelings influenced their attachment to apartheid conceptions of blackness and whiteness and their irrational fear of black people (the swart gevaar). Alongside this attachment and fear, my study shows that the residents of Munsieville have developed an ‘ambivalent intimacy’ with the black people in their neighbourhood which has resulted in the formation of a different kind of whiteness. This re-aligned whiteness is a result of the articulation of their race and class position. Key Words: Whiteness, ‘Poor Whites’, Blackness, Structure and Articulation.Item (Dis)-empowered whiteness: an ethnography of the King Edward Park(2017) Kruger, Christi LouiseThis thesis focuses on group of poorer white South Africans who have settled, informally and illegally, in a former caravan park on the West Rand of Johannesburg, The King Edward Park. It is enthographic study that explores the socio-economic genealogies of the poorer white residents of the park, the everyday practices of making livelihoods, and attempt to produce ideologies of South African blackness. [Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version]Item Analysis of the determinants of poverty in South Africa(2016) Kgaphola, Hlali KemediThis research dissertation investigates what factors drive poverty in South Africa using annual data from 1996 to 2013. In an attempt to contribute towards a better understanding of what contributes to poverty in South Africa, the researcher adopted three types of research questions: a contextual research question, a main research question and an applied research question. The central questions of this study was “what drives poverty in South Africa?” and “how do these drivers influence poverty trends in South Africa?” The study recognises poverty as a multi-dimensional phenomenon, in addition to the unidimensional money-metric definition of poverty for analysis purposes. Consequently although the study adopts the monetary definition of poverty as a framework to poverty analysis; it also incorporates other variables that capture the multi-dimensional nature of poverty relevant to the South African context. The study uses various data analysis tools including descriptive statistics, line graphs, bivariate analysis, and trend analysis to investigate the relationship between poverty and the variables in this study. Consistent with Klasen (2000) and Finn et al. (2013), the main findings were that there is a negative relationship between poverty and government expenditure on health, housing, energy, public order and safety, and access to credit in South Africa. On the contrary, government expenditure on education is found not to reduce poverty in South Africa, neither is unemployment found to increase poverty in South Africa. The research concluded that although certain variables are expected to reduce or increase poverty, remedial policy interventions by Government and country specific economic structure mitigate these a prior expectations. From these findings the researcher makes recommendations, contributing to how scholars (and government) can further their attempt to alleviate poverty in South Africa.Item Food price inflation and the poor(2016) Ngidi, BandileFood price inflation has been an important subject of debate internationally since 2008. This sharp increase in food prices experienced during 2008 lead to intense research into the causes, dynamics and responses to this particular instance of food price inflation. The international literature attributed food price inflation to such factors as climate change, increases in energy costs and speculative activity in financial markets for agricultural commodities. This research report undertakes a review of the measurement of food price inflation in South Africa, broadly assessing how it is to be linked to the poor in South Africa. The research report focuses on the work of institutions concerned with the measurement of food price inflation in South Africa. Different methodologies of identifying foods as food staples are looked at. Food prices and trends are analysed using CPI data from January 2008 until October 2008, using selected consumer price index series from Statistics South Africa. The research report finds that the institutions studied show evidence of that higher food price inflation is correlated with demographic markers of poverty, although the traditional measure, the CPI, does not suggests that this is very extensive. This, it is argued, is due to the calculation methodologies used in the published CPI, and the data period. The research report then ends with an overview of the political economy of food in South Africa, thereby makes recommendations as to why the measurement of food price inflation is important for the poor.