4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions
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Item The Intersection of Systemic Racism and Technology and the Consequences for Video Games(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Flusk, Timothy; Reid, KieranThe paper documents and reviews the process by which consequences of systemic racism is found in video games through the medium of technology. The principal idea of technology is used broadly to accommodate all media produced by society as tools for wielding and enforcing capitalist ideology. This is used as a means of revealing and mapping the cultural epistemic domain that dominates the West and its former colonies. The principal methodology is drawn from D. Fox Harrel’s Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation and Expression. The process focuses on using the idea of the phantasmal generation within media, by individuals within systems. As such the process of these phantasm expressing or revealing themselves in various media is tracked and studied from both sides of the process: where they come from and how they are expressed. The principal approach situates the discussion of developing video games within the West, specifically the United States of America. The case studies used to illustrate and apply the methodology include Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and NBA2K17. These are placed in context along side their appropriate phantasmal sibling and representation. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is interrogated through the lens of capitalism and the representation of Black criminals in media. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is placed in context of fantasy genre and colonialism. NBA2k17 is placed in context of traditional racist perspectives of Black, athleticism and sport. All case studies utilise the principal twin approach of separating phantasms into hegemonic teleological expectation and ontological racist assertions. This allows the encapsulation of ludic systems as well narrative and character representation within the games.Item Adopting the theory of degrowth as a means to achieve sustainability in South African law(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Ramsay, Madison; Bapela, MphoCapitalism’s mandate of infinite, exponential growth on a planet with finite, non-renewable resources has resulted in global environmental crisis. Contextualized by South Africa’s industrial Minerals-Energy Complex, this paper submits that the growth imperative of neoliberal fossil capitalism is resulting in unsustainability in South African environmental management. Decision-making is skewed in favour of economic growth at the expense of sustainability. Degrowth is a movement that rejects the growth imperative as compulsory; it is a call not only to do less, but to do differently, a counterhegemonic alternative to capitalism that seeks environmental justice, decolonization of the North-South divide, and alternatives to growth and development. This paper posits that rejecting capitalism’s growth imperative and approaching environmental management from a degrowth perspective can inform sustainability in South African environmental law. It posits that degrowth can find applicability in South African environmental law through its compatibility with ubuntu, which in the context of this study is accepted as a similar counterhegemonic alternative to capitalism. This paper emphasizes ubuntu degrowth as a framework to conceptualize South African environmental management, insofar as it offers a transformative alternative to growth, and to capitalism itself