My dissertation, “‘It’s like I can be myself here’: Adolescent identity and agency in an arts-based out-of-school program” is a three-year post-critical ethnographic study (Noblit, Flores, and Murillo, 2004) of YouthArts, a free, out-of-school arts program for adolescents who self-identify as having a low socio-economic status. YouthArts, under the auspices of a non-profit art space, offers participants both a range of activities, such as field trips, artist-led workshops, and critique sessions, and materials, such as supplies and an electronic portfolio, to help foster artistic identity development. The program design demonstrates the complexity of artistic endeavors beyond technical prowess and highlights the role of collaboration, communication, inquiry, and curiosity in the process of art creation and consideration. I employ participant-observation methods, semi-structured interviews, and artifact collection, as well as narrative analysis and content analysis, to create a dynamic representation of how adolescents engage in this program. My theoretical approach to this project brings together social production theories, such as figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), social and cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2006), situated learning (Lave, 1990; Lave and Wenger, 1991) and the field of youth studies (James, Jenks, and Prout, 1998; Best, 2007) to explore learning, identity, and agency. I provide a thick description of the program’s professionalizing activities and offer detailed case studies of four focal participants in order to demonstrate the ways that the program helps participants transition from high school to post-secondary paths and from being students in high-school art classes to becoming practicing artists. I privilege youth voices to highlight the ways they see their identities as being informed by multiple communities, including their out-of-school activities, their schools, their families, and their friends and through intersecting classed, raced, gendered, and sexualized discourses, as well as to consider the ways that they enact agency in these multiple contexts. I highlight the need for more studies that research out-of-school learning from a place of positive youth development and explore the role of relationship building in learning environments. / text

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

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There is a growing library of literature on the relationship between self and culture. Most studies (Cousins, 1989; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Sampson, 1989) in this area are quantitative and approach culture as a concept that is "intemally homogenous and externally distinctive" (Hennans & Kempen, 1998, p.1113). Such studies have found cross-cultural differences in how people define their sense of self. This has led to a classificatory approach to self and culture such that the western and non-western self have been defined as distinct from one another. This thesis explores the appropriateness of such cultural dichotomies from a novel, dialogical perspective of self (Hennans, Rijks & Kempen, 1993) which allows for the special investigation of self and culture A qualitative methodology was adopted for this investigation, within the narrative paradigm. Narrative interviews were conducted with a sample of twelve women between the ages of 35 and 50 years and these women were varied by ethnicity as one measure of culture. A voicecentred relational method (Mauthner & Doucet, 1998) was used to analyse the interviews. Both investigative and methodological aims were forn1Ulated during the analysis. Investigative aims explore the appropriateness of the dichotomisation of the self as western and non-western. The results of the analysis question such cultural dichotomies criticised by Spiro (1993) and yet so prevalent in self and cultural studies (Cousins, 1989; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Sampson, 1989). Frequently in the narratives there is an interweaving of individualistic and collectivist characteristics. Such a co-existence of traits is accommodated by the dialogical view of self, which provides a large enough framework to account for both interdependent and independent characteristics in the same self. The methodological aims directed the researcher to investigate the appropriateness of the measurements of self and culture adopted by traditional approaches (Cousins, 1989; Markus & Kitayama, 1991 ; Sampson, 1989). The results of the thesis suggest that as intercultural connections are becoming increasingly common, culture needs to be recognised as a complex concept that is no longer homogenous. Cross-cultural approaches to this area are questioned by this investigation because of their tendency to simplify and categorise the self and culture. It is proposed that future research should approach this area of self and culture as an intersection or interface of complex factors that are not easily homogenised or dichotomised. The findings point to the value of qualitative research, and in particular the framework of the dialogical self, for exploring this interface. / Thesis (M.A.)- University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

The dramatic transition from South Africa's previous apartheid political system to a democratic dispensation, has posed unique challenges for the media. Ethical practices per se are difficult, with joumalists being faced with the demanding position of having to act ethically on a tightrope between a totalitarian heritage and a newly emerging democratic nation. This thesis begins with the mapping out of a new theoretical model of ethical practice for South African journalists - a model that is open-ended, context-sensitive, and emphasises critical and creative thinking, as well as diversity and relativity in the process of moral decision-making. Considerable debate - both nationally and internationally - currently surrounds the ethical role of joumalists. In South Africa, these polarised positions have tended to emerge as the two main discourses evident in the local press: the watchdog discourse, broadly corresponding to the libertarian theory of the role of the media; and the nation-building discourse, which approximates to the egalitarian or social responsibility model. This thesis argues that the two discourses are not necessarily mutually exclusive; the theoretical framework does not exclusively support either normative theory as such, but rather facilitates the fostering of both sets of values represented by each respectively. The case studies examined in this thesis are all underpinned by this idea. Attention is given to an examination of the violence coverage in KwaZulu-Natal, demonstrating an ethical breakdown in reporting during the years of apartheid, which shadowed journalists into the transitional period after the unbanning of the ANC and the lifting of all Emergency Regulations in 1990. The concepts of privacy and hate speech are examined, illustrating a lack in the culture of the South African press, of any concise articulation of its journalistic mission or what is expected of journalists. Finally coverage of the country's HIV/Aids pandemic is examined, the ethics involved in reporting such coverage are explored, and the ethical implications of an advocacy role vis-a-vis HIV/Aids, and reporting in general, are discussed. The thesis ultimately attempts to map out an ethics that creatively seeks to guide journalists in both binding people together, and exposing what is wrong between them, in order that they may participate in the crafting of a new moral order. / Thesis (Ph.D)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

South Africa is currently revitalising the role of Traditional Health Practitioners (THPs) in the country's healthcare provision. This undertaking is guided by Chinese Traditional Medicine which is said to be one of the most highly developed traditional healthcare systems in the world. Programmes developed by the National Department of Health and other stake holders in the development of indigenous medicine often need to be accommodated architecturally. Collaboration with biomedicine is one of the main programmes aimed at empowering Traditional Health Practitioners of the country. Accordingly, this dissertation is divided into two sections, both based on the current undertakings of collaboration between biomedicine and indigenous medicine in South Africa. Due to the fact that traditional healing systems are less commonly described than biomedicine, the main focus of this study is indigenous medicine and how architecture could be influenced by alternative healthcare practices. The first section (A) is theoretical. It investigates and compares the current architecture that accommodates THPs in rural and urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal. This unveils social, cultural, economic and political factors affecting this architectural genre. The aim thereof is to establish architectural elements to be considered when designing a health care facility for THPs. Section A also explores the current state of healthcare architecture in the country and abroad so as to establish the latest challenges to be addressed by the proposed collaborative healthcare model. Design principles for collaborative architecture accommodating THPs and biomedical practitioners in an urban context of South Africa are then be put forward. Section B incorporates the theories derived from section A, towards the design of a joint indigenous and biomedical healthcare centre for Durban. It gives specific spatial requirements for a collaboration between biomedical practitioners and izinyanga. / Thesis (M.Arch.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

My research examines how Africa is represented within the meaning-making arena of travel journalism specifically focusing on the travel publications Travel Africa, Getaway and Africa Geographic. The principal focus for many postcolonial theorists is the (mis)representation of “less-developed”, “third-world” countries, often focusing on literature in the creation and maintenance of structures of discursive oppression. I have used the work of postcolonial theorists Said (1978), Spurr (1993) and Pratt (1992) to form the theoretical foundation of my analytical framework. A discourse analysis of the magazines for the years 2006 and 2007 reveal Africa to be a discursively constructed cultural package. Touristic understandings of what constitutes ‘real’ African experiences are underpinned and portrayed through eloquent and articulate descriptions or imagery which interpellates the prospective Western traveler. To borrow Spurr’s (1992) terminology Africa is portrayed as ‘absence’ metaphorically or through the rhetorical strategy of negation in an attempt to create a void which can only be filled through intervention by ‘the civilized’. However, in addition to this, the magazines offer active systematic proposals to foster change and appeal to audiences to trans-code representations, a notion that postcolonial theorist Elfriede Fürsich (2002) has discussed in studies focusing on television travel journalism. I am arguing that in some instances the travel journalists in these magazines challenge conventional, traditional journalistic practices in order to create more balanced representations of the African continent. It is these forms of writing that can harness social change and represent African people, places and politics in alternative depictions. These strategies may include various narrative or linguistic techniques such as an altering of the conventional, commercial travel discourse, or an increased and liberated feedback loop between the publication and its readers. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, [2010]

South African painter turned photographer, Zwelethu Mthethwa, was born in Durban during Apartheid. In 1980 Mthethwa began taking his photographs in the shanty towns on the outskirts of Cape Town and later took pictures in Mozambique and New Orleans. His work has global significance. Using art and literary theory and criticism, I expand upon the significance of his photographs in the contemporary world. I do “readings” of eight photographs from eight different series of Zwelethu Mthethwa’s work using postcolonial theory, abjection, and cultural studies as theoretical constructs to provide three different angles for interpreting his work.