CAPES / Esta dissertação discute as articulações entre gênero, raça e cultura material na construção dos corpos de mulheres negras que passam pelo processo de transição capilar. A pesquisa está centrada no evento Afro Chic, que acontece em Curitiba e promove ações afirmativas relacionadas ao cabelo crespo e empoderamento de mulheres negras. Percebo esse evento como uma das estratégias da Geração Tombamento, movimento cultural que utiliza a moda e a estética como ferramentas políticas para desconstrução de estereótipos de raça e gênero. A partir de uma análise dos processos históricos ligados à ideologia de branqueamento no Brasil, busco compreender as rejeições e resistências a estética negra no país. Neste evento, me interessam principalmente as oficinas de tranças e turbantes, que ensinam essas técnicas e articulam seu uso à ligação com a cultura afro-brasileira, incentivando um olhar para a diversidade e para o corpo como um todo que é construído por diversos elementos, incluindo a cultura material. A pesquisa é de caráter qualitativo, tendo sido realizada observação participativa na segunda edição do evento, com registro em diário de campo e entrevistas com as facilitadoras das oficinas, com base no método de história oral e história de vida. A partir da teoria de cultura material e dos estudos de interseccionalidade, entendo tranças e turbantes como artefatos de moda e busco compreender como participam do processo de empoderamento de mulheres negras que passam pela transição capilar. Estes artefatos também constroem e desconstroem, marcam gênero e raça nos corpos e, deste modo, argumento que o uso de tranças e turbantes no processo de transição capilar é uma das propostas de “desbranqueamento” dos padrões estéticos no Brasil e estratégia de resistência ao racismo. / This dissertation discusses the articulations between gender, race and material culture in the black women’s bodies construction who undergo the process of hair transition. The research is centered on the Afro Chic event, which happens in Curitiba and promotes affirmative actions related to curly hair and black women’s empowerment. I perceive this event as one of the strategies of the Tombamento Generation, a cultural movement that uses fashion and aesthetics as political tools for the deconstruction of race and gender stereotypes. By an analysis of the historical processes related to the bleaching ideology in Brazil, I try to understand the rejections and resistances of the black aesthetics in the country. In this event, I am interested mainly in the braids and headwraps workshops, which teaches these techniques and articulate their use in connection with the Afro-Brazilian culture, encouraging a look at diversity and for the body as a whole constructed by different elements, including material culture. The research is qualitative, with participatory observation in the second edition of the event, with a field journal and interviews with the facilitators of the workshops, based on the method of oral history and life history. By the theory of material culture and intersectionality studies, I understand braids and turbans as fashionable artifacts and try to understand how they participate in the process of empowering black women who undergo the hair transition. This artifact also construct and deconstruct gender and race in the bodies and, therefore, I argue that the use of braids and turbans in the process of capillary transition is one of the proposals of "unbleaching" of Brazilian aesthetic standards and racism’s resistance strategy.

M.A. / The present study explores experiences of loss, disconnection, truth, hurting, healing, non-forgiveness and forgiveness associated with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Using a social constructionist perspective, the concepts of truth and forgiveness are explored through a theoretical background to psychology and subsequently in the stories and reflections of individuals who participated in the Commission. The issue of truth has been central to debates across the broader intellectual landscape, as well as to the theory and practice of psychology. In the following study, the historical shift from more modernist conceptions of truth to postmodern views is explored through a brief overview of the philosophy of science. These perspectives are explored further in the epistemological shifts underlying therapeutic endeavours and methodology in the field of psychology. Approaches to therapy in South Africa are subsequently reviewed, focusing particularly on positions of truth adopted by the profession in this context. The themes of truth, reconciliation, healing and hurting in the discourse surrounding the Commission are subsequently explored further. This discussion includes some of the literature regarding experiences of people who have been involved with the Commission. Following this, the narratives from interviews held with a group of mothers who attended the Truth Commission and one of the journalists working with the Commission are included. These narratives are related to participants' experiences in having attended/been involved with the Truth Commission and their experiences around truth and forgiveness. A qualitative, reflexive approach to the interviews and analysis thereof, is used. In conclusion, reflections on the process are included. These reflections present a dialectic between the importance of the ongoing nature of the journey in this multi-dimensional context, as well as the author's perspective on the need for the notion of absolute truth in this journeying.

Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

This is a transdisciplinary study of how ‘popular cultures of survival’ regenerate and rehumanise township residents and communities whose social fabric and intergenerational bonds have been violently torn by endemic suffering. I focus specifically on township mothers’ and daughters’ lifeworlds with the aim of recentering these marginalised lives so that they can inform us about retheorising marginality and in this way enrich our limited academic discourses on the subjectivities of poor urban African women. Located in the interdisciplinary field of popular culture studies, the study draws on and synthesises theoretical insights from a number of disciplines such as sociology, political-science, anthropology, history, literary studies, womanist and feminist studies and indigenous studies, while using a variety of methods and sources such as interviews, reports, observation, newspapers, field notes, photo-albums, academic articles and embodied expressions to create a unique theory on the lived and embodied suffering and healing experiences of township women. I have called this situated conceptual framework that is theoretically aligned to African womanism and existential phenomenology, but principally fashioned out of township mothers and daughters ways of understanding the world and their place in it--Township mothers’ and daughters’ lived and embodied ‘cultures of survival’. And in order to surface their popular cultural survival strategies I have adopted an African womanist interpretative phenomenological methodological framework. This suggested conceptual and methodological framework has allowed me to creatively explore the dialectical tensions of the everyday township philosophies, aesthetics and moralities of ‘ukuphanta’, to hustle and ‘ukuhlonipha’, to respect, and show how they create the moral-existential ground for township mothers and daughters not only to continue to survive, but to reclaim lives of dignity and sensuality amidst repeated negation and historical hardships. / Sociology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)

Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

This is a transdisciplinary study of how ‘popular cultures of survival’ regenerate and rehumanise township residents and communities whose social fabric and intergenerational bonds have been violently torn by endemic suffering. I focus specifically on township mothers’ and daughters’ lifeworlds with the aim of recentering these marginalised lives so that they can inform us about retheorising marginality and in this way enrich our limited academic discourses on the subjectivities of poor urban African women. Located in the interdisciplinary field of popular culture studies, the study draws on and synthesises theoretical insights from a number of disciplines such as sociology, political-science, anthropology, history, literary studies, womanist and feminist studies and indigenous studies, while using a variety of methods and sources such as interviews, reports, observation, newspapers, field notes, photo-albums, academic articles and embodied expressions to create a unique theory on the lived and embodied suffering and healing experiences of township women. I have called this situated conceptual framework that is theoretically aligned to African womanism and existential phenomenology, but principally fashioned out of township mothers and daughters ways of understanding the world and their place in it--Township mothers’ and daughters’ lived and embodied ‘cultures of survival’. And in order to surface their popular cultural survival strategies I have adopted an African womanist interpretative phenomenological methodological framework. This suggested conceptual and methodological framework has allowed me to creatively explore the dialectical tensions of the everyday township philosophies, aesthetics and moralities of ‘ukuphanta’, to hustle and ‘ukuhlonipha’, to respect, and show how they create the moral-existential ground for township mothers and daughters not only to continue to survive, but to reclaim lives of dignity and sensuality amidst repeated negation and historical hardships. / Sociology / D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)