The well-documented problem of gender-based violence in South Africa has emerged in a context in which human rights are championed, new economic opportunities are available to some, and structural inequalities persist. Scholars have argued that in modern times, high rates of gender-based violence are due to a ‘crisis in masculinity’. This study reframed the crisis in masculinity thesis by critically examining how South Africa’s current transformative moment has reinscribed ideas around gender, sexuality, race, rights, freedom, and equality into the post-apartheid era. The objective was to analyze how normative, material, and discursive dimensions of the South African context shape young adults’ lives and gender ideals for and experiences in sexual relationships. The study innovates by applying an intersectional lens to explore the context of young-adult lives and sexual relationships in relation to race and class as well as gender. Data collection included 11 single-sex and 5 mixed-sex focus group discussions, and 21 interviews with a diverse – across the axes of race, class, and gender – group of young adults between 20 and 30 years old in Cape Town, South Africa. Focus group and interview data were analyzed in conjunction with field observation that took place during the two and half years that I lived in Cape Town. The study strengthens research that moves beyond reductionist views of culture, rights, inequality, gender, and power. The findings suggest that discourses on human rights, neoliberalism, gendered sexual morality, post-racialism, and personal responsibility have purchase in South Africa’s post-apartheid context and contribute to a contested landscape of transformation. Sexual relationships are a terrain upon which the contested landscape of transformation plays out. Tensions between popular discourses, human rights laws, cultural scripts for gender and sexuality, and structural inequalities allow young adults to deploy them flexibly in organizing their lives and relationships. Young adults use rights and gender as languages of social critique in a context where the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice are contested. I argue that in pluralist “modern” South Africa, cultural scripts that operate within and between a variety of social institutions offer conflicting messages about gender and sexuality that are expressed in young adults’ gender ideals for relationships. Young adults selectively pull from competing scripts and popular discourses to construct masculine and feminine ideals for sexual relationships and decide how power should be negotiated in idealized intimate partnerships. This project also contributes to research on gender and modernity by illustrating how social location shapes who and what is considered desirable in the young-adult relationship market as well as the relationship pathways available for young women and men to pursue. In sum, young adults’ discursive use of rights and their relationship ideals reveal that they are acutely aware of the discrepancies among the values to which they are exposed in South Africa’s contested landscape of transformation. The gendered sexualities they construct suggest that sexual relationships are a key location to articulate these tensions and redefine equality and freedom in their own lives.

Submitted by Maria de Lourdes Mariano (lmariano@ufscar.br) on 2017-01-17T18:42:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 SILVA_Roberta_2015.pdf: 4418503 bytes, checksum: b36d65608039c7ca5f0477fb98d6d3bb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria de Lourdes Mariano (lmariano@ufscar.br) on 2017-01-17T18:42:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 SILVA_Roberta_2015.pdf: 4418503 bytes, checksum: b36d65608039c7ca5f0477fb98d6d3bb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria de Lourdes Mariano (lmariano@ufscar.br) on 2017-01-17T18:43:05Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 SILVA_Roberta_2015.pdf: 4418503 bytes, checksum: b36d65608039c7ca5f0477fb98d6d3bb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-01-17T18:43:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SILVA_Roberta_2015.pdf: 4418503 bytes, checksum: b36d65608039c7ca5f0477fb98d6d3bb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-06-26 / Não recebi financiamento / This research's goal is to analyze the meanings attributed to work and education by youngsters of Milton Santos Settlement of landless agricultural workers, located in the city of Americana, state of São Paulo, Brazil, considering an education view not reduced to the space of the school. Education and work are subjects very present and valued by the Brazilian youth. Although employment has increased recently, young people continue to be the biggest share of unemployed in the country and the majority employed in precarious jobs. Understanding this reality contributes indirectly to learn the influences to the youth life in the daily routine of the youngsters, who recuperated their experiences with agriculture, with jobs out of the rural space, with the school, with the care for their children, and with the participation in the struggle for land. For this, sixteen semi-structured interviews were made, besides many visits to the settlement to observe the field, culminating in the analysis of the narratives of the youth, which converged into four groups: 1 – Difficulties in conciliating work and education; 2 – Dilemmas related to conciliating work, education and family; 3 – To study is a priority.The meanings of work and of education were multiple, work being related to income, independence and professional achievement, while education was referred to exclusion, dreams and to more liberating processes regarding the participation in social movements. / Esta pesquisa pretende analisar os sentidos do trabalho e da educação atribuídos pelos jovens do Assentamento Milton Santos, localizado na cidade de Americana (SP), tendo em vista um olhar educativo que não se resume ao espaço escolar. A educação e o trabalho são temáticas sempre presentes e valorizadas pela juventude brasileira, contudo, mesmo em um contexto de ampliação dos empregos, os jovens continuam a ser a faixa etária que mais está desempregada no país, ocupando em boa medida postos de trabalho precários. Entender essa realidade contribuiu indiretamente para perceber as influências vivenciadas no dia a dia dos jovens, que recuperaram suas experiências com a agricultura, com os empregos fora do espaço rural, com a escola, com o cuidado dos filhos e com a participação na luta pela terra. Foram realizadas dezesseis entrevistas semiestruturadas; além disso, foi preciso ir ao assentamento várias vezes para observar o campo, culminando por fim nas análises das narrativas juvenis, que convergiram para a formação de três grupos: Grupo 1: dificuldades em conciliar trabalho e estudo; Grupo 2: dilemas da conciliação do trabalho, do estudo e da família e Grupo 3: o estudo é prioridade. Os sentidos do trabalho e da educação foram múltiplos, sendo o trabalho remetido à renda, à independência e à realização; já a educação remeteu à exclusão, ao sonho e a processos mais libertadores quando considerada a participação em movimentos sociais.