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The begging asymmetry: management of Inequalities in interactions between street beggars and motorists

A research project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA Masters in Community-Based Counselling Psychology (Psychology) in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 15/03/2017. / This research examines the interaction between beggars and motorists at traffic light
intersections in Johannesburg CBD. Drawing on approximately 80hrs of video recorded
interactions, the research primarily demonstrates the ways in which beggars and motorists
produce embodied actions in the management of their asymmetrical socioeconomic
positions, and more so the inequalities consequent of which. The phenomenon in question
takes place in everyday settings constituted by mundane practices and embodied actions. As
such, an ethnomethodologically oriented means towards gathering data served best suited
to this research. A qualitative Conversation Analysis approach serves an apt technique for
analysing the kind of fine-grained focus of the interactional phenomena observed (both
verbal and non-verbal). The analysis has been rooted in the analytic framework of the
greeting, request and offer adjacency pair types The progression of the analysis, as it
unfolds, lends an eye to a particular sequence organization that appears to have crystalized,
and further been reproduced in all of the beggar-motorist cases that have been examined
here. The discussion turns towards unpacking some of the socio-structural implications of
the embodied practices highlighted in the interaction of interest; particularly converging
some of the ideas presented regarding the way in which the beggar-motorist interactional
practices contribute to and maintain what can be seen as an institutionalized form of
inequality. / XL2018

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/24542
Date January 2017
CreatorsTladi, Boledi Moralo
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
FormatOnline resource (77 leaves), application/pdf

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