Women & Gender Studies
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/7
2024-03-28T09:10:25ZFood shaming and race, and hungry translations
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/9263
Food shaming and race, and hungry translations
Lewis, Desiree
Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America by Psyche A. Williams-Forson (2022) and Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability by Richa Nagar (2019) deal with food and hunger in relation to the very different geo-political regions of North America and India. At the same time, they enter into dialogue with each other in exploring how socially situated bodies – othered in gendered, raced and neoliberal systems and discourses – navigate and resist oppressive food politics. As both authors also show, critical approaches to food politics should entail much more than attention to who gets to eat well, or why certain groups are able to waste food obscenely while most of the world’s population starves, cannot make informed and healthy food choices, or inhabits food deserts, those foodscapes of near-starvation created by the corporate food industry’s hunger for profits. As the authors show, exploring the politics of food, eating and hunger should focus also on the languages and attitudes surrounding how these are connected to radical struggles for human freedom. By focusing on the represented and imagined connections between human desires and experiences on one hand and food and hunger on the other, Williams-Forson and Nagar also encourage us to interrogate and re-imagine our relationships to both humans as well as nature and other living beings. These books’ perspectives from different continents invite us to consider the trans-continental context of multiple subaltern struggles through the lens of food.
2023-01-01T00:00:00ZGreener on the other side: Tracing stories of amaranth and moringa through indenture
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/9128
Greener on the other side: Tracing stories of amaranth and moringa through indenture
Naidoo, Pralini
My research, with its focus on women and food seed through the lens of indenture, has led me into the world ofleafy green vegetables and their intimate connection to women who had been brought to South Africa to servicecolonial plantations. Leafy greens are currently buzzwords in thefitness, health, vegan, and vegetarianvocabulary. Occasionally, another leaf isdiscoveredby the doyens of fancy cuisine, researchers orexperts,elevating anunknowndark green leaf to superfood status. In the past few decades moringa and amaranthhave gained popularity in scientific and culinary circles. This sudden spurt of interest in a food that has been traditionally eaten for years in ex-indentured communities, among many others, has often elicited from this community, wry amusement, confusion at its celebrity status or pride at its recognition. Delving into research transcripts and fieldwork notes, I observe, not only, how these communities consume moringa and amaranth, but the variety of ways the human and other-than-human stories are entangled. I also consider the impact/benefits of the commodification of foods and seeds such as moringa and amaranth, on the many invisible people who have been propagating, consuming and storying the plant before its discovery.
2023-01-01T00:00:00ZParents resist sexuality education through digital activism
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/8551
Parents resist sexuality education through digital activism
Ngabaza, Sisa
South Africa has high rates of HIV infection among its young population, high rates of unintended pregnancy
among the youth, and extremely high rates of gender-based violence. Given all this, it is essential that young
people be taught skills that will enable them to manage their sexuality. Schools have been shown to be best
placed to provide accurate and relevant information on young people’s sexualities. Through the Life Orientation
(LO) curriculum, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) offers age-appropriate sexuality education as a
response to these concerns. However, research in sexuality education shows that there is a lack of guidance and
preparedness by educators, and this hampers how sexuality education is delivered in South African schools. A
recent attempt by the DBE to upscale and strengthen the sexuality education curriculum in South African
schools was met with resistance from parents and other lobby groups. This resistance was driven across many
different media platforms, and particularly through an online hashtag #LeaveOurKidsAlone, largely on
Facebook and Twitter. Through this resistance, we are introduced to parents/adult response to the teaching and
learning of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in South African schools, a voice that has been missing to
a great extent in this debate.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZBe a little careful: Women, violence, and performance in India
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/8538
Be a little careful: Women, violence, and performance in India
Arora, Swati
In this article Swati Arora analyzes a contemporary Indian feminist performance, Thoda Dhyaan Se (A Little Carefully, 2013), by framing it in the spatial ecosystem of the city of Delhi and exploring its engagement with feminist discourse and the national imaginary of India. It highlights the workings of the cultural economy of the city, which is defined by its spatial contours as well as the privileges of caste, class, sexuality, and ethnicity, and at the same time explores the heterogeneous nature of the country's feminist movement through an intersectional perspective. Swati Arora argues that the concerns raised by Thoda Dhyaan Se are limited to urban, middle-class, and upper-caste women and overlook the oppressive realities of women from non-urban, lower-class, and lower-caste backgrounds. With conversations around gender focused through campaigns like #MeToo and #TImesUp, it is important to contextualize the voices that are articulated and those that are excluded. Swati Arora is an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape.
2019-01-01T00:00:00Z