Acta Academica最新文献

{"title":"Shame, subjectivity, and pandemic productivity","authors":"Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa53i2/9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa53i2/9","url":null,"abstract":"As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, the lockdown, isolation, and quarantine restrictions which were put in place in many countries obliged many people to begin working from home. Concurrently, advice in the form of articles and social media posts emerged, urging people to use the ‘opportunity’ of isolation during the pandemic to engage in self-improvement activities or launch a business. In this paper, I consider the ways that the temporal collapse between private and work life can be seen to exacerbate the degree to which these productivity discourses played upon neoliberal conceptions of identity formation through self-commodification and optimisation. The discourses frequently used a combination of shame and the suggestion that productivity was an obligation to the community, as well as to the self, to justify themselves and make finding purchase to engage in a critique of the broader structural issues at play more rhetorically difficult.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45696343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pandemic politics – an introduction","authors":"Ewa Latecka, J. du Toit, G. Swer","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa53i2/1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa53i2/1","url":null,"abstract":"The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 and the various measures taken subsequently, either by individual countries or by government and non-government bodies with a global reach, have had a profound effect on human lives on a number of levels, be it social, economic, legal, or political. The scramble to respond to the threat posed by the rapid spread of the virus has, in many cases, led to a suspension of ordinary politics whilst at the same time throwing into sharp relief the profoundly political nature of the pandemic. In addition to the new issues that have arisen regarding detection and treatment of the COVID-19 virus, perennial political issues regarding the limits of political authority, racial and gender justice, and populism and demagoguery have thrust themselves to the forefront of mainstream political discourse.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45898767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resilience in a Kenyan informal settlement during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Stephen Vertigans, Natascha Mueller-Hirth, F. Okinda","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa53i2/7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa53i2/7","url":null,"abstract":"Informal settlements have been identified as locations both where the spread of COVID-19 has generally been slower than within the Global North and measures to restrain the pandemic have further intensified local peoples’ marginality as income decreases without welfare or financial safety nets. In this paper, qualitative fieldwork is detailed which commenced in Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, immediately prior to national COVID-19 restrictions. This March 2020, pre-COVID phase of the fieldwork focused on a community-based project and the basis for resilience in transforming local lives. During the next 12 months of the pandemic fieldwork continued, exploring experiences and reactions to restraining policies. These findings reinforce concerns about the impact of COVID-19 related restrictions on marginalised peoples’ income, food security, health, safety and gender-based violence. How the local people reacted to these effects highlights their creative resilience and adaptability. The paper concludes by examining the impact of, and responses to, the controlling measures on the social relationships and cohesion that underpins the community resilience.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46343408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Surveillance capitalism as white world-making","authors":"Y. Jooste","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa53i1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa53i1.3","url":null,"abstract":"The era of ‘surveillance capitalism’ as a new logic of accumulation that claims human experience as free raw material necessitates an understanding of how corporate-controlled digital communication technologies govern and structure how we come to know the world. This article investigates surveillance capitalist operations and argues that it enables (1) algorithmic colonisation, (2) oppressive digital practices that reify bias along racial lines, and (3) the turning of bodies into objects in the creation and maintenance of whiteness. Through presenting these different arguments, a larger point emerges, namely, that surveillance capitalist operations must be understood as intimately tied to the project of white world-making.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42626868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reflecting on the ethics of PhD research in the Global South: reciprocity, reflexivity and situatedness","authors":"Christopher M. Millora, S. Maimunah, Enid Still","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/sp2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/sp2","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores ethical issues of reciprocity, reflexivity and situatedness in conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Global South as part of PhD research projects. Against the backdrop of increasingly bureaucratised doctoral processes, we argue that PhD students occupy a particular terrain that involves continuous navigation of tensions between institutionally-required ethical procedures and ‘situational’ ethical processes in the field. We illustrate these tensions by analysing reflections on our experiences of conducting fieldwork in Indonesia, India and the Philippines. Guided by decolonial and feminist thought highlighting the politics of knowledge (co)production, this paper unpacks the problems of insider-outsider binaries and standardised ethical procedures, and explores the possibilities of ethics as visible, collaborative negotiation.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47341138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The “warm welcome by South Africa of the stealthy introduction of impunified disregard for and violation of fundamental rights”: A legal-political commentary on the SADC Tribunal jurisprudence in South Africa","authors":"Neels Swanepoel","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/4","url":null,"abstract":"matter concerned the constitutionality of former president Jacob Zuma’s support for and signing of the infamous 2014 Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit protocol, which has deprived the people of the SADC region from recourse to the SADC Tribunal. In short, the Constitutional Court confirmed both the finding that the signing of the protocol was unconstitutional, and the order for the president’s signature to be removed, exactly as the high court had ruled. While welcoming the judgment, this contribution explores whether the ruling offers credible hope to SADC citizens and represents an important milestone for South Africa and the region. Or is it a token victory for constitutional democracy and the rule of law? A discussion of the judgment, supplemented by references to other case law and literature, leads to two conclusions: Firstly, it is evident that the South African constitutional scheme is extensive in reach, and the Constitution is central in the interpretation of treaty and customary international law. While the majority judgment ironically deviates from this, instead focusing more on the dictates of international law, the minority judgment clearly locates the grounds for reviewing the former president’s conduct in his failure to respect the rights in our Constitution. Secondly, the order to un-sign the protocol could be seen as an opportunity for South Africa to recommit to justice, the rule of law, human rights and the key values of democracy. The South African president did eventually withdraw South Africa’s signature from the protocol but the question remains whether the judgment and the un-signing of the protocol are token victories for maintaining the rule of law, particularly fostering access to justice in a regional court for ordinary citizens, in South Africa and the sub-Saharan region. It is one thing to un-sign a contentious protocol that divested the region’s people of an avenue of access to justice; it is another to repair the damage that was caused by the events discussed later which effectively dismantled the SADC tribunal; something about which the political elite has remained silent.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44091584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Challenging the way we know the world: overcoming paralysis and utilising discomfort through critical reflexive thought","authors":"Grace Ese‐osa Idahosa, V. Bradbury","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/sp3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/sp3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44332206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Amos Tutuola as a quest hero for endogenous Africa: actively anglicising the Yoruba language and yorubanising the English language","authors":"F. Nyamnjoh","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/kn","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/kn","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49318850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The gift as philosophical critique of the social grant system in South Africa","authors":"E. Heppell, M. Rathbone","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/2","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article is to undertake a philosophical reflection on the South African social grant system from the perspective of the gift as presented by Marcel Mauss, Alasdair John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida. Mauss’s and Milbank’s view of the gift is based on reciprocity and a circular economy that highlights a reductionist understanding of the gift and possibly of the social grant system. On the other hand, Marion’s saturated gift emphasises givenness as a transcendent phenomenon that moves beyond the donor-receiver relationship and may end in a mystical theology. The aneconomics of Derrida will be presented as an alternative to these reductions as a function of the appearance of the other. The appearance of the other interrupts economic circularity and opens the possibility of hospitality. This appearance is a continuous event in which case the aporia remains intact. The gift is not an object or finalisation. It is the continuous interface with the other that deconstructs circularity and maintains the dignity and flourishing of the participants.","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49019747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How do we teach the world? A conversation about decolonization, processes of unlearning and 'aha moments' in institutions of Higher Education","authors":"Z. Çapan, Sebastian Garbe, M. Zöhrer","doi":"10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/sp5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa52i1/sp5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38946,"journal":{"name":"Acta Academica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46045941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}