In this study, we analyze a body of discourse concerning the government of space in South Africa, employing the methodological framework developed by Wetherell and Potter (1992). Our data comprised a series of letters submitted to local newspapers by the white residents of a coastal town in the Cape Province. The letters protested, on various grounds, the development of a black `squatter' community within the town's environs. The present research focused upon residents' use of an ecological repertoire to warrant their arguments. In the first stage of analysis, we located several sites of contradiction at which the coherence of such arguments broke down. In the second, we delineated three moments wherein ecological discourse was employed to justify the racist division of space, while concealing overt racism. We conclude by underlining the value of Wetherell and Potter's model, which replaces a priori definitions of the content of racist ideology with a more fluid, contextualized approach.

This discourse analytic study explores constructions of culture and illness in the talk of psychiatrists, psychologists and indigenous healers as they discuss possibilities for collaboration in South African mental health care. Disjunctive versions of what 'culture' is in relation to the illness of a person form an important site for the negotiation of power relations between mental health practitioners and indigenous healers. The results of this study are presented in two parts. Part I explores how a professionalist discourse structured western psychiatric and psychological practice as rational, pragmatic and effective. 'Cultural differences' were variously deployed to support and subvert western psychiatric power. Part II explores the various constructions of African culture'--as 'collectivist' and 'pathogenic'--and the 'African mind'--as 'primitive' and 'irrational'--and how these formulations work to disqualify egalitarian positioning for indigenous healers within formal mental health care settings in South Africa.

This discourse analytic study explores constructions of culture and illness in the talk of psychiatrists, psychologists and indigenous healers as they discuss possibilities for collaboration in South African mental health care. Versions of 'culture', and disputes over what constitutes 'disorder', are an important site for the negotiation of power relations between mental health practitioners and indigenous healers. The results of this study are presented in two parts. Part I explores discourses about western psychiatric/psychological professionalism, tensions in diagnosis between cultural relativism and psychiatric universalism, and how assertion of 'cultural differences' may be used to resist psychiatric power. Part II explores how discursive constructions of 'African culture' and 'African madness' work to marginalize indigenous healing in South African mental health care, despite repeated calls for collaboration.

Responsive to the perceived high risks of HIV-infection by sexually active youth, several South African sexual health promotion campaigns have used media targeting parents/mothers, instructing them on how sex should be talked about with their children/youth to ‘risk-proof’ them. In this paper I examine how conversations about sex between apparently unwilling parents and young people are fabricated in selected loveLife print-media texts. A Foucauldian analysis of subject positioning explores how expert communication techniques are offered to set up ‘discussions’. I examine the implications for intergenerational communication of loveLife's use of a youth-culture discourse about adolescent agency alongside the familiar storm-and-stress discourse about adolescent deficits. I also explore how power is masked in figuring ‘open’, ‘willing’ and ‘conflict-free’ conversations about sexual issues.

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