Harnessing the Ancestors: Mutuality, Uncertainty and Ritual Practice in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Ainslie, Andrew

doi:10.1017/s0001972014000448

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Meat plays a central role in indigenous cultures of South Africa and is closely linked to wealth, ancestors and power [ 47 ]. For example, at most traditional cultural ceremonies, a beast (usually a bull) is slaughtered as a way for the family to connect with, and appease, their ancestors [ 48 , 49 ]. This meat is then cooked and feasted on at the occasion.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Does It Mean to Be a Young African Woman on a University Campus in Times of Sexual Violence? A New Moment, a New Conversation

Treffry-Goatley

Lange

Moletsane³

et al. 2018

Behavioral Sciences

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Sexual violence in the higher education is an epidemic of global proportions. Scholars conclude that the individual and collective silence that surrounds such violence enables its perpetration and that violence will only be eradicated when we break this silence. In this paper, we used two participatory visual methods (PVM), collage and storytelling, to explore what sexual violence at university looks like and what it means to woman students. Two groups of student teachers in two South African universities were engaged in collage and storytelling workshops in late 2017 and early 2018, respectively. We thematically analyzed the issues that emerged from the data, drawing on transformative learning theory to explore how our approach might help women students to break the silence around sexual violence and stimulate critical dialogue to address it. Our analysis suggests that these visual tools enabled deep reflections on the meaning and impact of sexual violence, particularly for women. In addition, the participatory process supported introspection about their experiences of sexual violence and their responses to it as bystanders in and around campus. More importantly, they discussed how they, as young women, might break the silence and sustain new conversations about gender and gender equality in institutions and beyond.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Does It Mean to Be a Young African Woman on a University Campus in Times of Sexual Violence? A New Moment, a New Conversation

Treffry-Goatley

Lange

Moletsane³

et al. 2018

Behavioral Sciences

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“…Rampant unemployment and declining marriage rates have contributed to the diminishing role of men in South African domestic life (Ferguson , 231; Walker , 431). Meanwhile, the mass distribution of state social grants, for which women (in their position as child bearers and child carers) are primary recipients, has bolstered female‐centered homes (Ainslie ; Bank ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiations of Blame and Care among HIV‐positive Mothers and Daughters in South Africa's Eastern Cape

2017

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Research delineates two epidemiological categories among HIV-positive adolescents: those who contract the virus sexually and those who inherit it as infants. In this article, we are interested in how tacit inferences about adolescents' mode of infection contribute to their experiences of HIV-related blame, and their ability to achieve care, in their intimate, everyday settings. The analysis arises from ethnographic research with 23 HIV-positive adolescents living in South Africa's Eastern Cape. From these, we draw particularly on the narratives of four HIV-positive teenage girls and their HIV-positive mothers. The article explores the social stakes entailed in ascriptions of adolescents' mode of infection, particularly in terms of how blame was allocated between mothers and daughters. It further considers how these families have sought to negotiate repudiation and thereby sustain intergenerational care. The article furthers limited research on the life projects and dilemmas of this HIV-positive adolescent cohort.

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“…In the process of industrialization and urbanization that occurred during and after apartheid, certain orientations and aspirations were stressed. Some were more related to tradition, the ancestors, and the continuity of values and lineages, while others highlighted the importance of change, education, and aspirations to make use of new opportunities and freedoms, especially women confronted with strict and confined gender roles as wives and mothers (see Ainslie ; Bank ; Mager ; McAllister ).…”

Section: Money For Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The twentieth century was marked by the brutal and forced resettlement of Africans; the theft of ancestral land; and racist labor laws that separated migrant men from their homes, wives, and children. Building a house and aspiring a home in Robert's hometown in the Eastern Cape, on the land of his ancestors, is socially and symbolically charged with aspirations to relate in particular ways to ancestors and descendants (see Ainslie ; Bank ; McAllister ). The relationship between the homestead (or umzi ), land, and kinship becomes particularly clear when examining the rituals that center around the house.…”

Section: Aspiring a Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Wealth‐in‐people and practical rationality: Aspirations and decisions about money in South Africa

Bähre

2020

Economic Anthropology

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This article explores crucial decisions made by Sylvia, a Xhosa woman living in the townships of Cape Town, during a period of approximately thirty years. These decisions involved large sums of money and had important consequences for her own life, for those of her son and grandchild, and for the relationships she had with her first and second husbands and in-laws. Sylvia's decisions continued to be influenced by gendered ways of belonging to ancestors and descendants but also show important changes in connecting wealth and people. The wealth-in-people approach offers important insights into how Sylvia's decisions are guided by power and control over people as well as by prestige. However, it also becomes evident that the wealth-in-people approach does not sufficiently explain or theorize the agency of people. By drawing on the philosophical notion of practical rationality as a complementary analytical perspective, I explore agency in relation to aspirations and the acquisition of new open-ended values. The perspective offered by practical rationality increases our understanding of how individual decisions, especially complex decisions around money, are made because of their transformative potential and the aspiration to cultivate oneself.Drawing on Miers and Kopytoff (1977), Guyer explores the connections between self-realization, the meaning of exchange, and different political and economic hierarchies in equatorial Africa (Guyer 1993; see also Guyer 1995). Using museum collections and archival records, she analyzes how material objects in precapitalist equatorial Africa constituted personal qualities. The way objects circulated within transactional systems was part of gaining rights-in-people, often the ability to mobilize them to particular acts or to lay claim to their loyalty. These rights-in-people could then be mobilized for economic or political purposes. The wealth-in-people approach highlights that these purposes can be individual pursuits as well as collective-particularly kinship-pursuits. Such pursuits were not (only) material but also forms of self-realization that shaped personhood. This approach shows how regimes or systems of circulation increase people's status and respectability and have far-reaching implications for power dynamics within and between communities. Guyer concludes that wealth-in-people offers important insights into the "contingent cultural and political process by which, in both capitalist and non-capitalist economies, some things and some people may be realized as assets" (1993, 261; see also Guyer 1995;Guyer and Belinga 1995). By carefully examining museum collections and archival records, the wealth-in-people approach offers a comprehensive analysis of how people in precapitalist West Africa established connections between material wealth, possibilities for political mobilization, and the valuation of people.Within the wealth-in-people approach, self-realization refers to the building of personhood. It shows how people try to gain status and prestige by how they are situated...

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Harnessing the Ancestors: Mutuality, Uncertainty and Ritual Practice in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

What Does It Mean to Be a Young African Woman on a University Campus in Times of Sexual Violence? A New Moment, a New Conversation

What Does It Mean to Be a Young African Woman on a University Campus in Times of Sexual Violence? A New Moment, a New Conversation

Negotiations of Blame and Care among HIV‐positive Mothers and Daughters in South Africa's Eastern Cape

Wealth‐in‐people and practical rationality: Aspirations and decisions about money in South Africa

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