'Real men, 'Proper ladies and mixing in-between : a qualitative study of social cohesion and discrimination in terms of race and gender within residences at Stellenbosch University

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: My research is motivated by concerns with promoting „transformation‟ in StellenboschUniversity, a formerly white Afrikaans University which is still predominantly white in termsof numbers and proportions of students attending the institution. While I argue about theimportance of taking measures to promote more „diverse‟ student populations, I am critical ofdiscourses which equate transformation with „improving‟ demographic profiles defined interms of numbers of black, white, coloured and Indian students. I argue that understandingsof transformation and diversity need to engage with the students‟ views and experiences ofthe university in order to make meaningful change with regard to social cohesion andintegration, which goes beyond statistical change. My research does this by exploring howstudents from particular residences, in Stellenbosch University, construct and experienceuniversity and residence life and their own identifications. The students were interviewed infriendship groups, selected by the students themselves, and a key concern of mine was tofacilitate conversations with them on broad themes relating to their reasons for coming toStellenbosch and their interests, aspirations, motivations, identifications and disidentificationsas particular students in particular residences in Stellenbosch. I wasparticularly concerned to pick up on issues which the students raised in these „focus groupdiscussions‟ so that the students, themselves, played a key role in setting the agenda in thediscussion and they and their reflections on their experiences and constructions of themselvesand others became the topic of discussion. Rather than taking the group interview as an„instrument‟ (as interviews, like questionnaires, are often described in methods texts in thesocial sciences), I write about it as ethnographic encounter involving them and myself asparticipants, and I explore insights about the nature of their friendships and relationshipsderived from first-hand experience, of how they engage with their selected friends and withme in the research group. Furthermore, by engaging with them as authorities about their livesand identifications as particular kinds of students at Stellenbosch, and posing questions whichencouraged them to reflect on these. I argue that this kind of research can itself become amodel of good pedagogic and „transformative‟ practice.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University