Papers by Sonja Narunsky-Laden
Critical Arts, Mar 1, 2010
... the dominance of a culture in a society does not require all members to be able to participat... more ... the dominance of a culture in a society does not require all members to be able to participate in that culture on the same terms. Indeed, a culture may be dominant even if most people can only aspire to participate in it: its dominance is felt to the extent that people's aspirations, their hopes and fears, vocabulary of motives and sense of self are defined in its terms ... While it is important to recognize that the terms of participation in consumer culture are profoundly unequal, these terms are not directly tied (though they might be indirectly related) to economic equality, but are peculiar to the culture itself. (Lury 1996: 7) What then is money? It is a universal measure of value, but its specific form is not yet as universal as the method that humanity has devised to measure time all round the world. It is purchasing power, a means of buying and selling in markets. It counts wealth and status. It is a store of memory linking individuals to their various communities, a kind of memory bank and thus a source of identity. As a symbolic medium, it conveys information through a system of signs that relies more on numbers than words. A lot more circulates with money than the goods and services it buys. (Hart 2007:15) Why political economy no longer tells the whole story The uneven and contradictory interconnections between apartheid and capitalism in South Africa have long been critically debated in political economy terms from both liberal and Marxist perspectives. Recent critical analyses of transformation in South Africa and attempts to describe South Africa's reintegration into the global economy underscore, to varying degrees and from a range of different viewpoints, the growing and troubling 'limits of liberation' (Robins 2005). These studies continue to probe and problematise, within political economy frameworks, the nature of state power and national polities both in Africa and beyond, typically critiquing the domination of state politics, law and institutions, issues of ownership and control, describing how subsequent struggles for power are enacted among various political players, and between these and market actors. These critical inquiries include, but are by no means limited to, Bond 2005, 2006; Chidester, Dexter and James 2003; Daniel, Habib and Southall 2004; Daniel, Southall and Lutchman 2005; Habib and Bentley 2008; Robins 2005; Seekings and Nattrass 2006; Southall and Melber 2009, to name but a handful. Today, post-transitional South Africa comprises a contradictory network of socio-cultural and economic forms of reorganisation, broadly attesting to an accommodation of neoliberal corporate capitalism. This corporate neoliberal environment is marked concurrently by continuing uneven development, ongoing poverty and rising structural unemployment, transforming accumulations of capital, more or less successful procedures of racial redress, elitist and ethnic mechanisms of socio-economic inclusion and exclusion, manifestations of non-racialism and re-racialisation, local mobilisations of social movements and NGOs, refashioned affiliations to traditionally African social practices and hierarchies, and more. During the apartheid regime, crucial in this regard were the ways political and economic factors converged and intersected primarily through strategies of racial discrimination as a means of controlling 'cheap' black labour. However, in post-apartheid South Africa, convergences between economic, ethnic, national and other socio-cultural determinants, and the state-initiated agenda of redress, have generated new socio-economic complexities. Alongside attempts to attain sustainable economic growth and rejoin the global economy, and a desire--however implicit--to forge a sense of national identity, government has also made a point of prioritising an initiative of redress, whereby transformation has been conceptualised in terms of wealth and income redistribution to previously disenfranchised groups (see Habib & Bentley 2008: 24, passim; Innes 2007: 67). …
English Studies in Africa, May 1, 2010
... For a detailed overview of popular culture in the West, see especially Dolby 2003: 258-262; f... more ... For a detailed overview of popular culture in the West, see especially Dolby 2003: 258-262; for seminal studies of popular culture in the West, see Miller and McHoul 1998; Cronin 2000; Dahlgren and Sparks 1991; Fiske 1987, 1990; Huyssen 1986; Hartley 1996, 1999; and ...
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf ... more Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Journalism Studies, Aug 1, 2007
The magazine appears to have been directed at a modernising, middle-class reading public actively... more The magazine appears to have been directed at a modernising, middle-class reading public actively engaged in promoting a culture of consumption. But this paper inquires into two sets of socio-cultural environments in which official, political economic determinants cannot ...
Deeply entangled in capitalist production and consumption even as they are largely responsible fo... more Deeply entangled in capitalist production and consumption even as they are largely responsible for activating and regulating the cultural construction of individual and collective identities and the social manufacture of meanings, 'middle-class matters' should be understood here in two ways: (1) as a repertoire of goods, conduct, and beliefs typically used, practiced, and subscribed to by individuals and groups of people who affiliate themselves, and are affiliated by others, with a range of lifestyles known as 'middle-class'; (2) as a dominant ethos that pIays a crucial role, 'makes a difference', and is hence a highly significant social force in present-day South Africa. Following Bourdieu (1984), the term 'middle-class' refers here to a set of 'middle-class' dispositions or aspirations representing what middle-class people typically 'do' or 'aspire to', rather than a group of people whose monthly income qualifies them as actual members of this socioeconomic stratum. It is time, I believe, for scholars and intellectuals in post-apartheid South Africa to revise their notions of things 'middle-class', and through self-critical analysis, to recover the 'middle-class' and their own roles within it as a socially energizing force which, over time, both prescribes and regulates social order. This paper inquires into the making of a new consumer-consciousness
The Cambridge History of South African Literature
Choice Reviews Online, 2011
This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, India... more This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA www.iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders Fax orders Orders by e-mail [email protected] 800-842-6796 812-855-7931 © 2010 by Herman Wasserman All ...
Transitions in Domestic Consumption and Family Life in the Modern Middle East, 2003
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 02560049785310101, Aug 29, 2007
... In education, the concept of ubuntu extends to the Outreach programs run by Phumzile Dlamini ... more ... In education, the concept of ubuntu extends to the Outreach programs run by Phumzile Dlamini at Durban's Art Gallery, where arts and crafts are taught, especially African beadwork techniques, to people with the aim of helping them earn money to start their own businesses. ...
Scrutiny2, 2001
... the African-American pub-lisher John H Johnson and a South African partnership comprising Kei... more ... the African-American pub-lisher John H Johnson and a South African partnership comprising Keith ... marks the onset of a new phase in the South African urban cultural economy ... to provide "serious" reading matter, may be precisely what ensures the endless regeneration of their ...
Poetics Today, 1991
This book has a dual focus. First, it investigates the reasons for the emergence of a large and d... more This book has a dual focus. First, it investigates the reasons for the emergence of a large and distinctive body of feminist literature in the last two decades, elucidating its social meanings and functions by linking genre analysis to a consideration of the ideological frameworks shaping the production and reception of recent women's writing. Feminist fiction can be understood as both a product of existing social conditions and a form of critical opposition to them, and this dialectic can be usefully interpreted in conjunction with an ...
Poetics Today, 2004
This essay argues that the critical practice of New Historicism is a mode of ''literary... more This essay argues that the critical practice of New Historicism is a mode of ''literary'' history whose ''literariness'' lies in bringing imaginative operations closer to the surface of nonliterary texts and briefly describes some of the practice's lead- ing literary features and strategies. I further point out that the ostensible ''arbitrary connectedness'' (Cohen 1987) of New Historicist writing is in fact aesthetically coded and patterned, both stylistically and in terms of potential semantic correspondences between various representations of the past. I then move on to address the ques- tion of why anecdotal evidence features centrally and has come to play a key role in New Historicist writing. Here, I contend that, as components of narrative discourse, anecdotal materials are central in enabling New Historicists to make discernible on the surface of their discourse procedures of meaning production typically found in literary forms. In particular, anecdotal materials are the fragmented ''stuff '' of his- torical narratization: they facilitate the shaping of historical events into stories and more or less formalized ''facts.'' This essay examines how the New Historicist anec- dote remodels historical reality ''as it might have been,'' reviving the way history is experienced and concretely reproduced by contemporary readers of literary history. Finally, the essay confirms how the textual reproduction of anecdotal evidence also enables the New Historicist mode of ''literary'' history to secure its links to literary artifacts, literary scholarship, and conventional historical discourse.
Poetics Today, 2001
... Manoim (ibid.) tells us that the Americanized African-sounding pen name of the series writer,... more ... Manoim (ibid.) tells us that the Americanized African-sounding pen name of the series writer, a white journalist named Bob Toms, was ''Robert Roro,'' and he describes Malaga as wearing ''Chicago-inspired clothing'' in ''the sketches that accompanied each installment.'' This use ...
Journal of Consumer Culture, 2003
Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1991
... PUBLISHER: Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore). SERIES TITLE: ... SUBJECT(S): English ... more ... PUBLISHER: Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore). SERIES TITLE: ... SUBJECT(S): English prose literature; Autobiography; Authors, English; Women; Sex role in literature; Self in literature; History and criticism; Biography; Women authors; 18th century; England. ...
Critical Arts, 1997
... In education, the concept of ubuntu extends to the Outreach programs run by Phumzile Dlamini ... more ... In education, the concept of ubuntu extends to the Outreach programs run by Phumzile Dlamini at Durban's Art Gallery, where arts and crafts are taught, especially African beadwork techniques, to people with the aim of helping them earn money to start their own businesses. ...
Comparative Literature, 1992
Copyright © 1990 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in t... more Copyright © 1990 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 S 4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 1939-Subversive intent: gender, politics, and the ...
Media power, politics …, 2008
... play here on South Africanness, generated by presenting inverted stereotypical representation... more ... play here on South Africanness, generated by presenting inverted stereotypical representations of the ... to identity and identification, which takes into account the socio-cultural determinants entailed in the mediatory mechanisms of consumer culture and the commercial ...
English Studies in Africa, 2010
... For a detailed overview of popular culture in the West, see especially Dolby 2003: 258-262; f... more ... For a detailed overview of popular culture in the West, see especially Dolby 2003: 258-262; for seminal studies of popular culture in the West, see Miller and McHoul 1998; Cronin 2000; Dahlgren and Sparks 1991; Fiske 1987, 1990; Huyssen 1986; Hartley 1996, 1999; and ...
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Papers by Sonja Narunsky-Laden