Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed - 25 May
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Categories
Dear friends of the Urban Futures Centre @ Durban University of Technology (UFC@DUT),
The UFC@DUT will be running its 13th seminar of the year. Please join us for yet another interesting seminar presentation on the Dreaming Workshops.
Topic : Dreaming Workshops
Presenter: Kira Erwin
Date: Wednesday, 25 May 2016
Time: 12:00 to 13:30
Venue: BS2103, Level 1, S2 Block, Steve Biko Campus. Entrance from gate 1 and 2. 79 Steve Biko road.
About the Presentation
Non-racialism is one of the founding principles in the South African constitution and frequently found in political, media and public discourses. Yet there is little critical debate or consensus on what lies within the concept. Its common use vaguely suggests a way to live together harmoniously in South Africa, but this belies both its contested history and its present lack of content.
This study proposes to explore how Grade 10 and Grade 11 (approximately 14 – 17 year olds) South African school learners envision such a future. The pilot study aims to give some content to the concept of non-racialism through the ideas and imaginings of young people. To our knowledge there is little work in South Africa on how ordinary people imagine a future non-racial society. Studies that do focus on non-racialism indicate that for many older South Africans the realization of these ideals is best left to the younger generations who do not carry the historic baggage of their own generation. Romanticizing ‘untainted’ youth as able to transcend a troubled past is not an unusual response in transitional societies. However, we need to be cautious of displacing responsibility for change onto the young in society particularly given the various ways in which inequality, including racial inequality, is currently reproduced in South Africa.
Acknowledging this we do think it is important to listen carefully to the imaginings of young people’s dreams of a more socially just world. To do this we use a methodology of Dreaming Workshops; these sessions not only offer a space for utopian dreaming, but importantly then use these dreams to identify and reflect on practices and power relations in the present that create obstacles or enablers to these future trajectories.
This seminar explores the methodology of Dreaming and presents some of the initial findings from the study conducted by Kira Erwin and Kathryn Pillay.
About the Presenter
Kira is based at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. She has a Doctorate in Sociology from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, and a Masters in Philosophy from Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Her research interests for the most part focus on race, racialism and racism, as well as how these identities and power relations play out in particular urban spaces. She is increasingly interested in notions of the urban and cities and how they shape our lives. She is an ethnographer who likes to explore participatory methods in research.
Please feel free to send this on to others who might be interested. Kindly RSVP your attendance.
Looking forward to seeing you at this seminar.
Kind Regards
Fathima Ally
Durban University of Technology
Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment
Urban Futures Centre
Administrator
031 373 2100/2020