Emerging identities in contemporary South Africa : six individual identity narratives from central Cape Town high schools

This research is an interdisciplinary, qualitative study of youth identity in two coeducational secondary schools with diverse student populations, in central Cape Town. Combining sociological and psychological perspectives, it seeks to understand how young South Africans are making sense of their place in the world, and in the history of their country, through exploring the way in which identities are being constructed on the site of the individual. It seeks to identify what discursive and imaginative resources young South Africans are drawing upon in the construction of their identities, how the (racialised) discourses from the past are working through them, and how they are negotiating new ways-of-being. Discourse analysis was combined with narrative methods; the former determined the discursive environment in which the students are embedded, and the latter investigated how individuals are positioned within this environment, and how they interact with this positioning. Focus groups in the schools formed the first phase of the research, followed by intensive individual interviews with six key participants. In order to understand the complexity of identity processes, the identity narratives of six individuals are the main focus of this research. Narrative methods were used to interrogate actors' own meanings in the construction of their identities, and a principal concern was to explore how participants understood, and narrated, their own identities. The intersubjective, embodied, and imaginative construction of identities was incorporated into the research. What became apparent was the way in which racialised discourses continue to dominate the post-apartheid landscape. However, racial signifiers are becoming increasingly confused, and students are resisting the positions to which they are being called. These individuals are negotiating their way through complex fields of meaning to generate new identities and ways-of-belonging that subvert former categories.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Sociology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Jones, Sarah

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Meeran, Jean

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10712

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10712