COE student or fellowship support Dr Alude Mahali
Abstract
This proposal roughly outlines the beginning of an imagined far-reaching and significant research programme that principally investigates the ways in which South African youth enact freedom, implement civil service and leadership and experience personal identity in a transforming South Africa and globalizing world. Youth are anxious for strategies for navigational abilities in the contemporary South African landscape. Marginalized youth especially, contend with social inequality, unemployment, inadequate education, economic inertia, shifting gender roles, and lack of resources as well as issues of agency, identity and belonging. While youth experience these issues, they concurrently contend with a recovering post-apartheid South Africa. The latest national youth policy agenda speaks of participation, information, youth conflict and leadership as some of the priority areas that need to be addressed. Thusly the imagined research sees me working with ACTIVATE! , a network of young leaders to; a) observe, detail and make meaning of their pedagogical tools as useful strategies ACTIVATE! change drivers adopt to navigate through difficulties and to effect real change in their communities; b) make meaning of and articulate the dynamics of group interaction/conflict between youth from different races, backgrounds and cultures to demonstrate how race and culture, especially, interface in a way that reflects the shifting identity of South Africa. I identify how programmes like ACTIVATE! dynamically address youth experiences and social problems in an engaged pedagogical way, I recognize how structured interventions such as these prepare youth for navigating the world and moreover, aid in equalizing access, thus, bolstering South Africa???s social capital. This imagined research additionally examines how instances of self-knowledge i.e. ???making meaning??? or formation ??? of selfhood manifest in the interaction between young people.
