Gendered naming and values inherent in the Xhosa amakrwala (graduate-initiates): implications for teaching a multicultural class
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2012
TITLE AUTHOR(S): M.Cekiso, T.Meyiwa
KEYWORDS: INITIATION RITUALS, SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
DEPARTMENT: Equitable Education and Economies (IED)
Intranet: HSRC Library: shelf number 7696
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/2985
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/2985
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Rites of passage play a central role in African socialization, demarking the different stages in an individual's development, as well as that person's relationship and role in the broader community. The major stage in African life is the transition from childhood to adulthood when they become fully institutionalized to the ethics of the group's culture. Rites of passage are for this reason critical in character building and identity formation (Shahadah) - a view equally propounded by Tajfel (1996), a social identity theorist. For Xhosa male graduate-initiates (amakrwala), names bestowed upon them during the process of ukwaluka are a prescript that signifies values held by the broader community. Drawing from an empirical study that sought to understand the conceptual underpinnings of the practice, this paper presents the perceptual voices of both the initiates and name givers. Using theories of social identity and masculinity, it asserts that the naming custom occurs in a context that, whilst one hand is endeared and seeks to build character, it stipulates a kind of masculinity and identity that is in line with what the broader community sanctions and values. Equally the paper seeks to examine implications that such socialisation could have in a multicultural and/or multilingual class - as such classes are in the rise at the research sites from which the data for this paper was drawn.-
Related Research Outputs:
- The consolidation of democracy in South Africa
- Core datasets for the state of the environment reporting in SARDC
- Disability assessment tool
- Care as vocation and occupation
- Monitoring and evaluation of DANIDA support to education and skills development (SESD) programme: second impact study: Vuselela College, North West, March
- South Africa: skills development as a tool for social and economic development
- The development decade?: economic and social change in South Africa, 1994-2004
- Employment creation through the provision of social development services: exploring the options
- Studying adolescence
- Afrique du Sud: reduction des depenses sociales et deterioration de la qualite de l'enseignement
- The reproduction of social class inequalities through mathematics pedagogies in South African primary schools
- Teachers' social class, professional dispositions and pedagogic practice
- Social class and pedagogy: a model for the investigation of pedagogic variation
- Social and economic context of families and households in South Africa
- Confounding phenomenology, epistemology and the place of race
- Speaking to global debates with a national lens: South African social movements in comparative perspective
- Report and policy brief from the 4th Africa Conference on social aspects of HIV/AIDS research: innovations in access to prevention, treatment and care in HIV/AIDS, Kisumu, Kenya, 29 April-3 May 2007
- The South African index of multiple deprivation for children: census 2001
- Young people's violent behaviour: social learning in context
- Traditional circumcision during manhood initiation rituals in the Eastern Cape, South Africa: a pre-post intervention evaluation