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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Political, economic, and social forces in South Africa include a history of colonization and apartheid as well as a current struggle toward democratic transformation. This context offers rich lessons for scholars of culture and communication. The dynamic cultural identifications and representations that are emerging from those aligning as 'black,' 'white,' [1] Afrikaner, Xhosa, Zulu, South African, and African, for instance, are particularly relevant to scholars who study the role of history and politics in creating and sustaining institutional and social practices such as racism, ideologies of whiteness, and class privilege. Many scholars and practitioners seek to understand intersecting forms of racism, classism, and sexism, and ultimately to transform intergroup contact and relationships to reflect an orientation toward social justice. Paying attention to how people talk with one another about their group memberships and how they characterize others is one means of addressing how hierarchy and levels of privilege are advanced and resisted. The broad goal of this study is to apply a critical perspective to examine cultural focus group discourse generated by South Africans in 1992 and 1999 in interviews with a US American researcher. Discursive examples of race ideologies and racism, engaging and contesting class privilege, and cultural identifications were selected for analysis. In 1999, focus groups were interviewed about their group identifications, interracial contact and relationships, and views about the changing sociopolitical climate. Adding to the analysis of selected responses in 1999, an additional goal is to re-examine similar discourse from an interpretive study in 1992 (see Collier & Bornman, 1999) to see how issues of self and other cultural identifications, race, and class privilege emerge.
The purpose of this study is to examine how multiple and contextually contingent cultural identifications and privileges based on whiteness and class level are revealed and resisted in interview discourse obtained from the focus groups. Although the 1999 study was not specifically designed to replicate the earlier study, focus group respondents in both studies were asked to talk about similar issues related to cultural identifications and experiences. An examination of responses in the two time periods can reveal differences in historical, political, and social forces and establish the relevance of context in future research.
Theoretical Perspective
Assumptions I bring to the goals of this study form the foundation of a Critical/Interpretive perspective to understanding how cultural identifications and levels of privilege are constructed and contested in group interview discourses. Though Interpretive and Critical theoretical perspectives are unquestionably varied, complex, and often contradictory, I apply a particular combination consistent with my goals in this analysis of interview discourses. I seek to build an interpretive understanding of individuals' conduct and the communication moves through which they construct cultural group identifications (Collier, 2005; Martin & Nakayama, 2000). However, in order to build knowledge that is relevant to the experiences of group members and the material and social conditions in which they live (Hegde, in Collier, Hegde, Lee, Nakayama, & Yep, 2002), I simultaneously seek to uncover the means through which race and class privilege are constructed and resisted (Thompson & Collier, 2003).
Generally speaking scholars of culture and communication using an Interpretive perspective seek to build understandings of peoples' experiences of and sense-making frameworks related to culture (Carbaugh, 1996; Collier, 1998; Martin & Nakayama, 2000). Attention is often given to relationships among the forms of messages, norms, and setting and what is accomplished or produced in the social interaction. Collier (1996) used an Interpretive perspective to examine ethnic and gender identity in descriptions of recalled conflicts among friends, giving attention to properties of cultural identity based in both avowal and ascription, and variations in salience and intensity of particular cultural identities, and preferences for conduct.
Scholars employing Critical Perspectives typically give attention to uncovering structures of domination and how hierarchy is maintained and resisted in order to point ultimately to the means to emancipate those who are unjustly subjugated (Collier, 1998; Martin & Nakayama, 2000; Shome, 1996). Interest is in working with intersections between structures such as ideologies, institutions, and socioeconomic class level, and discourses and norms that reify hierarchy. Scholars applying a Critical research perspective often note the discursive means through which ideologies and oppression are enabled and constrained (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1994; van Dijk, 1997). 'This is partly a matter of how power relations are exercised and negotiated in discourse' (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, p. 270).
The study of contextual and structural features is essential because historical, economic, political, and institutional forces enable as well as constrain positions of speaking and acting, group identifications, and modes of relating. An example of research utilizing a Critical Perspective is that of Lee (1998) who examines anti-foot binding discourse in China from a postcolonial feminist approach. She uncovers the contradictions and intersections between histories, traditions, and changing norms.
This study addresses how multiple cultural identifications emerge in group members' commentaries about their own and others' groups and in their talk about their experiences in a dynamic political and social milieu. Since respondents are able to recall recent conduct and describe cultural identifications that are salient in particular situations (Collier, 1996) the discourse on which I focus is prompted and co-constructed in response to interview questions.
The cultural identifications that emerge in the discourses are expected to be contextually and situationally constrained and sometimes contradictory (Nakayama in Collier et al., 2002). Cultural identifications are not constructed in isolation, but are produced within and across dynamic contexts. Thus I seek to uncover ways in which race and class privilege emerge and reflect broader social structures in 1999 as well as in 1992, and point to implications of the responses with regard to visibility and invisibility of the privileges, positioning of members of each race group regarding social and economic status, and the range of conduct options that are open or foreclosed to members of different groups. The combination of perspectives allows me to focus on how a small group of South Africans construct their own group identifications, ascriptions of the Other and, at the same time, to see how race and class hierarchies are advanced and/or resisted.
South African Contexts: 1992 and 1999
The political landscape in 1992 reflects a period just prior to installation of South Africa's first democratically elected government in 1994 and Nelson Mandela taking office as president. In 1999, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (officially adopted in 1996) had been in place for several years. A process often described as 'transformation,' moving into a 'new South Africa,' and creating the means for a 'professedly anti-racist system of government' (Duncan, 2003, p. 137) had been in place three years.
Racial categorizing was and continues to be a common basis of self and other-identification in social interaction in South Africa (as well as many international sites). During apartheid, race was a basis of determining legal and political rights, areas of residence, and distribution of resources.
Apartheid policy, later referred to as 'separate development,' regulated every aspect of political, economic, social, and personal life, and progressively stripped 'black' South Africans of their citizenship, homes, and human rights. In so doing it enforced an over-arching system of oppression, discrimination and segregation of material, economic, political, and subjective reality on the basis of 'race.' (Franchi, 2003a, p. 127)
In 1999, although the constitution had ratified policies of democratization and Affirmative Action policies were in place, the wealth and status of the population was still concentrated in the hands of a limited few 'whites.' Apartheid was originally designed to reify social, economic, and material privilege to 'white' South Africans and deny political recourse for 'black' South Africans. Because of the persistence of systems of racism and ideologies of whiteness in South Africa (Duncan, 2003; Steyn, 2003) in this analysis I examine discourse among individuals who align with two very broad race groups of 'white' and 'black.'
Cultural identifications such as those based in race, ethnic origins, levels of privilege, among others are constructed in social interaction. Franchi and Stewart (2003) make a case for investigation of various identity markers in South African discourse as the 'discursive sites from which the individual perceives, constructs and acts upon the self and the outside world. In this sense they reflect the strategic positioning of the self within historically, politically, socially, culturally and gendered subject locations' (p. 211).
Duncan (2003) explores the impact of racism and identifications of self and other on the lives of individuals residing in the Western Cape in 1992 and 1999. Duncan describes focus group discussions with 26 adults who identify as members of 'so called "colored" communities' (p. 136) in 1992. Through a Critical orientation, he calls attention to the importance of context in his description of the sociopolitical and historical foundations that inform his use of group labels. 'Coloreds' connote
... people who, within the racist discourses of the ancien regime were constructed as being of mixed 'race' and different both to whites and 'Africans' (the main role players in the racist drama of Apartheid, according to proponents of this ideology) ... the term 'African' generally did not refer to the inhabitants of the continent, Africa, but was used primarily as a marker of 'racial' identity ... (p. 136)
He further explains that he uses the designator 'black' as 'all those marginalized by the institutionalized racism of the apartheid order, i.e., "Africans," "Indians," and "coloreds" in the old apartheid terminology' (Duncan, 2003, p. 140).
Duncan analyzes discourse from 26 individuals who are 'coloreds' in 1992 and with seven 'black' young adult students in 1999. Through utilizing a depth hermeneutics analysis, Duncan found that in discussions of racist incidents and racism in 1992 there were 'no meaningful differences' in the examples offered to represent 'blacks.' In 1999 however, 'racial' group differences among 'blacks' 'appears to be viewed as an accepted fact' (Duncan, 2003, p. 152). He also found that the marked difference that was discussed in 1992 was that between 'whites' and 'blacks.' The 'black/white' discursive constructions in 1999 were less binary and much more complex and contradictory. Duncan points out that the interpretations of discourse are not '... generalizable to the broader social groups in which the producers of these discourses were located ... also not generalizable beyond the temporal space in which they were produced' (Duncan, 2003, p. 141). Nonetheless, he argues that the themes do point to how individuals negotiate their group identities in different ways at two politically different points in history.
Cultural Identifications as Contingent and Contextual
Social/Psychological Orientations to Group Identity
Intergroup relations scholars have been investigating the role of group identity on attitudes such as prejudice and beliefs related to stereotypes for many years. Psychologists and social psychologists such as Tajfel (1981, 1982) and Pettigrew (1981, 1985) have produced a wealth of research on ingroup and outgroup distinctions and intergroup orientations of 'blacks' and 'whites' in the USA. The current study adds to the intergroup relations literature by bringing a different theoretical lens to the project of inquiry about group identities. Understanding how cultural identifications are contextually...
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