International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies

vLex
Publisher:
Pluto Journals
Publication date:
2023-03-01
ISBN:
2516-5518

Description:

The International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies is a bi-annual, peer-reviewed journal that aims to provide a platform for critical engagement with hierarchies of power that create and sustain privilege and oppression along axes of difference. IJCDS contains original articles (research and theoretical) and book reviews and is published in June and November. All articles are submitted for anonymous peer reviewing by at least three referees.

Issue Number

Latest documents

  • Commentary: Sustained and Sustainable Transformative Actions Can Deliver Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Universities
  • Contents
  • Practitioner’s Perspectives on a National South African Higher Education Institution Policy Framework Mitigating Gender-Based Violence at a South African University

    Gender-based violence (GBV) is a crime that violates the right to life, equality, human dignity, freedom and security of a person (South African Constitution, Act No 108 of 1996). The prevention and management of GBV is a critical transformation imperative and has in recent years (2014 to 2021) come under the spotlight at South African universities. The National Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) developed a policy framework to guide post-school education and training institutions to address GBV in 2020.This article is a practitioner’s assessment and reflection of how the DHET policy framework on GBV can be implemented at Stellenbosch University, a public higher education institution (HEI) in South Africa. We look at how to integrate recommendations made in the GBV policy framework at South African universities and what are the current constraints that throttle GBV interventions. We reflect on existing mechanisms and policy recommendations that still need to be operationalised to effectively respond to GBV at universities. This article further assesses how institutional policy development, professional administrative and support services, and senior leadership structures can be leveraged to include, and efficiently implement, some of the GBV policy framework recommendations to address GBV at HEIs and in South Africa more broadly.

  • Introduction
  • Aims and Scope
  • IJCDS News
  • Institutional Culture Change

    The purpose of the paper is to explore the architecture of the institutional culture with the aim of proposing a programmatic template to use to implement culture change initiatives in the higher education (HE) sector in South Africa. The need for institutional culture change has been flagged in numerous studies as a barrier in the implementation of substantive and qualitative transformation. Through document analysis, this paper argues that the problem in implementing institutional culture change interventions aligned with the humanising mission of the sector is related to the failure to adopt a social inclusion approach that is based on a systems thinking paradigm. The paradigm is a holistic analysis of a system with the purpose of identifying elements of that system, which this research manifests and explicates. The findings of the research show that changing institutional culture is inextricably linked to the objectives of transformation. Second, the article highlights the significance of adopting the social inclusion framework, including understanding the politics and practices of social inclusion.

  • Workplace Bullying and Its Implications for Gender Transformation in the South African Higher Education Sector

    While transformation in the higher education sector in South Africa has been the subject of intensive research since 1994, few studies have explored the link between workplace bullying and transformation. Whereas workplace bullying has drawn researchers’ attention for decades, it is only recently that scholars have started to interrogate the phenomenon through the intersectional lens. This paper employs intersectionality to explore women academics’ experiences of workplace bullying and to suggest links between workplace bullying and gender transformation in the higher education sector in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a cross-section of 25 women academics who had experienced workplace bullying. As part of data triangulation, four union representatives and three human resources practitioners were also interviewed. The study’s main findings indicate that gender, race and class mediate women academics’ experiences of workplace bullying. In historically White universities, African, Coloured and Indian women academics, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, are more likely to be bullied, by seniors, peers, administrators and students. For White women academics, race ameliorates their workplace bullying experiences. The simultaneous effects of race, gender and class derail transformation as members of previously disadvantaged groups either remain stuck in junior academic positions, or exit the sector.

  • Review of Pumla Dineo Gqola’s Female Fear Factory

    This paper reviews the book Female Fear Factory (2021) by Pumla Dineo Gqola. An overview and evaluation of the book are provided, emphasising the important deepening of the central concept and its relevance to anti-rape and feminist work, activism and scholarship across the world.

  • Diversity Is an Asset to Science Not a Threat

    In this paper, Critical Realism is used as a theoretical framework to show that diversity is an asset to science not a threat. Critical Realism situates the reliability and reproducibility of science in the realm of the real and thus relocates the notion of “objectivity” from the person of the scientist to the process of science. This means that it no longer necessary to attempt to minimise the person of the scientist in pursuit of rigorous knowledge. The implication is that diversity both in terms of intellectual training (within limits) and in terms of being multicultural, gender, sexuality, multilingual, is revealed to be an asset. This is because the construction of knowledge draws on personal experience and having people with divergent experience interrogating the same problem is more likely to provide a reliable, reproducible solution. In the latter parts of the paper, the implications for teaching are described. In addition, it is demonstrated that this argument can be extended into different knowledge areas.

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