The effectiveness of poverty alleviation initiatives in Buffalo City Metropolitan municipality

The South African democratic government has, since 1994, implemented various programs that aim to alleviate poverty through policy interventions. The Provincial Growth and Development Plan (Eastern Cape 2004-2014) commit its self to halving poverty by 2014. The research seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of poverty alleviation initiatives in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM), East London; focussing in Nompumelelo informal settlement. The study applied quantitative and qualitative approaches for biographical and socio economic information; and for in-depth understanding and verification respectively. Data collection was through structured interviews and survey questionnaires. The findings reveal that there are random, short-term poverty alleviation initiatives taking place in Nompumelelo informal settlement area. Projects that could have been self-sustaining collapsed due to lack of skills and training. The study indicates that the level of unemployment is high at 68 percent

A low cost high flux solar simulator

A low cost, high flux, large area solar simulator has been designed, built and characterized for the purpose of studying optical melting and light absorption behavior of molten salts. Seven 1500 W metal halide outdoor stadium lights are used as the light source to simulate concentrating solar power (CSP) heliostat output. Metal halide bulbs and ballasts are far less costly per-watt than typical xenon arc lamp solar simulator light sources. They provide a satisfactory match to natural sunlight; although ‘unfiltered’ metal halide lights have irradiance peaks between 800 and 1000 nm representing an additional 5% of measured energy output as compared to terrestrial solar irradiance over the same range. With the use of a secondary conical concentrator, output fluxes of approximately 60 kW/m[superscript 2] (60 suns) peak and 45 kW/m[superscript 2] (45 suns) average are achieved across a 38 cm diameter output aperture. Unique to the design of this simulator, the tilt angle and distance between the output aperture and the ground are adjustable to accommodate test receivers of varying geometry. Use of off-the-shelf structural, lighting and electrical components keeps the fabrication cost below $10,000

The Civil War and the Transformation of American Medicine

The most common historiographical narrative used to explain the transformation of American medicine during the Civil War centralizes on the brilliance of a few notable physicians, whose radical ideas, daring, and exceptional work ethic built or set precedents for standards foundational to modern medicine. However, this approach is limited and does not consider the impact of the context of war and power structures in shaping the practice of medicine. Through examining personal accounts and official documentation including, government reports, news articles, war journals, private and military correspondence, physicians and nurse’s notes, and post-war autobiographical recollections, a new understanding emerges. Civil War physicians were mobilized to make medical breakthroughs due to the context of war itself. The demands of battlefield medicine coupled with the unprecedented magnitude of the wounded exacerbated and made unavoidably explicit many dysfunctional norms and commonly held practices in treatment or inpatient care that too often characterized early American medicine. The context of war exposed the need for changes in medical practice, which was consequently made possible by the military’s centralized authority, resources, and systems. These two factors prompted Civil War physicians to transform and professionalize medicine by establishing and enforcing standards for inpatient care procedures or training requirements for practitioners. Ultimately, without the circumstance of battle or the power structure of the military at war, the changes that improved medical practice would have happened much more incrementally and over a more extended period

Panel: Sexual Harassment in Higher Education: Understanding Root Causes and Developing Labor-Management Solutions

Sexual Harassment: Recognizing All Type

Absent from the frontline but not absent from the struggle: women in mining

Im Beitrag wird eine ethnographische Studie präsentiert, deren Gegenstand die Teilnahme von Frauen an den Arbeitskämpfen im südafrikanischen Bergbau gewesen ist. Die Darstellung ist durch folgende theoretisch abgeleitete Fragen gerahmt: Wie erfolgt die Verwandlung der geschlechtsspezifischen Gestaltung des sozialen Raumes in kulturelle und alltagsbezogene Praktiken und wie erfolgt die Produktion und die Reproduktion sozialer Räume angesichts der Absonderung von frauenspezifischen Aufgaben im Rahmen des Arbeitskampfes? Den Schwerpunkt der Studie bilden die Muster der geschlechtsspezifischen Partizipation innerhalb der Interessenvertretungen der Bergarbeiter und ihre Bedeutung im Arbeitskampf. (ICB

Panel: Sexual Harassment in Higher Education: Understanding Root Causes and Developing Labor-Management Solutions

Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicin

Panel: Sexual Harassment in Higher Education: Understanding Root Causes and Developing Labor-Management Solutions

Sexual Harassment: Recognizing All Type

Panel: Sexual Harassment in Higher Education: Understanding Root Causes and Developing Labor-Management Solutions

Interventions for Preventing Sexual Harassmen

Women in mining : occupational culture and gendered identities in the making

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology), 2016This research contributes to an understanding of how female mineworkers make sense of themselves and how gender identities are constructed in mining. Mine work has for a long time been seen as allowing for particular masculine self-formations and mineworkers embodying specific mining masculine subjectivities. The entrance of women in South African mines from 2004 and their allocation into occupations that were previously exclusively reserved for men is a significant challenge and a disruption to masculine subjectivities and the occupational culture. This thesis illustrates what transpires when socially constructed gender boundaries are crossed. This is what the women are doing with their entry into underground mining. For ten and a half months, between 2011 and 2012 I worked in the mines and lived with mineworkers. During this period I completely submerged myself into the life world of mine workers to get an in-depth understanding of the ways female mineworkers understand themselves and navigate the masculine mining world. I managed to get the subtle, nuanced, instantaneous and unnoticeable ways which produce and reproduce the fluid and contested gender identities. Drawing on insights from a range of feminist theorists and feminist readings of theories I argue that the construction of gendered identities in mining is an ongoing embodied performative process which is articulated in fluid ways in different mining spaces within certain structural, relational and historical constraints. The thesis presents a typology outlining four categories of femininities; mafazi, money makers, real mafazi and madoda straight, that are performed and produced underground by women mineworkers. At home these performances are unstable and disrupted as women attempt to reconcile their role as mothers, wives and their workplace 2 identities as underground miners with their notions of femininity. This necessitates a renegotiation of gender ideologies, performances and identities. In this thesis I succinctly present the fluid, multiple, contradictory and contested processes involved in constructing gendered identities; above ground, underground, and at home. Drawing from this evidence I conclude that women do not approach the workplace or labour process as empty vessels or act as cogs-in the mining machines but are active agents in the construction of their gender identities. The key elements I use to analyse gendered identities are; gendered spaces, embodiment, social and material bodies (as sites of control, resistance and agency) and performativity. I argue that all of these converge and are central to the construction of gendered identities. Key Words: Women in mining, gendered identities, subjectivities, femininities, masculinities, gender performances, embodiment, gendered spaces, gender transformation.GR201