YOUTH VOICES ON SOCIAL JUSTICE.
“We are young. Unripe. We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible. What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become….Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? …. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald…. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours….”
Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize lecture, December 7, 1993
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity….When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TED Talk 2009
OUR PROJECT
> Our project
Our year-long project in 2020 is led by Melanie Walker (https://www.ufs.ac.za/hehd/home/People/professor-melanie-walker) and Carmen Martinez (https://www.ufs.ac.za/hehd/home/unlisted-pages2/student-dummy-pages/Dr-Carmen-Martinez-Vargas) at the University of the Free State in South Africa.
The team includes 18 graduate students as co-researchers.
Our funding is from NRF grant number 86540.
> Background
In post-1994 South Africa, history continues to disfigure the social fabric and educational landscape. Slow-paced and uneven transformation, as well as challenges of power and voice, wealth, race and gender inequalities, and decolonization persist. Public universities, too, face these challenges. Yet, with over 1.2 million students, universities can foster critical ways of thinking about challenging issues, enable us to reimagine and reinvent possibilities, to co-construct knowledge, and to envisage social contributions that align with the seven pillars of the Constitution - democracy, responsibility, equality, freedom, respect, reconciliation and diversity. They can imagine and be the society that we want to become and be spaces where the principles of ubuntu can be mobilized and our freedoms fostered.
Universities have great potential to face the injustices that persist in post-apartheid South Africa, to contribute to building a democratic nation and advancing the public good, even though social justice remains elusive and universities still not sufficiently transformed.
We can make a different story of aspirations, decolonial knowledge-making and advancing justice. The struggle for social justice in the aftermath of historical violence should, we think, not simply be about opposing dehumanization but should enable creative, expansive self-actualisation. Change should involve finding ways of reclaiming our sense of being human together and moving forward. This aligns well with Steve Biko’s call for a new humanity.
‘Social justice story-telling’ can then be a space of decolonization and contribute to a rich ecology of knowledges.
This project therefore focuses on youth at one South African university in central South Africa. The young people in the project bring different biographies and have had varied experiences of voice and inclusion, or marginalization. Digital story-telling and participatory video are our methods to generate debate over social justice and change They offer a space for young people to exercise agency, creativity, imagination, mobilize knowledge, and learn new and empowering digital skills.
> Our Aims and Questions
Our aim is to investigate how digital methods can foster spaces for youth voices for a more just university and a more just society.
Our objectives are:1) To identify ways in which youth can work together to shape stories of transformation for sustainable social justice; 2) To encourage inclusive, co-constructed knowledge-making; 3) To engage many stakeholders youth voices for social justice using digital story methods; and, 4) To develop new ways of thinking about, and practices for doing on youth-led social justice development.
Our two key questions are: 1) What are the education and social experiences and aspirations of university youth? How do they understand social in/justice from their own experiences? 2) How can participatory digital story-telling methods contribute to social justice, and to the university as a space for decolonial research?
NARRATIVE
Our project makes narrative and stories central in the project to foster participatory research to expands people’s ‘capabilities’ or freedoms (Sen 2009) and realize more justice. We have a special concern with narrative capabilities, voice and speaking because storytelling is an essential part of a rich notion of what it means to be human, it is ‘an essential human act; it what we humans do; it is an act by which we assert our humanity’ (Teresa Phelps, 2006, p. 106). Moreover, stories involve us emotionally and not only intellectually, ‘they draw us in, challenge our autonomy, and make us cognizant of our inevitable interconnectedness’ (Phelps, 2006, p. 115). Narratives also show that individuals and the particular matter, and this aligns well with capabilities. Humans are homo narrans, says Phelps (2006, p. 107) because we understand our lives in terms of narrative and through narrative find or assert our place in families, communities, and in our project, a university.
PARTICIPATION
AND RESEARCH
Ours is a participatory research project. A key political goal for participatory research has to do with the fact that it is typically those with less power who speak through the research process - people whose voices, agendas, and research do not (yet) count as valid knowledge contributions. Instead, the participants (who would normally be considered objects of the research) act as co-investigators so that they might come ‘to a critical form of thinking about their world’ (Freire, 1972, p. 104). We understand participatory research to seek deliberately, ‘to include the investigated in the process of investigation itself’ (Korala-Azad and Fuentes, 2009-2010, 1) and to strive for methods that are ethical, open, respectful, and alert to power dynamics. Participatory research involves active participation by all and reflection through democratic relationships (Reason & Bradbury, 2008) so that participants’ voices, values, and insights are central. Therefore, participatory approaches aim at doing research with and alongside rather than on and about. Even though projects may not always or even typically succeed in intervening in larger political processes, the aspiration is for more democratic and inclusive forms of knowledge-making.
Of course, there are diverse interpretations of ‘participation’. Thiollent and Colette (2017) explain that participation can be confused with other terms such as ‘collaboration’ or ‘cooperation’. ‘Participant’ or ‘participatory’ is also sometimes attached to research as if it were easy to characterize and to do. In our case, our aim was ‘thick’ participation, enabling the voices of student actors in the university, challenging status inequalities, and fostering new knowledge-making.
> References
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Sheed and Ward.
Korala-Azad, S. and Fuentes, E. (2009-2010). Introduction: Activist Scholarship – Possibilities and Constraints of Participatory Action Research. Social Justice, 36(4), 1-5.
Phelps, T. G. (2006). Narrative capability: Telling stories in the search for justice. In Deneulin, S., Nebel, M., & Sagovsky, N. (Eds.). Transforming unjust structures. The Capability Approach (pp. 105–120). Dordrecht: Springer.
Reason, P., and H. Bradbury (Eds). (2008). Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications.
Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice. London: Allen Lane.
Thiollent, M., & Colette, M. M. (2017). Action Research and Participatory Research in Brazil. In The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research (pp. 161-176). Palgrave Macmillan US.
NARRATIVE
Our project makes narrative and stories central in the project to foster participatory research to expands people’s ‘capabilities’ or freedoms (Sen 2009) and realize more justice. We have a special concern with narrative capabilities, voice and speaking because storytelling is an essential part of a rich notion of what it means to be human, it is ‘an essential human act; it what we humans do; it is an act by which we assert our humanity’ (Teresa Phelps, 2006, p. 106). Moreover, stories involve us emotionally and not only intellectually, ‘they draw us in, challenge our autonomy, and make us cognizant of our inevitable interconnectedness’ (Phelps, 2006, p. 115). Narratives also show that individuals and the particular matter, and this aligns well with capabilities. Humans are homo narrans, says Phelps (2006, p. 107) because we understand our lives in terms of narrative and through narrative find or assert our place in families, communities, and in our project, a university.
PARTICIPATION
AND RESEARCH
Ours is a participatory research project. A key political goal for participatory research has to do with the fact that it is typically those with less power who speak through the research process - people whose voices, agendas, and research do not (yet) count as valid knowledge contributions. Instead, the participants (who would normally be considered objects of the research) act as co-investigators so that they might come ‘to a critical form of thinking about their world’ (Freire, 1972, p. 104). We understand participatory research to seek deliberately, ‘to include the investigated in the process of investigation itself’ (Korala-Azad and Fuentes, 2009-2010, 1) and to strive for methods that are ethical, open, respectful, and alert to power dynamics. Participatory research involves active participation by all and reflection through democratic relationships (Reason & Bradbury, 2008) so that participants’ voices, values, and insights are central. Therefore, participatory approaches aim at doing research with and alongside rather than on and about. Even though projects may not always or even typically succeed in intervening in larger political processes, the aspiration is for more democratic and inclusive forms of knowledge-making.
Of course, there are diverse interpretations of ‘participation’. Thiollent and Colette (2017) explain that participation can be confused with other terms such as ‘collaboration’ or ‘cooperation’. ‘Participant’ or ‘participatory’ is also sometimes attached to research as if it were easy to characterize and to do. In our case, our aim was ‘thick’ participation, enabling the voices of student actors in the university, challenging status inequalities, and fostering new knowledge-making.
> References
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Sheed and Ward.
Korala-Azad, S. and Fuentes, E. (2009-2010). Introduction: Activist Scholarship – Possibilities and Constraints of Participatory Action Research. Social Justice, 36(4), 1-5.
Phelps, T. G. (2006). Narrative capability: Telling stories in the search for justice. In Deneulin, S., Nebel, M., & Sagovsky, N. (Eds.). Transforming unjust structures. The Capability Approach (pp. 105–120). Dordrecht: Springer.
Reason, P., and H. Bradbury (Eds). (2008). Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications.
Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice. London: Allen Lane.
Thiollent, M., & Colette, M. M. (2017). Action Research and Participatory Research in Brazil. In The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research (pp. 161-176). Palgrave Macmillan US.
USEFUL LINKS
OUR WORK
METHODS AND ACTIVITIES
We adopted two methods: an individual digital story and a group participatory video. The stories and the video had to relate in some way to social justice but we did not specify in advance what ‘social justice meant so that this could emerge from student experiences and discussions.
The first phase was the recruitment of student volunteers with an intrest in social justice issues. We invited graduate student because they are a little older and because, pragmatically, they have more flexibility in their academic timetables than undergraduate students.
In the end 18 students came to our initial workshop to explain the project. Of the student 17 were black and 1 white, XX male and XX female. They are studying science and arts subjects and all but one were masters students.
At the first workshop we explained that the project had three main activities: the ‘privilege walk’, thinking about social justice and introducing digital stories and participatory video.
All 18 students signed up for the further phase of the project to produce a digital story and video.
The digital story has these key features (see the work of the StoryCenter https://www.storycenter.org/stories for more information and many examples of digital stories):
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The story is a personal reflection, something that has meaning for you. You should own the story
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The story is about a lived experience of your own, a moment or moment in time.
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Photos are used more than moving images.
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A soundtrack adds meaning to the story
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The story should be around 3 minutes long.
The participatory video requires close team work and had to incorporate moving images, still images, interviews and a script. It had to be between 5 and 8 minutes long.
The participants were divided into three groups to meet in March, May, July/August with a public Colloquium in late August and individual interviews in September.
The March group were: Luvuyo Ngubeni, Ntobeko Mathebula (digital story only), Cheri Matjila, Ntombi Nhlapo, Getrude Jays, Natasha Kabaso.
We planned the programme as follows:
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3 consecutive days to work on digital stories (story circle, training, writing, editing, assembling photographs, production) and a week later screening the stories for the group, and then audio-recorded reflections on the process and on social justice.
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3 consecutive days to work on a video in one or two groups and a week later screening the video/s with discussion and audio-recorded reflections on the process and on social justice.
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We took photographs and video clips in order to be able to produce a short informative process video at the end.
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Slides from the March meeting are available here to show our process in more detail.
Activity 1: Privilege walk
Activity 2: Identifying your own experiences of injustices
Digital story telling
Participatory video
Milan and Fedrianni, 2014
COLLECTIVE ANALYSIS
Co-researchers mind-map analysis of injustice and justice based on their digital stories and participatory videos.
Everything on our social justice mind map is inter-related.
The main focus is obviously social injustice at the top of our map. We decided to use injustice as well, because we think it is easier to pick out what all our digital stories were shining a light on, speaking of injustices. Justice is implied in the reasoning behind the injustices, it sheds light on what went wrong.
On the far left of the map, is gender inequality – this featured in most of the stories. What flows from this injustice are stereotypes and unequal treatment of the genders, or unequal treatment of individuals, which leads to expected ideals or ideal individuals. So, if you think that a woman is less than a man, it creates a stereotype of what a good woman is or what a woman should be. The idea of unequal treatment feeds into stereotypes. And then we find sexism - a prejudicial treatment against women. From sexism comes the idea of a justice system that fails women, awakening the idea that the idea that the justice system is not a space where women can pursue justice, or where women can find justice bearing fruit. Maybe to add on that, the justice system that fails in general.
Then on the map we have cultural and social norms, the rules and expectations of behaviour in society, which in turn influence gender stereotypes. Because we have an expected behaviour of what a man should do or what a woman should do, or what the relationship between a man and a woman should look like, it fits into a stereotype for that system to work, this is what the woman should do, this is what the man should do.
Then we find tradition, the fact that there is a way of doing things, and this is how it has been done. So that creates or informs the idea of tradition, and this tradition feeds into patriarchy, which is also something that’s self-explanatory, the idea that this is the way things were done, therefore it is okay for now. And so tradition perpetrates injustice, because you cannot necessarily question tradition because this is how it is. Patriarchy feeds into the sexism, because of unequal traditions with regard to women. Patriarchy for the lived experience for the black community in particular, it’s a bit more intense in terms of tradition, although there are also cultural traditions that would have a lived white experience.
Stereotypes are also are connected to self-acceptance, tradition is also connected to self-acceptance. For example, stereotypes and self-acceptance, as well as tradition and self-acceptance, comes out in the Ubudoda and Being Me stories, the idea that this is what someone should look like or this is what a man should do or this is the role that a man should take, or this is who you should be as an individual when you present yourself in society. This has an effect on self-acceptance, which is a grave injustice, because self-acceptance is related to the wish that someone places, not only on themselves, but also on others.
This relates to beauty standards as well, for example Hair Untangled. Cultural and social norms say or depict expected behaviour, what is acceptable, this is what you should be. And history perpetuates some injustices. For example, racism, which has fed beauty standards, for straighter, more Eurocentric kind of hair, ‘white’ hair is more accepted. Or how beauty standards apply, even in body shapes, although now that is changing. But it is almost as if society gets to pick what they like about everyone, or what they like about other groups, and paste it on the beauty standard that has always existed – like this is what is beautiful.
History is also part of the map, because of the system of differential treatment in the past that has an effect on the social classes in society today. Obviously you have more access to things the higher you are in the social class, the more social status you have. This is directly linked on our map to the far-right cluster. There is lack of access, not having access to certain things - lack of access to wealth, resources, opportunities and privileges. Our map clusters these into three main categories. The first is child labour and abuse, because there is not access to certain things that a child needs. They have to work for those things (such as their schooling) , they are left to fend for themselves. That can lead to abuse, because this person is in a position where they need the person in power, or they are in a disempowered position.
Then on the map we have the lack of funds and resources, which leads to the economic disempowerment that came through a lot in our stories of gender inequality. Women did not have access to economic empowerment. If somebody does not have money or economic empowerment, it leads to their quality of life being less, or it leads to injustice, which is directly linked to poverty and how well you fare in society. It also forms social classes, because if you have money, it means you are important. If you don’t have money, it directly means you are not important. Then there is unequal access to education.
Education is a privilege as it stands. It should not be, but it currently is, and therefore some people do not have it. And therefore, it presents as an injustice, because there is unequal access. Access is not equal, because education in itself is a good thing. And that leads to exclusions and to exclusivity. So there is a link between education being exclusive, funds being exclusive, your social status being exclusive.
As you can see, on our map, there is long connection between the racial system and exclusivity, there is a direct link today in South Africa specifically, to access by virtue of your race. That is obviously rooted in the system, the racial system which perpetuates injustices.
To have social justice all these injustices would need to be challenged and dismantled.
WORKSHOPS
PHOTOS
> DST process G1 March 2020
digital storytelling
> PV process G1 March 2020
photovoice
VIDEOS
> PV Video 2020
participatory video
PV
Exposing a pandemic within a pandemic
Student Well being
> DST Videos 2020
digital storytelling
Hope
Hope
Mother, Resolute
Awakening
Hard work and hope
Couragous choice
Being Me
Coming to know education as it really is
'Ubudoda' Masculinity
Hair Untangled
Amandla
my father my life
Chigwilizano
A shadow of a woman
OUR VIDEOS
RESEARCHERS
> Natasha Kabaso
Natasha considers herself a focused, determined and driven individual with a passion for Life, leadership through servanthood and service to the broader community around her. She is currently pursuing an Interdisciplinary Masters in Human Rights at the University of the Free State. She studied law because she firmly believes in the power of the law to change the quality of life that we as a global community experience. She is keen on assisting in the creation of a conducive and productive society that is driven by a desire to uplift others. She describes herself as a Warm dog-loving Sunflower of a human being that loves everything Food and Outdoors.
> Getrude Jana
Getrude Jana is currently a final year student of Master of Science in Economics at the University of the Free State. She graduated in 2011 with her first degree a Bcomm Honors in Finance from the University of Science and Technology in Zimbabwe.
> Luvuyo Ngubeni
Luvuyo Ngubeni holds a Bachelors degree in Environmental and Engineering Geology obtained from the University of Kwazulu Natal and Honors degree in Environmental Geology obtained from the University of the Free State. He is currently pursuing his Masters degree in Environmental Geology. Other than geology, he passionate about having reviewing social justice and social injustices.
> Chéri Matjila
Cheri is currrently a Master student in Social Anthropology at the University of the Free State. She holds a B.A. Hons with Specialisation in Anthropology and B.Soc.Sc. in Human Societal Dynamics by the University of the Free State. Her interest at the moment is Black female representation in Africa regarding natural hair and their daily experiences. I find that it is important for young Black females to have representation in times where ones identity is sometimes forged by what is portrayed in media, social institutions and society.
> Ntombi Nhlapo
Ntombi Nhlapo is from Harrismith in the Eastern Free State and have obtain her BA degree in Governance and Political Transformation and her honours degree in Political Sciences both at the University of the Free State. She is currently pursuing a Master Degree. She is an activist and a board member of Ikusasa Decolonisation Libraries as well, where we established libraries in previously disadvantaged schools to spark the love for reading'
> Nontobeko
Mathebula
Nontobeko Mathebula holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Science. Currently she is doing a honours in industrial psychology and she is passionate about justice and prison reinforcement.
> Nhlanhla
Nhlanhla is passionate about education and is currently a part time lecturer at the department of English, at the University of the Free Sate (UFS). He holds a BA Degree in English and Criminology, a BA Honours Degree (Specialization in English) from UFS and a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCEca) from the Central University of Technology (CUT). I am hoping to one day research about the intricacies that come with language teaching and learning, because I have seen how language in many ways privileges certain individuals and excludes many that do not have a good command of a specific language, particularly English.
> Christiaan
Johannes Botha
Christiaan Johannes Botha is currently a M.Sc student majoring in botany with the focus on molecular studies such as DNA, RNA and proteins. He received his B.Sc degree in botany and genetics in 2017, and his B.Sc hons degree in botany during 2018. he aims to learn more about molecular studies and be able to apply it in the future where other people can benefit from it, and he wants to help people that are suffering from social pressure and expectations forced on them.
> Moroesi
Talita Makape
She is an educationist. I plough back to the community by providing some vulnerable learners with breakfast and a school uniform. My professional experience has taught me to mould and develop young learners from different backgrounds and also to provide counselling and equip those learners with desirable knowledge that will instil them with acceptable moral values. I hold Honours’ Degree in Curriculum Studies from the University of the Free State and am currently enrolled in Masters Degree in Education.
> Neliswa Motebang
Holds a degree and Post -Diploma certificate in Governance and Political Transformation from the University of the Free State. She is a Co-founder and a chairperson of educational nonprofit organization called Courage. She is a socio-economic development activist in disadvantaged areas and currently pushing her Masters Degree.
> Jeremiah
Jeremiah Hlahla is a Scientist, born and grew up in Mpumalanga, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Botany and Biochemistry at the University of Johannesburg in 2018 and honours in botany at Nelson Mandela University in 2019. Currently he is doing his Masters in plant biochemistry at the University of the Free State. He is passionate about science. He is a hard worker, a fun person, outgoing, and enjoys spending time with different people from different backgrounds and cultures, He also like helping people. He aspires to inspire others (especially from very poor backgrounds) that you can become whatever you want, only if you believe in yourself and work hard.
> Angel
Nqobile Zungu has a passion for human rights and social justice, that has taken her from a small
town in Kwa-Zulu Natal to international conferences across the world to discuss the need for reform concerning human rights. She is currently pursuing her Masters Degree with a focus on workplace bullying. She considers herself as a lover of people, whose mission is to change the lives of the marginalized and ensure the fulfilment of human rights for all.
EVENTS
