3,230
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
2 collections
    2
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      The decolonial turn: reference lists in PhD theses as markers of theoretical shift/stasis in media and journalism studies at selected South African universities

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          The supervision and production of a PhD thesis often presents a potentially interesting tension between PhDs as conforming to disciplinary epistemologies and PhDs as breaking epistemological boundaries. No academic discipline has been left untouched by decolonial thinking in the South African university space since the eruption of radicalized student protest movements in 2015. The Rhodes Must Fall student protest movement, which quickly morphed into Fees Must Fall, precipitated a new urgency to decolonize the university curriculum in post-apartheid South Africa. A new interdisciplinary conversation in the humanities and social sciences began to emerge which challenged established orthodoxies in favour of de-Westernizing, decolonizing and re-mooring epistemological and pedagogic practices away from Eurocentrism. Whether and how that theoretical ferment filtered into postgraduate students’ theses, however, remains to be established. This article deploys a decolonial theoretical framework to explore the tension between epistemic conformity and boundary transgressing in journalism studies by analysing reference lists of PhD theses submitted at three South African Universities three years after the protest movement Rhodes Must Fall. With specific focus on media and journalism studies as a discipline, this article argues that the PhD process represents a site for potential epistemic disobedience and disciplinary border-jumping, and for challenging the canonical insularity of Western theory in journalism studies. The findings appear to disconfirm the thesis that decolonial rhetoric has had a material influence so far on the media studies curriculum, as reflected in reference lists of cited works in their dissertations.

          Most cited references60

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Book: not found

          Constructing Grounded Theory

          <p>Lecturers, request your electronic inspection copy<br> <br> Kathy Charmaz presents the definitive guide to doing grounded theory from a constructivist perspective. This second edition of her groundbreaking text retains the accessibility and warmth of the first edition whilst introducing cutting edge examples and practical tips.<br> <br> This expanded second edition:<br> <br> - explores how to effectively focus on data collection<br> <br> - demonstrates how to use data for theorizing<br> <br> - adds two new chapters that guide you through conducting and analysing interviews in grounded theory <br> <br> - adds a new chapter on symbolic interactionism and grounded theory<br> <br> - considers recent epistemological debates about the place of prior theory<br> <br> - discusses the legacy of Anselm Strauss for grounded theory.</p> <p>This is a seminal title for anyone serious about understanding and doing grounded theory research. </p>
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            THE EPISTEMIC DECOLONIAL TURN

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                lre
                London Review of Education
                UCL Press (UK )
                1474-8479
                08 September 2021
                : 19
                : 1
                : e19128
                Affiliations
                [1]Midlands State University, Zimbabwe, and University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
                Author notes
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8628-1370
                Article
                10.14324/LRE.19.1.28
                4915c1d8-d24d-499e-879c-e95b3a359a01
                Copyright © 2021 Mugari

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 01 September 2020
                : 15 June 2021
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 2, References: 62, Pages: 17

                Education,Assessment, Evaluation & Research methods,Educational research & Statistics,General education
                disciplinary border-jumping,decolonizing,decolonial turn,epistemic conformity,canonical insularity

                Comments

                Comment on this article