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

IF 1.9 Q2 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH London Review of Education Pub Date : 2021-09-08 DOI:10.14324/lre.19.1.28
Z. E. Mugari
{"title":"The decolonial turn: reference lists in PhD theses as markers of theoretical shift/stasis in media and journalism studies at selected South African universities","authors":"Z. E. Mugari","doi":"10.14324/lre.19.1.28","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nThe 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.","PeriodicalId":45980,"journal":{"name":"London Review of Education","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"London Review of Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.14324/lre.19.1.28","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

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.
查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
非殖民化转向:南非大学媒体和新闻学研究中作为理论转变/停滞标志的博士论文参考书目
博士论文的监督和撰写往往呈现出一种潜在的有趣张力,即符合学科认识论的博士与打破认识论界限的博士之间的张力。自2015年激进的学生抗议运动爆发以来,在南非的大学空间里,没有一门学科不受非殖民主义思想的影响。Rhodes Must Fall学生抗议运动迅速演变成Fees Must Fall,引发了后种族隔离时代南非大学课程去殖民化的新紧迫感。人文和社会科学领域的一种新的跨学科对话开始出现,它挑战了既定的正统观念,支持去西方化、去殖民化和重新将认识论和教学实践与欧洲中心主义分开。然而,这种理论的发酵是否以及如何渗透到研究生的论文中,仍有待确定。本文运用一个非殖民化的理论框架,通过分析抗议运动罗德必须垮台三年后南非三所大学提交的博士论文参考书目,探讨新闻学研究中认知一致性与越界之间的紧张关系。本文特别关注媒体和新闻学作为一门学科的研究,认为博士学位过程代表了一个潜在的认知不服从和学科边界跳跃的场所,并挑战了西方新闻研究理论的规范孤立性。调查结果似乎否定了一种论点,即非殖民主义修辞迄今对媒体研究课程产生了重大影响,这反映在他们的论文中引用的参考书目中。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
London Review of Education
London Review of Education EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH-
CiteScore
2.90
自引率
6.70%
发文量
39
审稿时长
48 weeks
期刊介绍: London Review of Education (LRE), an international peer-reviewed journal, aims to promote and disseminate high-quality analyses of important issues in contemporary education. As well as matters of public goals and policies, these issues include those of pedagogy, curriculum, organisation, resources, and institutional effectiveness. LRE wishes to report on these issues at all levels and in all types of education, and in national and transnational contexts. LRE wishes to show linkages between research and educational policy and practice, and to show how educational policy and practice are connected to other areas of social and economic policy.
期刊最新文献
Defying grand narratives of ‘being an international student’: finding ‘home’ in the Other Making community-based learning and teaching happen: findings from an institutional study Choice of international branch campus: a case study Libyan teachers as transitionalist pragmatists: conceptualising a path out of the peacebuilding narrative in conflict-affected contexts The internationalisation process: an opportunity for meaningful intercultural interaction or segregation in one UK university?
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1