Maheshvari Naidu
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3584610 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Maheshvari Naidu |
| NOMBRES | Maheshvari |
| APELLIDO | Naidu |
| FIRMA | NAIDU M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of KwaZulu-Natal |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0398-3834 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 64 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 64 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Between hope and sorrow
Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews, this paper examines the everyday struggles, moral economies, and affective worlds that shape Burundian refugees’ pursuit of dignity and belonging in a predominantly Indian community in South Africa. It argues that life in a foreign land is characterised by a delicate balance between aspiration and endurance, between the promise of renewal and the persistence of loss. The findings of this paper highlight…
Mapping public art to explore the decolonization and Africanization of space in the inner city of Durban, South Africa
Decolonizing South African urban spaces is crucial, particularly in the context of the post-apartheid reconciliation process, and, given the recent resistance against colonial and apartheid symbols and memorials in many institutions in the country. Public arts, particularly in urban centres previously secluded from Black people, constitute one significant means of a decolonial process. In this paper, we adopted an interdisciplinary Spatial Humani…
The Interplay between Cultural Heritage and Urban Morphology
Historic urban areas are a crucial component of urban heritage, arguably embodying the collective memory of urban development and often possessing distinctive urban textures and cultural attributes. This study analyses the relationship between intangible cultural heritage and urban morphology in uMlazi, a township in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A dual theoretical framework informs the study. Through the dual lenses of the cultural landscape mode…
Greening Brick and Mortar in South Africa
This paper presents a critical review of green architecture and green technologies, focusing on their evolution and implementation within the South African context. As climate change, resource scarcity, and urbanisation accelerate, the construction industry in South Africa is also arguably increasingly embracing sustainable building practices. This study, in turn, employed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Anal…
Spaces of Memory and Belonging
This article explores embodied memory at the intersections of space, identity, and history in the former Indian suburb of Chatsworth, Durban, South Africa. It draws on lived experiences from in-depth interviews with 10 participants who lived through the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. The article demonstrates how memory and attachment to specific spaces in Chatsworth developed through embodied encounters across spaces. It demonstrates a rel…
Reterritorializing space
Embodied spatiality
Un-weaving Aso-Oke
African Indigenous Performances, Collective Memory, and Identity in Post-apartheid uMlazi Township, South Africa
What unfolds when performative cultural production becomes both a conduit for collectively remembering the past and a map for (re)-imagining identity and belonging among residents in a fractured and contested space of a post-apartheid South African township? Drawing on ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews among residents of uMlazi Township, this paper addresses the above question by exploring the role that African intangible cu…
Evaluating the Sustainability of Local Women's Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Durban, South Africa
This paper employs a feminist political ecology and an intersectionality framework to examine the multiple dimensions of local women's vulnerability and adaptation to climate change impacts in selected locations in Durban, KwaZulu‐Natal Province, South Africa. We focus particularly on assessing the sustainability of the gendered adaptive strategies employed by these women. Utilising a qualitative methodology, the study is based on semi‐structured…
Exploring Black African women's experiences of vulnerability and adaptation to flood impacts in the eThekwini metropolitan municipality, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
This article explores the experiences of local Black African women in adapting to flood impacts within the Durban metropolitan area. The article is premised on the realisation that women and men experience climate change differently, as persisting gendered inequities affect women's adaptive capacity to climate change impacts. The study adopted a qualitative approach to research. Twenty-five local Black African women from four localities in Durban…
Negotiating In(security)
The deepening levels of poverty in Zimbabwe have resulted in high numbers of Zimbabwean women migrating to South Africa in the hopes of securing better wages and job security. Most of these migrants end up working in the informal sector with limited income, high levels of insecurity, and a lack of protection against gender-based violence and xenophobia. Regardless of the adversities that these women encounter, they often display resilience and ad…
Cyberstalking practices
Cyberstalking, especially among university students, has become a critical social concern. While a growing body of research associates cyberstalking with abuse of technology, psychological instability and the perceived porosity of the legal systems, power inequality has not been foregrounded as a major driver. With a focus on establishing power relationships between victims and perpetrators, the study explored structural and social environments s…
Examining the Interplay between Economic Development and Local Women Vulnerability to Flood Impacts in Selected Local Areas in Durban, South Africa
This article probes the rural economic development approach in selected informal settlements in Durban and how such approach affects the vulnerability of local Black women to flood impacts within the areas. Qualitative data for the study were gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 25 local Black women from Inanda, Ntuzuma, KwaMashu and Umlazi. Five key informants from the eThekwini (Durban) metropolitan munic…
Examining flood vulnerability mapping approaches in developing countries
Using local and indigenous knowledge in selecting indicators for mapping flood vulnerability in informal settlement contexts
Integrating Indigenous Knowledge and Geographical Information System in mapping flood vulnerability in informal settlements in a South African context
Climate change and the multidimensional nature of flood vulnerability, necessitate an in-depth consideration of experiential knowledge in reducing flood vulnerability in geospatial environments such as informal settlements. The objective of this paper is to provide a critical review of literature and scholarship in the context of the integration of Indigenous Knowledge and Geographical Information System in mapping flood vulnerability in South Af…
Africanisation and Community-Based Water Resource Governance
To optimise water as a “vehicle” for development, strategies are necessary that are appropriate in a situated African setting. On the one hand, many African scholars advocate public governance that is rooted in African philosophy and culture. This type of governance is viewed as potentially capable of employing indigenous knowledge systems that are familiar to African people and local communities. On the other hand, some scholars posit that Afric…
Gendered Acquiescence and Resistance(s) to Coercive Sexual Practices Among Female Students at a Zimbabwean University
High rates of sexual coercion among female students in institutions of higher education are a global concern. Although this phenomenon is universal, female university students’ experiences and reactions to coercive sexual practices vary greatly due to differences in geo-socio-cultural milieus in universities. This study investigated the extent to which female students acquiesced or resisted gendered codes of sexual conduct during experiences of s…
Research Site Anonymity in Context
This paper utilizes critical theory to interrogate and problematize the practice of anonymising research sites as an ethical imperative. The contributing authors conduct research in and with various communities in southern Africa, position themselves and work from and within diverse areas and specialities of the social sciences. This article is developed from their rich and wide spectrum of field experience with a great diversity of communities, …
Fight or flight? Understanding female students’ response to sexist humour at an institution of higher learning in Zimbabwe
Student protests of 2015–2016 in South African higher education institutions calling for the decolonisation of higher education spaces and equal access to these spaces have necessitated and led to increased scrutiny around the lived experiences, particularly of female students in university spaces. Critical attention has been paid to how hegemonic structures of power embedded in higher education spaces continue to exclude and marginalise female s…
Probing the Context of Vulnerability
The economic meltdown and worsening levels of poverty in Zimbabwe led to a significant increase in the number of women migrating to South Africa from 2005 to 2010 (Crush et al., 2015: 367). A Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) survey in 1997 found that 61% of Zimbabwean migrants were male and 39% were female (Crush et al., 2015: 367). This suggested that there was an increase in the number of women migrating to South Africa compared with…
The Role of Religion and Religious Leaders in Marital Conflict Resolution
The central aim of this study is to explore and examine the role of religion and religious leaders in marital conflict resolution through perspective of Congolese migrants’ families living in Durban, South Africa. In order to achieve the objectives qualitative study, employing an interpretive approach was used in data collection. The finding from this study revealed that religion and religious leaders play a very critical role in marital conflict…
Mapping the role of health professionals in peace promotion within an urban complex emergency
The study sought to establish the role of health professionals in promoting peace through health care using a case study of Chegutu Urban District in Zimbabwe. The participants were drawn from health professionals employed in three council clinics and were interviewed on their views on programmes that promote peace and end violence. Their narratives were thematically presented. Results revealed that although the participants had ideas on how to p…
Religion and Identity De/Construction among Forced Migrants
The current study unravels religious practices, politics and perceptions as forms of multiple identities within and amongst different types of migrant groups in South Africa. Using purpose sampling from members of the Christ Assembly Church of Africa, we explore how the appeal to religion is a form of identity construction that differentiates Congolese from other groups of migrants. We utilized social identity theory in showing how Congolese use …
Evaluating the Sustainability of Local Women's Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Durban, South Africa
This paper employs a feminist political ecology and an intersectionality framework to examine the multiple dimensions of local women's vulnerability and adaptation to climate change impacts in selected locations in Durban, KwaZulu‐Natal Province, South Africa. We focus particularly on assessing the sustainability of the gendered adaptive strategies employed by these women. Utilising a qualitative methodology, the study is based on semi‐structured…
Transnationalised Memories among Migrants
Memories, as emotional artefacts of what has transpired, are vital as they allow migrants to connect to their past. Anthropological perspectives on memory explain memory through constructionist and interpretivist lenses, and point out that there is an inextricable link between ‘memory’ and ‘place’. In this context, ‘place’ is the home space of the migrant. This paper argues that memories of ‘home’ are evoked through ‘indigenous’ or ‘home food’. E…
Glaring invisibility
The paper explores how the uniform of a group of female cleaners appears to be more than an abstract object framed by the practical exegetics of work. The uniform is seen as acting as a material exercise of discretionary and disciplinary power of inscription, and as the paper shows, emerges as a mode by which the cleaners are homogenously objectified and plastically turned into ‘subjects’ (Foucault 1982). The paper shows too that while the single…
Anthropology of Experience
This paper has a transdisciplinary orientation and is located in both anthropology and tourism studies. It draws on the seminal theoretical work of the post structural anthropologist Victor Turner and brings to the study of tourism, the concepts of performance, memory and ‘experience’. The paper focuses on what the world has come to know as the place of incarceration for Nelson Mandela, and now declared a World Heritage Site and museum, establish…
Embodied spatiality
Examining the Interplay between Economic Development and Local Women Vulnerability to Flood Impacts in Selected Local Areas in Durban, South Africa
This article probes the rural economic development approach in selected informal settlements in Durban and how such approach affects the vulnerability of local Black women to flood impacts within the areas. Qualitative data for the study were gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 25 local Black women from Inanda, Ntuzuma, KwaMashu and Umlazi. Five key informants from the eThekwini (Durban) metropolitan munic…
Invisible existence’
Involuntary human mobility within and outside national borders continue to raise connotations of these migrants being dispossessed of more than their physical shelter. In 2005, the Zimbabwean government demolished hundreds of buildings, which it had condemned as illegal through a program code named Operation Murambatsvina. Likewise, for the people dislodged by this program, the article contends that internal displacement did not only lead to loss…
Nature and Perception of Sexist Humor at Great Zimbabwe University
For the majority of women, university represents a time of hopefulness and opportunities such that gendered incidences questioning their academic merit poses a serious setback. Sexist humor is one such incident which communicates a message that females are irrelevant and insignificant. This article discusses the nature and perceptions of sexist humor on University campuses. The views on how students on campus perceive sexist humor are crucial for…
The Social Face of Networks
Enacting masculinities
Feminist anthropologists have shown how women's bodies have been appropriated and rendered ‘docile’ by so called cultural or traditional practices, as well as by discourse. The compelled docility of African women (as that of other women in the global south), is perhaps especially visible within subtly coerced performances within a context of ‘traditional’ masculinised practices, such as unprotected sex, that leave many African women vulnerable an…
Performing illness and health
Cancer is a potent example of a disease that grips and plays out on the body in ways that are both visceral and visual. This \npaper explores issues of disease and disorder, functioning and malfunctioning in bodies marked by cancer and a sense of non-belonging. \nBy working through the heuristic device of ‘narrative’, the paper argues for the humanistic value and currency of the \npersonal (subjective) illness narrative in social science scholars…
Cyberstalking practices
Cyberstalking, especially among university students, has become a critical social concern. While a growing body of research associates cyberstalking with abuse of technology, psychological instability and the perceived porosity of the legal systems, power inequality has not been foregrounded as a major driver. With a focus on establishing power relationships between victims and perpetrators, the study explored structural and social environments s…
Probing the Context of Vulnerability
The economic meltdown and worsening levels of poverty in Zimbabwe led to a significant increase in the number of women migrating to South Africa from 2005 to 2010 (Crush et al., 2015: 367). A Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) survey in 1997 found that 61% of Zimbabwean migrants were male and 39% were female (Crush et al., 2015: 367). This suggested that there was an increase in the number of women migrating to South Africa compared with…
Religion and Identity De/Construction among Forced Migrants
The current study unravels religious practices, politics and perceptions as forms of multiple identities within and amongst different types of migrant groups in South Africa. Using purpose sampling from members of the Christ Assembly Church of Africa, we explore how the appeal to religion is a form of identity construction that differentiates Congolese from other groups of migrants. We utilized social identity theory in showing how Congolese use …
Humanitarianism in Praxis? Probing Power Dynamics around Key Actors in Zimbabwe's Forced Migration
When my body is in the way
In recent times more embodied and seemingly more participant-empowering research methodologies such as body mapping have been used in a bid to allow greater agency to the ‘researched’, within the ‘researcher-researched’ dyad. While the non-traditional methodology of body mapping does attempt to change the inherent and embedded power dynamics in the research process by offering a more participatory methodology, where the participant actively contr…
Illness and Health as Constructions
This study involved a group of isiZulu-speaking nurses who were also traditional healers or izangoma2 within the South African amaZulu culture. The paper explored traditional healing beliefs and practices through the perspectives of this group of traditional healers who were alsoformally trained nurses. The narratives shared by the nurses, referred to as 'sangoma-nurses', revealed that their 'cultural' training and experiences dominated the manne…
Understanding African Indigenous Approaches to Reproductive Health
Illness and health is more often than not, embedded in a matrix of cultural beliefs and is often more than about simply ‘being ill’ or ‘being healthy’. The cause of the ‘ill health’ may also be located in social and spiritual realms, so that ethnomedical aetiology may include witchcraft and sorcery, and ‘attack’ by familiars or malevolent spirits. In many communities, constructed understandings of the body and health, for oneself, as well as that…
Transnationalising the Sacred
Globalisation and post-colonialism have created new religio-cultural geographies and articulations in many countries. Many aspects of Hindu religion have been transnationally stretched and (re)enacted within new migrant and diasporic spaces, in turn reshaping and somewhat changing how ritual and religious enactments come to be enunciated. This article focuses on the yajna as a plastic and symbolic resource that is enacted in a transnational conte…
Inscribing the Female Body
The paper seeks to work through the heuristic device of marriage and femalesexual bodily fluids, as they are constructed within particular strands ofHinduism. The paper applies the analytic lens of feminist Anthropologyand proceeds through the contested site of female body and probes howthe discursive body comes to be embedded within a discourse of matrimonyand reproduction. By looking at an archetypal female or Goddess within aparticular stream …
Anthropology of female body
The female body, in addition to everything else it may be, is very much a socio-cultural ‘construct’, which has been culturally ‘performed’ upon for colonial, religious and other purposes. This article argues that the female body is also being highjacked within certain popular discourses on AIDS, itself a socially constructed and gendered disease. The article seeks to contextualise, within the escalating HIV and AIDS epidemic, an exploratory two-…
Re-Constructing Identity in Global Culture
Inscribing the Female Body
The paper seeks to work through the heuristic device of marriage and femalesexual bodily fluids, as they are constructed within particular strands ofHinduism. The paper applies the analytic lens of feminist Anthropologyand proceeds through the contested site of female body and probes howthe discursive body comes to be embedded within a discourse of matrimonyand reproduction. By looking at an archetypal female or Goddess within aparticular stream …
Glaring invisibility
The paper explores how the uniform of a group of female cleaners appears to be more than an abstract object framed by the practical exegetics of work. The uniform is seen as acting as a material exercise of discretionary and disciplinary power of inscription, and as the paper shows, emerges as a mode by which the cleaners are homogenously objectified and plastically turned into ‘subjects’ (Foucault 1982). The paper shows too that while the single…
Seeing (through) the Gaze
This article uses the notion of ‘gaze’ as a tool in attempting to probe how the Muslim female is discursively constructed through the act of a particular gaze on her veiled body. The hijab (headscarf) and purdah (face covering) as forms of veiling are not publicly contested symbols in South Africa. However, local Muslim women who practice veiling are seen by other non-veiling females as embodying a practice that is a visible signifier of a partic…
Wrestling with standpoint theory…some thoughts on standpoint and African feminism
This essay attempts to probe the theory of standpoint feminism, and the charge of epistemic privilege associated with the theory. Standpoint theory itself can be seen to have emerged in the context of feminist critical theory attempting to explain the relationship between the production of knowledge and practices of power (Harding, 2004: 1). The essay attempts to probe the efficacy of a standpoint epistemic within the framework of the various asy…
Shaping and Gazing on Foreign Mrican Female Bodies
Indian women in marriage
Violence against women is a worldwide problem that transcends all boundaries – cultural, geographic, religious, social and economic. However, it is maintained that there are also added particular cultural ‘dynamics’ or constraints inherent in specific cultural groups. This focus attempts to sketch out the features of a category of Indian women who are assumed as being compelled by particular systemic cultural constraints or familial pressures to …
Performing illness and health
Cancer is a potent example of a disease that grips and plays out on the body in ways that are both visceral and visual. This \npaper explores issues of disease and disorder, functioning and malfunctioning in bodies marked by cancer and a sense of non-belonging. \nBy working through the heuristic device of ‘narrative’, the paper argues for the humanistic value and currency of the \npersonal (subjective) illness narrative in social science scholars…
Food and Maintaining Identity for Migrants
Food and Maintaining Identity for Migrants
Food can be considered a vital and dynamic part of people’s ‘culture’ and identity, as people often identify and associate themselves with the particular foods they eat. This paper explores the importance of traditional or ‘home food’ in maintaining a sense of ‘self’, and an articulation of a particular identity for Sierra Leoneans. Away from a nutritionist paradigm and the subsistence discourse (around food) the study probes the role of ‘home fo…
Migrant Mothers
Enacting masculinities
Feminist anthropologists have shown how women's bodies have been appropriated and rendered ‘docile’ by so called cultural or traditional practices, as well as by discourse. The compelled docility of African women (as that of other women in the global south), is perhaps especially visible within subtly coerced performances within a context of ‘traditional’ masculinised practices, such as unprotected sex, that leave many African women vulnerable an…
Indigenous Mothers
Collaboration between traditional healers (TH) and medical doctors is encouraged by the South African Government.The objective of this study was to investigate the frequency and determinants of referral intention of medical students to traditional healers.This cross-sectional study was conducted among medical students from Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha.Socio-demographic factors, ethnicity, beliefs, practices, attitude of students, friends, pa…
Transnationalising the Sacred
Globalisation and post-colonialism have created new religio-cultural geographies and articulations in many countries. Many aspects of Hindu religion have been transnationally stretched and (re)enacted within new migrant and diasporic spaces, in turn reshaping and somewhat changing how ritual and religious enactments come to be enunciated. This article focuses on the yajna as a plastic and symbolic resource that is enacted in a transnational conte…
Indigenous Mothers
Pregnancy' and 'giving birth' are socio-culturally constructed and regarded as critically important events in a (married) women's life. Within many sub-Saharan African communities, children are valued and considered as 'agents' who serve to continue the genealogical lineage of the parents. However, the Mpondo women believe public knowledge of their pregnancy increases their (and their unborn child's) vulnerability from spirits and witchcraft, and…
Anthropology of Experience
This paper has a transdisciplinary orientation and is located in both anthropology and tourism studies. It draws on the seminal theoretical work of the post structural anthropologist Victor Turner and brings to the study of tourism, the concepts of performance, memory and ‘experience’. The paper focuses on what the world has come to know as the place of incarceration for Nelson Mandela, and now declared a World Heritage Site and museum, establish…
Pregnancy and Birthing amongst the Mpondo Community
Understanding African Indigenous Approaches to Reproductive Health
Illness and health is more often than not, embedded in a matrix of cultural beliefs and is often more than about simply ‘being ill’ or ‘being healthy’. The cause of the ‘ill health’ may also be located in social and spiritual realms, so that ethnomedical aetiology may include witchcraft and sorcery, and ‘attack’ by familiars or malevolent spirits. In many communities, constructed understandings of the body and health, for oneself, as well as that…
Understanding African Indigenous Approaches to Reproductive Health
There has been a link between nutrition styles and human health and physical features for centuries.Similarly, there has been a connection between the easiness and difficulty to reach food materials, and shortage and abundance of these material and human behaviors and moral structure.One of the efforts to make a connection between these qualifications comes from Ibn Khaldun.A thinker of Islam, Ibn Khaldun, who lived in the 18 th century, stated t…
Transnationalised Memories among Migrants
Memories, as emotional artefacts of what has transpired, are vital as they allow migrants to connect to their past. Anthropological perspectives on memory explain memory through constructionist and interpretivist lenses, and point out that there is an inextricable link between ‘memory’ and ‘place’. In this context, ‘place’ is the home space of the migrant. This paper argues that memories of ‘home’ are evoked through ‘indigenous’ or ‘home food’. E…
The Social Face of Networks
When Illness is more than just a Sick Body
Particular communities and groups of people develop particular prevailing points of view, including how health and illness is understood. Our prevailing points of view, ‘worldviews’ or positioning, are a result of the ‘dialogue’ between us and our wider society (see Creswell 2009:8) and is a process of “active construction” (Fox 2001: 23). As such, we approach reality from our particular point of view which has been constructed and developed over…
I want sex too … What is so wrong with that
This focus piece works on a micro-level and is based on a qualitative study with four differently-abled young Black African women living at a university hostel in South Africa. The piece proceeds through their stories, taking as a starting point that ‘ethnographies of the particular’ offer a critical and intimate window into how these young women self-interpret and attempt to (re)claim their sexuality. The young women's excavated narratives testi…
Illness and Health as Constructions
This study involved a group of isiZulu-speaking nurses who were also traditional healers or izangoma2 within the South African amaZulu culture. The paper explored traditional healing beliefs and practices through the perspectives of this group of traditional healers who were alsoformally trained nurses. The narratives shared by the nurses, referred to as 'sangoma-nurses', revealed that their 'cultural' training and experiences dominated the manne…
Sociology (51 obras) · Political science (35 obras) · Gender Studies (27 obras) · Psychology (26 obras) · Geography (25 obras) · Gender Studies (18 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Social science (14 obras) · Anthropology (12 obras) · Law (12 obras)