Inette Swart
Biographic Data
| ID | 304773 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Inette Swart |
| GIVEN NAMES | Inette |
| FAMILY NAME | Swart |
| SIGNATURE | SWART I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Africa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1903-0627 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Diaconia and Christian Social Practice in a Global Perspective: Concluding Synthesis of Emerging Topical Issues and Themes
Trust in politics and institutions, as well as the upholding of social cohesion, is presently under pressure globally
A New Journal for a New Space: Introducing Religion & Development: Introductory Article
This article introduces Religion & Development as a new transdisciplinary journal focusing on the nexus between religion and development. It outlines the motivation for establishing the new periodical along three central themes: the move towards sustainable development as dominant development paradigm; the reinvigoration of the post-development debate; and the emerging academic, policy and practice field of religion and development. The discussio…
Religion and Environment: Exploring the Ecological Turn in Religious Traditions, the Religion and Development Debate and Beyond
Achieving ecologically sustainable societies necessitates fundamental social and cultural transformations. Religion has the potential to foster the required paradigm shifts in mindsets, behaviour and policy. Moreover, in many religious communities there is increasing engagement with questions of environment, climate change and ecological sustainability. This has led to an increasing corpus of literature engaging with the nexus between religion, e…
Language Practices as Religious Innovation: The Case of Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in Xenophobic Contexts
In the authors’ recent case-study research of migrant-dominated Pentecostal charismatic churches (PCCs) in the South African cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town, language emerged as a prominent feature of religious practice, suggesting a positive correlation between experiences of xenophobia and religious innovation. This perspective is developed through the identification and discussion of two interlinked themes that surfaced from a closer anal…
Youth, faith, climate change and environmental consciousness: A case for sustainable development
HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies is an acclaimed journal with broad coverage that promotes multidisciplinary, religious, and biblical aspects of studies in the international theological arena. The journal’s publication criteria are based on high ethical standards and the rigor of the methodology and conclusions reported
The Seventh-day Adventist Church and the quest for transformational development in contemporary Nigeria: Perspectives from an empirical study
This article discusses the findings of an empirical study that investigated the attitudes of different sections of the membership of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church to the socio-economic and political struggles in Nigeria. The study sought to explore how this denomination’s theology and missional orientation have limited its role in the holistic development of Nigerians. The article argues that proclamation of the SDA Church’s unique messa…
Youth marginalisation as a faith-based concern in contemporary South African society: Introducing a research contribution
The aim of this article is to introduce a special collection of articles focused on the topic ‘Youth marginalisation as a faith-based concern in contemporary South African society’. In meeting this aim the discussion begins by alluding to an international research project known under the acronym YOMA (Youth at the Margins: A Comparative Study of the Contribution of Faith-Based Organisations to Social Cohesion in South Africa and Nordic Europe) as…
The Neet concept in comparative youth research: The Nordic countries and South Africa
The NEET concept has become widely used internationally since its emergence in the UK almost two decades ago. This article reviews the adoption of the concept in two extreme contexts in terms of NEET rates, youth opportunities and youth welfare: the Nordic countries and South Africa. The article discusses the situations of NEET young people in the two contexts, and how the concept is used in the wealthy and relatively homogenous Nordic welfare st…
Social Capital, Religious Social Capital and the Missing Element of Religious Ritual
This article was written to contribute towards developing a suitable conceptual framework for meeting the overarching research aim of developing a more profound empirically informed interpretation of the manner and extent to which religious ritual could be valued as a source of social capital formation in the South African context. With this in mind, the article first explores the concept of social capital in the light of the threefold distinctio…
Religion and development: The rise of a bibliography
This article endeavours to evidence the extraordinary rise of religion and development as a subject field by presenting a chronological bibliography of the literature that has been published, especially since the early to mid-2000s. By way of introduction and orientation, the authors firstly touch upon existing explanations for the extraordinary new interest in religion and development as a subject field; secondly they comment briefly on the ongo…
The struggle against poverty, unemployment and social injustice in present-day South Africa: Exploring the involvement of the Dutch Reformed Church at congregational level
This article is based on an exploration of the involvement of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) at congregational level in the struggle against poverty, unemployment and social injustice in present-day South Africa. The exploration arises from the thesis that South African citizens continue to regard poverty, unemployment and social injustice as the key challenges to be met in order to build a healthy nation. Historically, the DRC acted as a promin…
Relating to the Poor: Conceptualizations of Christian Diaconal Practice Considered Through the Lens of Human Dignity
This article, although not evolving from any original case study work, represents the concerted effort to critically reflect on ‘diaconia in action’ (diaconia as actual social practice) and, in that sense, take its focus on ‘practice’ as the point of departure for theoretical reflection. This is achieved, first, by exploring as a hermeneutical lens an understanding that could be directly related to a so-called ‘negative approach,’ which strives t…
New developments in neuroscience can benefit the learning and performance of music
As advancements in neuroscience increasingly illuminate the traditional understanding of the human mind, many of the new insights are also of relevance to musicians as well as to music pedagogy. Especially the greater understanding of how intersubjective processes are integral to the development of the right brain has shown how, according to the neuropsychoanalyst Allan Schore, right-brain models can bridge the fields of psychiatry, music and tra…
Frontal lobe brain damage and the lived piano-playing experiences of an older adult
This paper presents an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of the lived piano-playing experiences of an older adult who suffered frontal lobe brain damage. Semi-structured interviews and diary reflections were used to gain insight into the intrapersonal, relational, spiritual and therapeutic experiences of the participant, Annie. Emergent themes include being ill, loss, depression and anxiety, determination, yearning, will to live and …
Towards a fusion of horizons: Thematic contours for an urban public theological praxis-agenda in South Africa
This article proposes a ‘fusion of horizons’ in constructing urban public theologies in South Africa. This is done through the introduction of five interrelated themes that have emerged from the on-going knowledge and idea production by a distinguishable counterpoint in contemporary scholarly, intellectual and activist engagement with the urban, in the authors’ own South African context but also wider internationally. In advancing a praxis-agenda…
Faith-Based Organisations in the Context of Social Welfare and Development in South Africa: Towards a Conceptualisation
In South Africa the state strongly expects the religious sector – or more specifically thecollectivity of faith-based organisations constituting this sector – to make a meaningfulcontribution towards the country’s struggle against poverty and HIV and AIDS (Koegelenberg,2001, 2007; Swart, 2008). The debate on the role and contribution of faith-based organisations(hereafter FBOs) in social welfare and social development is not unique to South Afric…
Informal community-based early childhood development as a focus for urban public theology in South Africa
This article highlights important dimensions of public theology and shows how the identified dimensions are relevant to the specific situation of informal early childhood development (ECD) facilities in a South African urban setting. The article considers the contributions and challenges of informal community-based ECD on the basis of research conducted in the Rustenburg/Phokeng area of the North West province of South Africa. It critically discu…
Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Introducing a new agenda
This article serves as the introductory, first contribution to a special collection of articles on the theme, ‘Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Visions, approaches, themes and practices towards a new agenda’. The aim of the article is to set the conceptual and hermeneutical framework for undertaking urban public theology as a very intentional, new agenda in South African theological scholarship. The authors assert that public theology…
From trauma to well-being: How Music and Trauma Can Transform Us
Traumatic events can have a profound influence on the way musicians experience 'musicing' as well as on their actual performance. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of two case histories is presented here - one being that of a professional singer whose family members were brutally murdered, and the other of a conductor whose mentor committed suicide and who was paralysed for three months after a serious motor vehicle accident. Before tur…
South Africa’s service-delivery crisis: From contextual understanding to diaconal response
This article proceeded from the assumption that the theme of service delivery in present-day South Africa could well be qualified by the notion of ‘crisis’, to the extent that this qualification, from a theological perspective and on the basis of comparative social analysis, well recalls the statements in such critical and profound theological documents as The Kairos Document and Evangelical Witness in South Africa on the ‘crisis’ in the latter y…
Youth at the margins: Introducing a new research initiative in an ongoing south-north collaboration in the context of international diaconia
This article holds up the development of an expanding South-North collaboration between researchers from South Africa and the Nordic European countries of Finland, Sweden and Norway as an example of what can also be recognised as a new-found intentional initiative by the International Society for the Research and Study of Diaconia and Christian Social Practice (ReDi) to develop the field of International Diaconia, and, more specifically, of the e…
South African music learners and psychological trauma: Educational Solutions to a Societal Dilemma
Emotional trauma affects a large proportion of the South African population. This article addresses its influence on music learners, including its effects on brain development, relational development, learning and music-making. The power of the educator to reshape a child's brain by providing a nurturing and consistent environment is stressed. The effect of the environment in modulating epigenetic expression is discussed in conjunction with objec…
Listening to Africa’s children in the process of practical theological interpretation: A South African application
As part of the theological task of developing a publicly oriented ministry that will do justice to the social plight of children in Africa, this article adopted as its point of departure an appreciation of the new ‘hermeneutics of listening’ that is advanced today by an interdisciplinary movement of scholars from the disciplines of practical theology, theological ethics and religion studies. Emphasising the fact that this new hermeneutics is by a…
Welfare, Religion and Gender in Post-apartheid South Africa
The Role of Religious Ritual in Social Capital Formation for Poverty Alleviation and Social Development. Theoretical and Methodological Points of Departure of a South African Exploration
The article is a presentation of a South African research project in which researchers in the fields of ritual-liturgical studies and social development are collaborating to explore the role of religious ritual in the kinds of social capital formation that have a direct significance and implication for alleviating poverty and promoting social development at grassroots level. Focusing on Christian congregations in poor socio-economic contexts in t…
The Neet concept in comparative youth research: The Nordic countries and South Africa
The NEET concept has become widely used internationally since its emergence in the UK almost two decades ago. This article reviews the adoption of the concept in two extreme contexts in terms of NEET rates, youth opportunities and youth welfare: the Nordic countries and South Africa. The article discusses the situations of NEET young people in the two contexts, and how the concept is used in the wealthy and relatively homogenous Nordic welfare st…
Churches as a Stock of Social Capital for Promoting Social Development in Western Cape Communities
The aim of the article is to present a perspective on the manner and extent to which churches may be considered as an important stock of social capital for promoting social development outcomes in selected communities in the Western Cape, South Africa. Taking the recently presented policy outline on social capital formation in this province as the contextual framework for analysis and reflection, the results of recently executed demographic and s…
Networks and Partnerships for Social Justice? The Pragmatic Turn in the Religious Social Development Debate in South Africa1
This article offers a critical account of the turn in the religious social development debate in South Africa from its initial critical people-centred disposition to a preoccupation with pragmatic considerations, that is, its elaborated claim on the need for a formal religion-state partnership in the field of social development on the basis of the extensiveness and effectiveness of existing welfare and social development networks run by the relig…
The Rights of Children: A New Agenda For Practical Theology in South Africa
The aim of this article is to give prominence to the rights of children as a new agenda for Practical Theology in South Africa. Adopting a distinctly contextual approach, the article takes a critical look at the problematic situation of children in present-day South Africa and then focuses attention on the emergence of a children's rights agenda, both internationally and in South African society. A discussion of these aspects leads the authors to…
The Churches and the Development Debate: Perspectives on a fourth generation approach
CITATION: Swart, I. 2006. The churches and the development debate : perspectives on a fourth generation approach. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS. doi:10.18820/9781920109110
Churches as a Stock of Social Capital for Promoting Social Development in Western Cape Communities
The aim of the article is to present a perspective on the manner and extent to which churches may be considered as an important stock of social capital for promoting social development outcomes in selected communities in the Western Cape, South Africa. Taking the recently presented policy outline on social capital formation in this province as the contextual framework for analysis and reflection, the results of recently executed demographic and s…
Meeting the Challenge of Poverty and Exclusion: The Emerging Field of Development Research in South African Practical Theology
In the field of international practical theological scholarship, a new concern with the problem of poverty has recently emerged. This article is offered as a contribution toward practical theology's endeavor to become a meaningful role-player in the global struggle against the problem of poverty. The author draws specifically on his South African context and academic setting to discuss the place of “development research” as an emerging field of s…
The Role of Religious Ritual in Social Capital Formation for Poverty Alleviation and Social Development. Theoretical and Methodological Points of Departure of a South African Exploration
The article is a presentation of a South African research project in which researchers in the fields of ritual-liturgical studies and social development are collaborating to explore the role of religious ritual in the kinds of social capital formation that have a direct significance and implication for alleviating poverty and promoting social development at grassroots level. Focusing on Christian congregations in poor socio-economic contexts in t…
Listening to Africa’s children in the process of practical theological interpretation: A South African application
As part of the theological task of developing a publicly oriented ministry that will do justice to the social plight of children in Africa, this article adopted as its point of departure an appreciation of the new ‘hermeneutics of listening’ that is advanced today by an interdisciplinary movement of scholars from the disciplines of practical theology, theological ethics and religion studies. Emphasising the fact that this new hermeneutics is by a…
Welfare, Religion and Gender in Post-apartheid South Africa
South Africa’s service-delivery crisis: From contextual understanding to diaconal response
This article proceeded from the assumption that the theme of service delivery in present-day South Africa could well be qualified by the notion of ‘crisis’, to the extent that this qualification, from a theological perspective and on the basis of comparative social analysis, well recalls the statements in such critical and profound theological documents as The Kairos Document and Evangelical Witness in South Africa on the ‘crisis’ in the latter y…
Youth at the margins: Introducing a new research initiative in an ongoing south-north collaboration in the context of international diaconia
This article holds up the development of an expanding South-North collaboration between researchers from South Africa and the Nordic European countries of Finland, Sweden and Norway as an example of what can also be recognised as a new-found intentional initiative by the International Society for the Research and Study of Diaconia and Christian Social Practice (ReDi) to develop the field of International Diaconia, and, more specifically, of the e…
South African music learners and psychological trauma: Educational Solutions to a Societal Dilemma
Emotional trauma affects a large proportion of the South African population. This article addresses its influence on music learners, including its effects on brain development, relational development, learning and music-making. The power of the educator to reshape a child's brain by providing a nurturing and consistent environment is stressed. The effect of the environment in modulating epigenetic expression is discussed in conjunction with objec…
Towards a fusion of horizons: Thematic contours for an urban public theological praxis-agenda in South Africa
This article proposes a ‘fusion of horizons’ in constructing urban public theologies in South Africa. This is done through the introduction of five interrelated themes that have emerged from the on-going knowledge and idea production by a distinguishable counterpoint in contemporary scholarly, intellectual and activist engagement with the urban, in the authors’ own South African context but also wider internationally. In advancing a praxis-agenda…
Faith-Based Organisations in the Context of Social Welfare and Development in South Africa: Towards a Conceptualisation
In South Africa the state strongly expects the religious sector – or more specifically thecollectivity of faith-based organisations constituting this sector – to make a meaningfulcontribution towards the country’s struggle against poverty and HIV and AIDS (Koegelenberg,2001, 2007; Swart, 2008). The debate on the role and contribution of faith-based organisations(hereafter FBOs) in social welfare and social development is not unique to South Afric…
Informal community-based early childhood development as a focus for urban public theology in South Africa
This article highlights important dimensions of public theology and shows how the identified dimensions are relevant to the specific situation of informal early childhood development (ECD) facilities in a South African urban setting. The article considers the contributions and challenges of informal community-based ECD on the basis of research conducted in the Rustenburg/Phokeng area of the North West province of South Africa. It critically discu…
Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Introducing a new agenda
This article serves as the introductory, first contribution to a special collection of articles on the theme, ‘Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Visions, approaches, themes and practices towards a new agenda’. The aim of the article is to set the conceptual and hermeneutical framework for undertaking urban public theology as a very intentional, new agenda in South African theological scholarship. The authors assert that public theology…
From trauma to well-being: How Music and Trauma Can Transform Us
Traumatic events can have a profound influence on the way musicians experience 'musicing' as well as on their actual performance. An interpretative phenomenological analysis of two case histories is presented here - one being that of a professional singer whose family members were brutally murdered, and the other of a conductor whose mentor committed suicide and who was paralysed for three months after a serious motor vehicle accident. Before tur…
Religion and development: The rise of a bibliography
This article endeavours to evidence the extraordinary rise of religion and development as a subject field by presenting a chronological bibliography of the literature that has been published, especially since the early to mid-2000s. By way of introduction and orientation, the authors firstly touch upon existing explanations for the extraordinary new interest in religion and development as a subject field; secondly they comment briefly on the ongo…
The struggle against poverty, unemployment and social injustice in present-day South Africa: Exploring the involvement of the Dutch Reformed Church at congregational level
This article is based on an exploration of the involvement of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) at congregational level in the struggle against poverty, unemployment and social injustice in present-day South Africa. The exploration arises from the thesis that South African citizens continue to regard poverty, unemployment and social injustice as the key challenges to be met in order to build a healthy nation. Historically, the DRC acted as a promin…
Relating to the Poor: Conceptualizations of Christian Diaconal Practice Considered Through the Lens of Human Dignity
This article, although not evolving from any original case study work, represents the concerted effort to critically reflect on ‘diaconia in action’ (diaconia as actual social practice) and, in that sense, take its focus on ‘practice’ as the point of departure for theoretical reflection. This is achieved, first, by exploring as a hermeneutical lens an understanding that could be directly related to a so-called ‘negative approach,’ which strives t…
New developments in neuroscience can benefit the learning and performance of music
As advancements in neuroscience increasingly illuminate the traditional understanding of the human mind, many of the new insights are also of relevance to musicians as well as to music pedagogy. Especially the greater understanding of how intersubjective processes are integral to the development of the right brain has shown how, according to the neuropsychoanalyst Allan Schore, right-brain models can bridge the fields of psychiatry, music and tra…
Frontal lobe brain damage and the lived piano-playing experiences of an older adult
This paper presents an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of the lived piano-playing experiences of an older adult who suffered frontal lobe brain damage. Semi-structured interviews and diary reflections were used to gain insight into the intrapersonal, relational, spiritual and therapeutic experiences of the participant, Annie. Emergent themes include being ill, loss, depression and anxiety, determination, yearning, will to live and …
Social Capital, Religious Social Capital and the Missing Element of Religious Ritual
This article was written to contribute towards developing a suitable conceptual framework for meeting the overarching research aim of developing a more profound empirically informed interpretation of the manner and extent to which religious ritual could be valued as a source of social capital formation in the South African context. With this in mind, the article first explores the concept of social capital in the light of the threefold distinctio…
Youth marginalisation as a faith-based concern in contemporary South African society: Introducing a research contribution
The aim of this article is to introduce a special collection of articles focused on the topic ‘Youth marginalisation as a faith-based concern in contemporary South African society’. In meeting this aim the discussion begins by alluding to an international research project known under the acronym YOMA (Youth at the Margins: A Comparative Study of the Contribution of Faith-Based Organisations to Social Cohesion in South Africa and Nordic Europe) as…
The Neet concept in comparative youth research: The Nordic countries and South Africa
The NEET concept has become widely used internationally since its emergence in the UK almost two decades ago. This article reviews the adoption of the concept in two extreme contexts in terms of NEET rates, youth opportunities and youth welfare: the Nordic countries and South Africa. The article discusses the situations of NEET young people in the two contexts, and how the concept is used in the wealthy and relatively homogenous Nordic welfare st…
Language Practices as Religious Innovation: The Case of Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in Xenophobic Contexts
In the authors’ recent case-study research of migrant-dominated Pentecostal charismatic churches (PCCs) in the South African cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town, language emerged as a prominent feature of religious practice, suggesting a positive correlation between experiences of xenophobia and religious innovation. This perspective is developed through the identification and discussion of two interlinked themes that surfaced from a closer anal…
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