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21 September 2018

The composition of the Council of the University of the Free State is stipulated in the UFS Statute, as promulgated in the Government Gazette of 26 January 2018. The terms of office of the President of Convocation, Prof Johan Grobbelaar, Christo Dippenaar, Henry Madlala (Qwaqwa Campus) expire on 31 October 2018. Convocation has to appoint three representatives in their place, one of which has to be the President of Convocation and another should be from the Qwaqwa Campus. In terms of the Statute, both Dippenaar and Madlala are eligible for re-election.
 
Written nominations for the election of three representatives of the Convocation for a period of four years, are hereby requested.
 
The Convocation comprises of all permanent academic staff from lecturer to professor, all permanent staff other than academic staff from Deputy Director to Rector and Vice-Chancellor by virtue of their respective offices and all students (current and former) who obtained a qualification at the university.
 
Each nomination shall be signed by five members of Convocation and shall contain the written acceptance of the nomination by the nominee under his or her signature, as well as an abridged CV (±2pages). These must reach Dawid Kriel by 12:00 on Monday 12 November 2018. If more than one person per each of the three categories is nominated, elections will be held on or before Friday 16 November 2018. You will be notified of the final date for elections in due course. Please submit your nomination via:
 
• E-mail: dawid@ufs.ac.za
• Fax: 086 643 1665
• Post: Dawid Kriel University of the Free State: Institutional Advancement PO Box 339 Bloemfontein 9300
• Hand delivered at: Dawid Kriel, Room 26, 1st Floor, Wekkie Saayman Building, Bloemfontein Campus
 
For enquiries, please contact Claudine Taylor at TaylorCL@ufs.ac.za or +27 51 401 2097.
 
Click here for the nominations form.

News Archive

Dying of consumption: Studying ‘othering’ and resistance in pop culture
2014-10-31

 

 

The Centre for Africa Studies (CAS) at the UFS – under the project leadership of Prof Heidi Hudson (CAS Director) – conceptualised an interdisciplinary research project on representations of otherness and resistance.

This is in collaboration with UFS departments such as the Odeion School of Music, the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, the Department of Fine Arts, the Jonathan Edwards Centre Africa and the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, German and French.  

In this project, Dr Stephanie Cawood from CAS leads a sub-project on the dynamics of pop culture and consumerism. Her research unpacks and critiques pop culture representations of othering and resistance by engaging with the othering rhetoric of conspicuous consumption as well as the subversive rhetoric or culture jamming at play in various South African youth subcultures.

Consumerism has become the institutional system in which we live our daily lives. Pop culture is the result when multinational corporations take aspects of culture and turn it into commodities with high market value. In pop culture and its manifestation, consumption, marketers and savvy advertising executives have realised long ago that othering and resistance are powerful tools to artificially create empty spaces in people’s lives that can only be filled through consuming.

“The scary thing is in my opinion that everyone has become a market segment, including very young children,” says Dr Cawood.

In his 1934 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (TLC), Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to describe the conduct of the nouveau riche. He  contended that when people manage to meet their basic human requirements, any additional accumulation of wealth will no longer relate to function, but will be spent on ostentatious displays of conspicuous consumption or waste. Conspicuous consumption has evolved into invidious consumption where consumption is a mark of one’s superior social status and particularly aimed at provoking envy. The whole point is unashamed one-upmanship.  

“Think of the izikhotane or skothane cultural phenomenon where young people engage in ritualised and ostentatious consumerist waste for social prestige. This is an excellent example of invidious consumption.

“Instead of striving to become good citizens, we have become good consumers and none are more vulnerable than our youth irrespective of cultural and ethnic differences”.

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