Digital Heritage, e-Citizenship, Community Engagement » ccrri

Classification and its consequences

McN2 — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:12:08 +0000

The Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity is holding a symposium on classification next week. Niall McNulty will be taking part in a session on classifying information, where he will discuss the Ulwazi programme and the process and purpose of classifying intangible heritage. Two sessions are also open to the public:

Classifying people: necessity of categories?
The Centre for Critical Research on Race & Identity invites you to the Howard College Theatre, Howard College Campus, UKZN.
Date: 2 February, 18h00 to 19h30
Speakers: Ian Hacking (University of Toronto), Halleh Ghorashi (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) & Dvora Yanow (University of Amsterdam)

Classification, legislation and the Constitutional ideal of non-racialism
The Centre for Critical Research on Race & Identity invites you to the Howard College Theatre, Howard College Campus, UKZN.
Date: 1 February, 18h00 to 19h30
Speakers: Pierre de Vos (UCT) & Max du Plessis (UKZN)

Revisiting Apartheid Race Categories: A Colloquium

McN2 — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:31:01 +0000

We’re attending this colloquium at Wits next week – as associates of the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity (we develop digital research resources for them). Should be interesting and there is a public lecture with Professors Jonathan Jansen and Steven Friedman on Thursday night – see you there!

The post-1994 South African government requires information on apartheid race classification to implement and monitor racial redress. Some citizens argue this practice is necessary given our history. Others, possibly a minority, argue against it. Resistance to ticking race classification boxes emerges from various quarters with different political motivations. This colloquium begins with the premise that jettisoning apartheid race categories now in favour of either class or ‘merit’ would set back the few gains made toward redress. It brings into conversation scholars from various disciplines, activists and practitioners to explore the implications of common sense uses of ‘race’, of the continued administrative use of apartheid-era race categories, and of class reductionist approaches to redress. Significantly, this gathering begins to explore possibilities for developing and testing new indicators for ‘race’ and class disadvantage, and for eventually replacing apartheid race categories. Its aim is not to drain redress strategies of the life of ‘race’. On the contrary, it explores thought and practice toward encompassing racialised lived realities without surrendering to apartheid’s codes. The aim of this colloquium is neither to advocate an un-situated transcendence of ‘race’, nor to subscribe to thought of its permanence. Instead, it hopes to contribute to socially just redress, and to a future in which lived experience, political identifications and ways of knowing are less orchestrated by apartheid race categories.

ccrri Archive

McN2 — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 07:15:26 +0000

We have been working with the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity for the past few months, digitizing (with the help of DISA) their archive of news-clippings, to make them available online in an easy to use and searchable database. We are happy to announce that a Beta version of the website is available at http://ccrri.ukzn.ac.za/archive. Currently there are about 200 entries in the database with the remaining (estimated at around 10,000) to be added over the next year.

Comments and suggestions on how to improve the usability of the website are welcome.

ccrri archive

Managing documents with Omeka

McN2 — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:50:18 +0000

Earlier on in the year we started a project which involves digitizing and making available online a large number of newspaper clippings. We had originally looked at Greenstone for the collections management software but it seemed too clunky for what we needed. Likewise Drupal wasn’t ideal as it needed a fair bit of customization in order to be useful for this project. After some deliberation, we decided to go with Omeka, a relatively new publishing platform, but one that had been generating a lot of interest in the libraries and heritage industry in the US.

After using it for a few months, and as the digital archive takes shape, it looks like we made the right decision. Omeka easily handles a large number of documents, which can be organised by collection. Each document can also be assigned a series of tags, creating a folksonomy that can be searched across collections. The default metadata for each item is Dublin Core, while you can also include Document Type metadata. All of this information is searchable. The actual document, loaded as a machine-readable PDF, can be viewed directly in the browser from the item page (along with the document metadata) or downloaded and viewed on your computer.

All in all, a promising start to what looks to be an exciting project.

City Cultures Seminar: DURBAN SINGS

McN2 — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:56:20 +0000

DURBAN SINGS is a pilot project collaboratively initiated and collectively developed by Molefi Mafareka Ndlovu, community research scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS, UKZN), and Dr. Claudia Wegener, a visiting scholar from the University of the Arts London (UAL), together with 50 young people from 12 Durban community organizations, many of them now trained and networked as editorial collectives of audio producers for micro-media hubs in their local organizations and areas.

The project has a base at the university as a CCS outreach initiative - it includes training and workshops for recording, interview, audio-editing, oral history and IT skills; oral history data-collection, on-line and off-line archiving, project management, public presentations, networking, blog-editing, and broadcasts. An extensive on-line audio archive is uploaded at www.archive.org; and collections of oral history interviews from Clermont, Folweni, Inanda, Ntuzuma, Marianridge, Mzinyathi, Umlazi and the inner city are networked via their own blogs, the ‘switch-board’ blog at www.durbansings.wordpress.com and a ‘community portal’ at the CCS web-site: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?11,62

DURBAN SINGS is funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Editors presenting the project for discussion at the City Cultures Seminar:

Beverley Webster (Mariann Coordinating Committee, Mariannridge)
Bongisipho (Malungisa Youth Development, Mzinyathi)
Peter Shea (Ubuntu Babasha, Clermont)
Nokulunga Mthethwa (Abasha, Inanda Newtown A)
Claudia Wegener (radio continental drift, CCS Visiting Scholar)

Date: Tuesday, 02 March 2010

Time: 12:30-14:00

Venue: ccrri seminar room, 2nd floor George Campbell building, South Campus, Howard College Campus of teh University of KwaZulu-Natal. Use the south entrance into the building; and Entrance 3 on Rick Turner (Francois) Road if driving.

Enquiries:

ccrri@ukzn.ac.za or 031 260 1599/3904/3902

Please forward to colleagues who may be interested in attending and suggest joining the ccrri mailing list by sending an email toccrri@ukzn.ac.za

Durban Sings