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White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender

Gender-based violence (GBV) research in South Africa has been critiqued for producing and perpetuating trauma-saturated narratives that situate gendered violence in poor black individuals, families, and communities (Boonzaier, 2017, 2018; Boonzaier et al., 2020). Young, black, working class men, in...

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Main Author: Pitcher, Sorrel
Other Authors: Boonzaier, Floretta
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Department of Psychology 2024
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access_status_str Open Access
author Pitcher, Sorrel
author2 Boonzaier, Floretta
author_browse Boonzaier, Floretta
Pitcher, Sorrel
author_facet Boonzaier, Floretta
Pitcher, Sorrel
author_sort Pitcher, Sorrel
collection Thesis
description Gender-based violence (GBV) research in South Africa has been critiqued for producing and perpetuating trauma-saturated narratives that situate gendered violence in poor black individuals, families, and communities (Boonzaier, 2017, 2018; Boonzaier et al., 2020). Young, black, working class men, in particular, have come to be conflated with sexual violence, while white, financially privileged men remain noticeably absent from the literature (Buiten & Naidoo, 2016). In this way, research about GBV in South Africa has become implicitly racialized (Buiten & Naidoo, 2020). As a response to this gap, and with the intention of disrupting racialised knowledge production about GBV, this dissertation explores and critically analyses white men's narratives about GBV in South Africa. This study was theoretically guided by decolonial feminist theory and narrative theory, and a combination of purposive and snowball sampling via social media was utilised to recruit participants. In total, 12 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with white South African men. The individual interviews were analysed using a thematic narrative lens. Three dominant thematic narrative groupings emerged from the data: Narratives of gendered violence, masculinity narratives, and narratives of men's trauma. The narratives speak to how white men position themselves in relation to gendered violence in South Africa and the raced and classed distancing tactics that they employ to achieve this. This analysis provides a more nuanced and detailed understanding of how narratives of race, class, and gender interact with understandings of GBV. Such information could inform future GBV prevention and intervention work by highlighting novel areas of focus.
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institution University of Cape Town (South Africa)
language eng
last_indexed 2026-06-10T12:31:34.243Z
license_str Not specified — see source repository
provenance_str_mv Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository
publishDate 2024
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spelling oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/39831 White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender Pitcher, Sorrel Boonzaier, Floretta Clinical Psychology Gender-based violence (GBV) research in South Africa has been critiqued for producing and perpetuating trauma-saturated narratives that situate gendered violence in poor black individuals, families, and communities (Boonzaier, 2017, 2018; Boonzaier et al., 2020). Young, black, working class men, in particular, have come to be conflated with sexual violence, while white, financially privileged men remain noticeably absent from the literature (Buiten & Naidoo, 2016). In this way, research about GBV in South Africa has become implicitly racialized (Buiten & Naidoo, 2020). As a response to this gap, and with the intention of disrupting racialised knowledge production about GBV, this dissertation explores and critically analyses white men's narratives about GBV in South Africa. This study was theoretically guided by decolonial feminist theory and narrative theory, and a combination of purposive and snowball sampling via social media was utilised to recruit participants. In total, 12 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with white South African men. The individual interviews were analysed using a thematic narrative lens. Three dominant thematic narrative groupings emerged from the data: Narratives of gendered violence, masculinity narratives, and narratives of men's trauma. The narratives speak to how white men position themselves in relation to gendered violence in South Africa and the raced and classed distancing tactics that they employ to achieve this. This analysis provides a more nuanced and detailed understanding of how narratives of race, class, and gender interact with understandings of GBV. Such information could inform future GBV prevention and intervention work by highlighting novel areas of focus. 2024-06-03T07:54:58Z 2024-06-03T07:54:58Z 2023 2024-06-03T06:49:27Z Thesis / Dissertation Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/39831 eng application/pdf Department of Psychology Faculty of Humanities
spellingShingle Clinical Psychology
Pitcher, Sorrel
White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender
thesis_degree_str Master's
title White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender
title_full White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender
title_fullStr White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender
title_full_unstemmed White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender
title_short White men's talk about gender-based violence in South Africa: A thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race, class, and gender
title_sort white men s talk about gender based violence in south africa a thematic narrative analysis of the stories told about race class and gender
topic Clinical Psychology
url http://hdl.handle.net/11427/39831
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