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Formative influences
My spiritual journey has been characterised by a number of crises of faith. My involvement in the struggle against apartheid raised questions about prevailing interpretations of the Bible. It seemed astonishingly incongruous that there could be dogmatism about issues like playing sport on Sundays, women wearing trousers, and the use of certain musical instruments in a worship service, while there was silence on issues of social justice. This raised profound questions for me about the nature of Christian faith and praxis, and about its relevance to what seemed to be the most important social issues. It seemed that, particularly in the arena of faith, it was too easy to ‘know’ God or formulate biblical knowledge in a manner that was highly subjective and selective. This disturbed me because the prevalence of this in the church suggested that I too was ‘knowing’ God and reality with the same subjectivity and selectiveness. My conservative evangelical theological training only really reinforced the polarities between correct and incorrect interpretations of the Bible, truth and error – along with a fairly smug assumption that ours was the correct and true interpretation. What was problematic for me was that many of the theological discourses that helped to make sense of South Africa’s problems were disregarded by my theological mentors and peers as misguided – and even false or heretical.
Newbigin’s (1989) use of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology offered possibilities for understanding knowledge differently. Polanyi’s theory of Personal Knowledge stressed the role of personal commitments in knowledge. My exposure to liberation and feminist theologies gave me insight into the power dynamics of social and religious discourses. It also marked the beginning of what was to be a growing concern with the way that Enlightenment philosophy seemed to have domesticated and even subverted the Gospel. My initial theological training was in a Baptist seminary within a conservative evangelical theological tradition. For nearly twenty years I worshipped and served in a church belonging to the Association of Vineyard Churches, a church-planting movement that had its roots in the ‘Jesus People’ revival in California during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, where hippies and beatniks were coming to faith but finding traditional and mainline churches to be unwelcoming to new converts that did not conform to conservative social norms. Vineyard churches belong to a theological stream that has been called “Empowered Evangelical” by Nathan and Wilson (1995) because of their commitment to conservative evangelical theology and to the experience of the Holy Spirit’s life and power in the church. The history of the Vineyard is recorded by Jackson (1999) in The Quest for the Radical Middle. The Vineyard’s theology is based on a framework that comes from an understanding of the Kingdom of God as the dynamic rule of God, which has broken into history in the person of Jesus, that has been developed by Ladd (1952, 1974, 1975) and Bright (1953), and more recently by Wright (1992, 1996) and Dunn (2003). A full explanation of this theological framework of inaugurated eschatology, and its implications for gender roles in the church, is offered in my dissertation for my Master’s degree (Eliastam 2010).
Ethical considerations
Smythe and Murray discuss the ethics of Narrative research. They (2000:318) argue that, “research in the narrative study of lives yields information that cannot be dissociated so readily from ones fundamental human values and meaningful life experiences”. This calls for levels of respect, sensitivity and consent that might not be necessary for other research methods. I was also aware of the challenges presented by a white man interviewing black South Africans. By choosing participants with whom I had spent time building rapport, and who had experienced me as someone who respected them and their stories, I hoped to overcome some of the problems created by a skewed distribution of privilege and power. My preference for Van Huyssteen’s postfoundational approach is also informed by its ability to limit the impact of epistemological racism. I would argue that transversal rationality creates a space where the rationalities of different cultures, as well as different academic disciplines, can intersect and create knowledge.
Participation in the research was entirely voluntary and participants had the option of withdrawing at any point, if they wished to do so. All co-researchers were given an information letter containing details of the research. They signed a consent form, and gave permission to record the interviews. Pseudonyms are used for the names of the co researchers in this study in order to maintain a sense of personhood for each of them while maintaining confidentiality.
Discourses and identity
Within a social constructionist perspective, the self is not some kind of essence or a true, authentic nature that is integrated and bounded (Gergen 1991:7; White 2001:6). Rather, the self is a product of Discourse, enmeshed in a web of social exchanges characterised by power relationships (Caputo 1997:113-114; Freedman & Combs 1996:34; Madigan 1996:50). Identity is preceded by language and by the social. The only access we have to ourselves and the world is through language. Identity is constructed through grammars, logics and metaphors that exist in language (Burr 1995; Harré 1987), and these are the products of history and culture (White 2001:6). Furthermore, one’s identity is embedded in social relationships (Gergen 2002:17), and these social relationships precede the self because without relationships there is no language that can be harnessed to describe the self (Gergen 1991:157). Epistemologically, community precedes the construction of individual identity (Gergen 1987:61-62). Within communities, language is the tool used by people as they create meaning and knowledge together.
The consequence of this social and linguistic positioning of the self is that we are surrounded by and immersed in Discourses. Social constructionism’s focus on the way language is used in Discourses is central to its understanding of identity and how identity is constructed. We live immersed within multiple Discourses that construct our identities and our reality through their descriptions of the world. Our experience of ourselves, the world around us, our place in the world, and the rules according to which we live are constructed by means of categories and concepts made available to us in Discourses (Davies 2000:88). These systems of signification generate both our identity as well as the meanings we attach to our lives and their circumstances. Subjectivity is constituted by taking up a certain position within these Discourses (Davies 1991:43). To have an identity is to take up a position in one or more Discourses (e.g. white, male, and middle class are all stories about a certain way of being in society – with certain privileges and rules – before they are descriptors for the self). Our identities are socially constructed as we take up subject positions within Discourses. The self is therefore a social and literary product rather than a metaphysical essence.
Chapter 1 Intersecting stories: My personal story and the story of a South African Problem
1.1 A hope derailed?
1.2 My personal story
1.3 Theological positioning
1.4 Research problem
1.5 Research questions
1.6 Research aim and specific objectives
1.7 Epistemology: Postfoundationalism and Social Constructionism
1.8 Research approach
1.9 Research process
1.10 Unique contribution
1.11 Ethical considerations
1.12 Limitations and scope
1.13 Research structure
Chapter 2 Epistemology and research approach
2.1 Postfoundational epistemology
2.2 Postfoundationalism
2.3 The social construction of reality and a Narrative approach
2.4 Seven movements for postfoundational research in practical theology
2.5 Conclusion
Chapter 3 Unmet expectations and hope deferred: A story of South Africa’s poor
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The broader post-apartheid South African context
3.3 The Eastern Cape
3.4 Conclusion
Chapter 4 The problem of foreigners: Identity, competing interests and unmet expectations
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The interview process
4.3 Demographic breakdown of co-researchers
4.4 The stories of the co-researchers from the Nxuba district
4.5 The stories of the co-researchers from East London
4.6 Reflections on the interviews
4.7 Identity: Foreigners are different
4.8 Competing interests: Foreigners are a threat
4.9 Unmet expectations
4.10 Reflections on the interviews
Chapter 5 The stories that construct xenophobia
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Discourses and identity
5.3 Stories about identity
5.4 Stories of displacement
5.5 Stories of belonging
5.6 Stories of entitlement
5.7 Stories of comparison
5.8 Stories told by leaders
5.9 Stories about the absence of freedom
5.10 Reflecting on the xenophobia stories
5.11 Alternative discourses
5.12 Discursive intersections
5.13 Liminal spaces and transversal narrativity
5.14 Concluding reflections
Chapter 6 Re-storying xenophobia
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Difference: A trajectory of identity and prejudice
6.3 Competing interests: A trajectory of conflict
6.4 Antagonism: A trajectory of the politics of difference
6.5 Reflections on this chapter
Chapter 7 Beyond xenophobia
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Challenging prejudice
7.3 Resolving Conflict
7.4 Overcoming antagonism
7.5 Rationality and the violence against foreigners in South Africa
7.6 Discursive leadership and the ‘Other’
Chapter 8 Reflections on the research
8.1 Personal reflections
8.2 Reflections with the co-researchers
8.3 Reflections on the research findings 294
