Mellon-Mays Undergraduate
Fellowship Programme (MMUF)
• Part of UCT’s Equity Development Programme (EDP)
• 2 UCT Prog co-ordinators
• 5 students selected per year – high academic merit + social
responsible
• Only black students (inclusive)
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Goal is to:
recruit promising ‘black’ undergraduates
interest in academic careers
encourage & support the completion of PhD
swell the ranks of black & underrepresented groups in academy
MMUF as research site
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PILOT PROJECT 2003 – 2004:
2 x Black African students
Class, Language, Mentorship issues
stressed the heterogeneous nature of “black” experiences
through a comparison of different types of Capital (Bourdieu)
• Aim: to show how undervalued capital translated into “worth”
Underlying claim:
• Specific types of capital smooth successful transitions into H.E.
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BUT initial absence of capital does not necessarily spell failure or
reproduce ‘existing patterns of domination’ in society.
Findings of pilot:
• extent to which different types of “capital” impact on black student
experiences of h.ed
• struggle for recognition of “undervalued” capital
• strategies for converting undervalued capital into gain
• MMUF context as stimulus reflective practice
Formed basis for the PhD research
• Thesis Title
The Discourse of Being Successfully ‘black’:
(Re)constructing an understanding of ‘black’
South African student identity within an Equity
Development Programme at UCT.
Research Question
• How do critical events and experiences impact
on the nature of the choices that ‘black’ students
make, and what types of identity transformations
occur in the process?
Framework
• Qualitative
• Social constructionist view of ID
• Data collecting: Reflective essays
Observation
Interview transcripts
• Conceptual tools:
Fateful moments = transformation in ID
Fateful moments
• are those when individuals are called on to take
decisions that are particularly consequential for their
ambitions, or more generally for their future lives. Fateful
moments are highly consequential for a person’s destiny
…have a particular relation to risk – decisions measured
against possibilities of success and failure! (Giddens
1991: 112).
• E.g Divorce; medical results; crime
• Giddens – vital to manage risks – life appears “normal”
•Agency as a set of ‘enabling potentials’ and
‘constraining boundaries’
“Persons are largely ascribed identities according to the manner
of their embedding within a discourse… In this way cultural texts
furnish their ‘inhabitants’ with the resources for the formation of
selves; they lay out an array of enabling potentials, while
simultaneously establishing a set of constraining boundaries beyond
which selves cannot be easily made” (Shotter and Gergen 1989: ix).
EDP values
Black UCT
students
Mellon-Mays
EDP
Forced to partake
in a discourse of
critical reflection
on race &
identity issues
embedded in
reflexive project –
rewrite biography