Resumen de Troubling 'race' and power in preschool: an ethnographic study of 'race' and identity discourses circulating in a culturally diverse Primary School in South Africa
This ethnographic study explores the complexities of how young children aged five to six years construct and perform their 'race' identities in early schooling in post-apartheid South Africa. Set within the broad framework of transformation and integration within the education system, official, formal and informal discourses of diversity, difference and identity are examined in order to understand how dominant ideological and discursive frameworks serve to structure social categories and imbue them with power. Through intensive engagement with the linguistic and embodied practices of children, I explore the range of contemporary discursive positions available to them with regards to the category of 'race', and other notions such as gender and class. Framed by poststructural theory, and concepts of power, positioning and multiplicity, this study takes a close look at the myriad ways in which children and educators (re)construct, negotiate, resist and subvert subject formation processes. An integral epistemological and methodological concern of this thesis pertains to contemporary research practices with children. Deconstructing essentialist principles that have served to position children as passively socialised into society, this thesis works from the premise that children are competent social actors that contribute towards shaping society. Thus, while adults are also given a voice in this thesis, theirs is not used to speak for, and so represent, the children. Instead, these voices are juxtaposed to provide a more holistic interpretation of the identity and discursive processes under study. This research has demonstrated that power relations inherent in the child-adult binary often serve to prevent educators and caregivers from viewing children as capable of taking on complex 'race' identities that are more than just descriptive. My approach as a 'non-sanctioning' adult during fieldwork allowed me to gain an in-depth look at how children wrestle with social categories and relations of power. The findings from this research show that the 'racially' segregated past continues to shape identities and relationships in the present. While the desire to move forward towards reconciliation and transformation is evident, the tight grip that 'race' maintains in the lives of educators is reiterated through reference to skin colour, 'whiteness', notions of superiority/inferiority, silence on the issue as well as practices of defensiveness and aggressiveness. The informal discourses circulating among the children are significant in giving meaning to their personal and social worlds. Notions of 'race', gender and class are taken up with regularity and used to assert positions of power and/or privilege, as well as to exclude. Foregrounding the subjective world of children I have shown how children actively contribute to, and contest, dominant definitions of 'race' such as through engaging in detailed discussions of physical appearance and difference. Play, stories and friendship patterns were tools through which to explore children's notions of 'race' and otherness in more detail and highlight how discourses of 'race', gender, class, and language intersected in ways that affirmed or negated the identity positions that children took up. 'Race' is therefore not an abstract concept for the children in this study; rather, it is invoked and used in concrete ways in social exchanges. While the children were exposed to multicultural discourses they were not ignorant of the more complex nature of 'race' politics in the wider South African society.
