Search

The article highlights the politics of the Covid-19 vaccination drive in Zimbabwe. It interrogates questions of individual agency and institutional power in the administration of the vaccine. It is framed within Foucauldian scholarship, particularly that concerning the role of biopower, subjects and governmentality in the politics of vaccination. The article uses virtual ethnography to understand the politics of vaccination and contends that the vaccination drive highlights how power is played out within the Zimbabwean context. Individuals perceive their agency as constrained through explicit and implicit coercion, since vaccination is exercised through a form of governmentality that uses biopower. The article argues that the vaccination initiative presents a new form of governmentality that is premised on policing individual agency by other individuals as opposed to the dominant notions of governmentality that are shaped by political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contends that subaltern urbanism is a way of life in the context of contemporary Zimbabwe. Through ethnography conducted in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, between February 2019 and May 2019, the paper extends the concept of subaltern urbanism through presenting subaltern urbanism as a way of life that encapsulates individuality and urban governance. The paper argues that subaltern urbanism is scripted by individuals positioned at the bottom of the social ladder and urban governing institutions. The paper maintains the view that subaltern urbanism as a way of life denotes redefinition and (re)imagining contemporary post-colonial urbanity. Finally, the paper proposes the notion that the author labels as "subalternization of the city" by urban governing institutions and suggests new ways of understanding urbanism in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contends that the covid-19 pandemic has reconfigured how cities manage urban marginality within Zimbabwe. The pandemic enabled cities to push everyday mundane practices away from the centre of the city to the margins of the cities through securitisation and criminalising informal activities within the centre. The paper's methodological underpinnings are hinged on a six month ethnography within Bulawayo (Zimbabwe's second largest city). The paper maintains the view that managing urban marginality in the context of covid-19 must be framed within the binary of two opposing forces – governing institutions (the government and municipality) and the low-income residents. Using covid-19 as a pretext of "curbing the pandemic" governing institutions have pushed informal economic activities from the centre through employing law and force; on the other hand low-income residents have found eclectic means to counteract the measures imposed to constrain their agency. Finally, the paper suggests that covid-19 has reconfigured how cities manage urban marginality through pushing everyday informal practices to the periphery and how the low-income residents deploy their agency to counteract confinement hence managing urban marginality can be understood as a two-way process involving governing institutions and the low-income residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a dearth of sport marketing research investigating the strategic potential of socially responsible sport marketing practices for organizations in the sport management industry. Despite the more recent focus on this the emergent topic within marketing literature, there is a lack of application of cause-related marketing (CRM) and social marketing (SM) strategies in the sport marketing context. Furthermore, these strategies are often confused with corporate social responsibility (CSR). The main purpose of this study was therefore to investigate the adoption of CRM and SM marketing strategies by professional sport organizations (PSOs) in South Africa. An interpretivist philosophy and qualitative approach was adopted for the study, which centered on in-depth interviews conducted with key individuals from six South African PSOs. The findings revealed encouraging evidence of South African PSOs engagement in CRM and SM activities. However, it also revealed that the strategic potential of these elements were not leveraged, mainly due to a lack of understanding of these concepts. The differences and similarities between CRM and SM are identified, according to practitioner understandings. The study contributes to sport marketing literature and practice by proposing a conceptual framework to guide the effective planning and execution of strategic CRM and SM campaigns by PSOs. This framework can assist PSOs to engage in social responsible marketing approaches to improve their marketing performance while maintaining socially responsible business practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines how the discourse of sexuality was employed to gain political legitimacy by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) to out-manoeuvre their political rivals Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai Faction (MDC-T) in the Zimbabwean elections of 2013. In the context of Zimbabwe politics, the nexus between sexual discourse and political contests presents a conspicuous shift from dominant day-to-day mundane political debates centred on policy to debates of personal (mis)conduct and morality. The nexus between sexuality and political legitimacy is analysed using Michel Foucault's ideas on sexuality: repressive hypothesis and biopower. The paper maintains that the media have been used to disseminate the discourse of sexuality to the electorate. Importantly, the influence of media is scrutinised using the theory of mass communication and media politics as articulated by Castells, and the Propaganda Model postulated by Herman and Chomsky. Through Critical Discourse Analysis and results from unstructured interviews the paper observes that the discourse of sexuality had a considerable bearing on gaining political power. Lastly, the paper observes that, although the discourse of sexuality has a symbiotic relationship with amassing political power, there were other factors that influenced the electoral outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]