Female adolescent subjectivities in Las Vegas: poststructural thoughts on the intersections of gender,sexuality, consumer logic and curriculum

In this article, data collected from an ethnographic study of adolescent girls growing up in the city of Las Vegas in the US is used to further our understanding of the role of mediated sex and consumer culture and in relationship to emerging adolescent female identities. Girls in this study articulated a clear sense of their abilities to make choices; however the ubiquitous visual of women as the body subject and object of the male gaze in this landscape, the accepted discourse of liberal feminism and certain acquiescence to the pervasive consumer logic complicate resistance among girls. Resistance, although apparent through forms of post‐punk representation, depicts the futility of challenge. The fluidity of postmodern theories helps explain and respond to the specificity of this context in ways that facilitate greater understanding of gender oppression in many western societies. The author argues for a curriculum that deconstructs cultural practices and illuminates multiple discourses to problematize issues of power and identity in the lives of young people that might provide avenues for emancipatory possibilities.     

New science for a new era: the Zimbabwean experience

Summaries

English

An attempt has been made to describe how curriculum developers in science in Zimbabwe have endeavoured to cater for the decision by government, at a stroke, to treble the intake of secondary school pupils and how the developers have, at the same time, attempted to employ the new situation as an opportunity to introduce the kind of science programme in schools which they believe to be appropriate to the conditions which obtain in a developing country like Zimbabwe. The practical, economic, philosophical, political and cultural issues which have been raised in the exercise have been outlined as well as the strategies that have been adopted, wherever possible, to meet them. Implications with international relevance have been highlighted.