The word "research" has its origins in old French in the 16th century. The word rechercher meant (and still means) "to search for". Nowadays we would say that research, and specifically "scientific" or "scholarly" research, is the search for truth, or the pursuit of or quest for credible knowledge. It is precisely because research has become such a complex and multidimensional endeavour that we need to "make sense of" it. Making sense of research thus unpacks research as a technical and methodical process which starts with framing interesting questions and culminates in credible findings. (Johann Mouton) Making sense of research is designed to take students beyond the messy experiential realm into what actually happens when getting registered, writing proposals, being examined and eventually crossing the stage to be capped. Making sense of research is aimed at all research students.

The San (hunter- gatherers) and Khoe (herders) of southern Africa were dispossessed of their land before, during and after the European colonial period, which started in 1652. They were often enslaved and forbidden from practicing their culture and speaking their languages. In South Africa, under apartheid, after 1948, they were reclassified as "Coloured" which further undermined Khoe and San culture, forcing them to reconfigure and realign their identities and loyalties. Southern Africa is no longer under colonial or apartheid rule; the San and Khoe, however, continue in the struggle to maintain the remnants of their languages and cultures, and are marginalised by the dominant peoples of the region. The San in particular, continue to command very extensive research attention from a variety of disciplines, from anthropology and linguistics to genetics. They are, however, usually studied as static historical objects but they are not merely peoples of the past, as is often assumed; they are very much alive in contemporary society with cultural and language needs. This book brings together studies from a range of disciplines to examine what it means to be Indigenous Khoe and San in contemporary southern Africa. It considers the current constraints on Khoe and San identity, language and culture, constantly negotiating an indeterminate social positioning where they are treated as the inconvenient indigenous. Usually studied as original anthropos, but out of their time, this book shifts attention from the past to the present, and how the San have negotiated language, literacy and identity for coping in the period of modernity. It reveals that Afrikaans is indeed an African language, incubated not only by Cape Malay slaves working in the kitchens of the early Dutch settlers, but also by the Khoe and San who interacted with sailors from passing ships plying the West coast of southern Africa from the 14th century. The book re- examines the idea of literacy, its relationship to language, and how these shape identity. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

This volume adopts a transversal South-South approach to the study of visual culture in transnational, transcultural, and geopolitical contexts. Every day hundreds of people travel back and forth between southern countries, including Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and South Africa. With these people travel cultures, experiences, memories, and images. This creates the conditions for the generation, sharing, and circulation of new knowledge that is both southern and about the South as a specific kind of material and imaginary territory (or territories). It does so through the study of the southern hemisphere's screen cultures, addressing the broad spectrum of cultural expression in both traditional and new screen media, including film, television, video, digital, interactive, and online and portable technologies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts.

The San/Bushmen are one of the most studied people in anthropology, subjects of research going back one hundred years, of documentaries, and even of popular movies (The Gods Must Be Crazy). This intriguing new work on the San is a team-based ethnography, collaborative (one of the writers is married to a member of the community), reflexive (the authors become characters in the book themselves), and literary (with poetry, dialogue, interviews, photography, and first person accounts, as well as traditional ethnographic description). In this book, South Africans are studying other South Africans, in a new environment in which many San are no longer hunter gatherers, but are activist and engaged in cultural tourism. It will be an exciting counterpoint to traditional ethnographies and stories about the San people, for anthropologists and Africanists.

This volume examines the crisis of humanities narratives in the context of neoliberal capitalism and of the emergence and consolidation of the metrics-driven, corporate, managerial university. Do narratives of the crisis of the humanities mobilize specific notions of value and prestige? How are these notions classed, gendered and racialized? How do narratives of the crisis of the humanities relate to current debates and contestations surrounding decolonization? Does the crisis of a traditional configuration of the humanities open up opportunities to use their institutional space for work that is both socially and politically relevant and academically rigorous? The aim is to provide a counter-narrative of the present and future of the humanities. In addition to the study of a multiplicity of media texts and other multimodal expressive forms, formats and platforms and genres, a communicative turn in the humanities entails deepening the study of the value chains in which they are inserted and their conditions of production, circulation and reception. Communicative and digital capitalism, now labelled the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is on its way to bringing its own waves of struggles and confrontations to our campuses and beyond, to which humanities scholars and activists can make a vital contribution-should some of us decide to do so. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of Art, Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, Education, Politics, Sociology, and Social and Cultural Anthropology. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.

This book examines China's identity transformations with a focus on self-perceptions and their representations and communication in the mass media. By considering the internal dynamics of change, it explores the emerging multifaceted 'China brand'. With its growing economic clout, China has taken a proactive stance in shaping global economic and strategic order through ambitious programmes such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the 'Belt and Road' initiative. However, as a developing country, China is at pains to manage its own transformations while trying to carve out an international identity. Arguably, China's unique sense of history and identities may lead to a 'contested modernity' or 'multiple modernities'; radically different from the prevalent classical theories of modernisation and convergence of industrial societies. To understand China's trajectory of future development has been a major issue in international affairs. This book is concerned with how China's hybridised identities are articulated, and intertwined with situational, institutional, and societal dynamics - and how they are interwoven with China's international outlook which converges with or diverges from China's historical assumptions and beliefs. This book will be of interest to those studying China's identity in the media; situated at the juncture of past, present, and future, and between China and the wider world. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Arts.

This volume adopts a transversal South-South approach to the study of visual culture in transnational, transcultural, and geopolitical contexts. Every day hundreds of people travel back and forth between southern countries, including Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and South Africa. With these people travel cultures, experiences, memories, and images. This creates the conditions for the generation, sharing, and circulation of new knowledge that is both southern and about the South as a specific kind of material and imaginary territory (or territories). It does so through the study of the southern hemisphere's screen cultures, addressing the broad spectrum of cultural expression in both traditional and new screen media, including film, television, video, digital, interactive, and online and portable technologies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts.

The San/Bushmen are one of the most studied people in anthropology, subjects of research going back one hundred years, of documentaries, and even of popular movies (The Gods Must Be Crazy). This intriguing new work on the San is a team-based ethnography, collaborative (one of the writers is married to a member of the community), reflexive (the authors become characters in the book themselves), and literary (with poetry, dialogue, interviews, photography, and first person accounts, as well as traditional ethnographic description). In this book, South Africans are studying other South Africans, in a new environment in which many San are no longer hunter gatherers, but are activist and engaged in cultural tourism. It will be an exciting counterpoint to traditional ethnographies and stories about the San people, for anthropologists and Africanists.

This book examines China's identity transformations with a focus on self-perceptions and their representations and communication in the mass media. By considering the internal dynamics of change, it explores the emerging multifaceted 'China brand'. With its growing economic clout, China has taken a proactive stance in shaping global economic and strategic order through ambitious programmes such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the 'Belt and Road' initiative. However, as a developing country, China is at pains to manage its own transformations while trying to carve out an international identity. Arguably, China's unique sense of history and identities may lead to a 'contested modernity' or 'multiple modernities'; radically different from the prevalent classical theories of modernisation and convergence of industrial societies. To understand China's trajectory of future development has been a major issue in international affairs. This book is concerned with how China's hybridised identities are articulated, and intertwined with situational, institutional, and societal dynamics - and how they are interwoven with China's international outlook which converges with or diverges from China's historical assumptions and beliefs. This book will be of interest to those studying China's identity in the media; situated at the juncture of past, present, and future, and between China and the wider world. The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Arts.