Digitizing Humanities in South Africa: Computational linguistic resources, training, and community building

2020 ◽  
Vol 02 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rooweither Mabuya ◽  
Dimakatso Mathe ◽  
Mmasibidi Setaka ◽  
Menno van Zaanen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Computational Linguistic ◽  
South African ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Language Resources ◽  
Language Technology ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Digital Language

South Africa has eleven official languages. However, not all have received similar amounts of attention. In particular, for many of the languages, only a limited number of digital language resources (data sets and computational tools) exist. This scarcity hinders (computational) research in the fields of humanities and social sciences for these languages. Additionally, using existing computational linguistics tools in a practical setting requires expert knowledge on the usage of these tools. In South Africa, only a small number of people currently have this expertise, further limiting the type of research that relies on computational linguistic tools. The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) aims to enable and enhance research in the area of language technology by focusing on the development, management, and distribution of digital language resources for all South African languages. Additionally, it aims to build research capacity, specifically in the field of digital humanities. This requires several challenges to be resolved that we cluster under resources, training, and community building. SADiLaR hosts a repository of existing digital language resources and supports the development of new resources. Additionally, it provides training on the use of these resources, specifically for (but not limited to) researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Through this training, SADiLaR tries to build a community of practice to boost information sharing in the area of digital humanities.

The Everyday in a Time of Transformation: Exploring a Single South African Lifeworld after 20 Years of Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
P. Conrad Kotze ◽  
Jan K. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Epistemological Framework

Transformation has come to be a defining characteristic of contemporary societies, while it has rarely been studied in a way that gives acknowledgement to both its societal effects and the experience thereof by the individual. This article discusses a recent study that attempts to do just that. The everyday life of a South African is explored within the context of changes that can be linked, more or less directly, to those that have characterized South Africa as a state since the end of apartheid in 1994. The study strives to avoid the pitfalls associated with either an empirical or solely constructivist appreciation of this phenomenon, but rather represents an integral onto-epistemological framework for the practice of sociological research. The illustrated framework is argued to facilitate an analysis of social reality that encompasses all aspects thereof, from the objectively given to the intersubjectively constructed and subjectively constituted. While not requiring extensive development on the theoretical or methodological level, the possibility of carrying out such an integral study is highlighted as being comfortably within the capabilities of sociology as a discipline. While the article sheds light on the experience of transformation, it is also intended to contribute to the contemporary debate surrounding the current “ontological turn” within the social sciences.

Directory of Current Research on Southern Africa

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
J. M. D. Crossey
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Preliminary Version ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

This directory is a revision and updating of two earlier publications issued in limited numbers in xerox form, “A Select Register of Current and Recently Completed Research on South Africa in the Humanities and Social Sciences,” (New Haven, CT, 1977) and “Inventory of Current Research on Southern Africa” (2nd Preliminary version. New Haven, CT, 1977. Plus “Supplement,” Jan. 1978).

scholarly journals The renewal of the digital humanities. An overview of the transformation of professions in the humanities and social sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol Atelier Digit_Hum (Data deluge: which skills for...) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Laure Massot ◽  
Agnès Tricoche
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Sciences Humaines ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Sciences Humaines Et Sociales

This article presents a study of the French-speaking digital humanities. It is based on the experience of two research engineers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) who have been studying these issues for the last ten years. They conducted a survey at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS-Paris) which enabled them to draw up an overview of the transformation of the profession of humanities and social sciences research engineers in the context of the digital humanities. The Digit_Hum initiative, which they run in parallel with their respective activities at the ENS, also provided information for this overview thanks to its role as a space for discussion about the digital humanities along with training and structuring of this field at the ENS and the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres (PSL). Cet article est une réflexion sur les humanités numériques en contexte francophone. Elle s’appuie sur l'expérience de deux ingénieures du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique travaillant sur ces questions depuis une dizaine d'années. À travers l'enquête qu'elles ont menée à l'École normale supérieure (ENS-Paris), elles dressent un panorama de la transformation du métier d'ingénieur(e) en sciences humaines et sociales dans le contexte des humanités numériques. L'initiative Digit_Hum, qu'elles animent en parallèle de leurs activités respectives à l'École, nourrit également ce témoignage en constituant un espace de discussions, de formations et de structuration des humanités numériques au sein de l'ENS et de l’Université Paris Sciences & Lettres.

scholarly journals Azanian Political Thought and the Undoing of South African Knowledges

Theoria ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (168) ◽  
pp. 42-85
Author(s):  
Joel Modiri
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Human And Social Sciences ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Key Questions

This article sets out a few key questions, themes, and problems animating an Azanian social and political philosophy, with specific reference to the radical promise of undoing South African disciplinary knowledges. The article is made up of two parts: The first part discusses the epistemic and political forces arrayed against black radical thought in South Africa and beyond. A few current trends of anti-black thinking – liberal racism, Left Eurocentrism, and postcolonial post-racialism – which pose challenges for the legibility of Azanian critique are outlined. Part two constructs an exposition and synthesis of key tenets of Azanian thinking elaborated upon under three signs: ‘South Africa’, ‘race and racism’, and ‘Africa’. The aim of the discussion is to illustrate the critical, emancipatory potential of Azanian thought and its radical incommensurability with dominant strands of scholarship in the human and social sciences today. The article ultimately defends the reassertion of black radical thought in the South African academy today and underscores in particular the abolitionist drive of Azanian political thought.

scholarly journals Failing Gloriously and Other Essays

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Graham
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Professional Development ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Digital Archaeology ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Memoir ◽  
The University

Please, you gotta help me. I’ve nuked the university. Failing Gloriously and Other Essays documents Shawn Graham’s odyssey through the digital humanities and digital archaeology against the backdrop of the 21st-century university. At turns hilarious, depressing, and inspiring, Graham’s book presents a contemporary take on the academic memoir, but rather than celebrating the victories, he reflects on the failures and considers their impact on his intellectual and professional development. These aren’t heroic tales of overcoming odds or paeans to failure as evidence for a macho willingness to take risks. They’re honest lessons laced with a genuine humility that encourages us to think about making it safer for ourselves and others to fail. A foreword from Eric Kansa and an afterword by Neha Gupta engage the lessons of Failing Gloriously and consider the role of failure in digital archaeology, the humanities, and social sciences.

Financialization in South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 1012-1030
Author(s):  
Ewa Karwowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
South African ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Global South ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
The Social

Financialization has become a popular concept across the social sciences, usually defined as the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors, and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies. Financialization researchers highlight the detrimental consequences of an excessively large and powerful financial sector on economy and society. In South Africa, financialization has been shaped by its colonial and apartheid past, especially the strong links of South African corporations and banks to the international financial centre of London. Low growth and investment, an outcome of the finance-led accumulation regime, have also resulted in the continuity of extreme inequality and high levels of unemployment. In the Global South, financialization mainly affects emerging economies since they possess relatively developed financial markets in comparison to poorer countries. South Africa is the only African economy for which there is a substantial financialization literature. In comparison to other emerging economies, South Africa is relatively strongly financialized as stock market capitalization is extremely high, making Johannesburg one of the top financial centres in the Global South. Furthermore, financial inflows into the country are comparatively large, JSE-listed companies are well integrated into global value chains and household debt is high.

scholarly journals Parlameter – a Corpus of Contemporary Slovene Parliamentary Proceedings

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darja Fišer ◽  
Nikola Ljubešić ◽  
Tomaž Erjavec
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

The paper presents the Parlameter corpus of contemporary Slovene parliamentary proceedings, which covers the VIIth mandate of the Slovene Parliament (2014-2018). The Parlameter corpus offers rich speaker metadata (gender, age, education, party affiliation) and is linguistically annotated (lemmatization, tagging), which boost research in several digital humanities and social sciences disciplines. We demonstrate the potential of the corpus analysis techniques for investigating political debates. The corpus architecture allows for regular extensions of the corpus with additional Slovene data, as well as data from other parliaments, starting with Croatian.  

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