J.S. Dreyer

Social Location of Transformative Orientations Among South African Youth

In the previous article we asked the question of to what extent a group of 538 Grade 11 students from Anglican and Catholic church-affiliated schools in the Johannesburg/Pretoria region show transformative orientations in the fields of ecology, economics and politics. In this article we deal with the question of what the social location of these transformative orientations is. The more transformatively oriented students are to be found among female, ANCoriented, transethnically directed, postmaterialistic, self-controlling, non-religious, and sometimes Anglican (in each case non-Catholic) students who regard work as something interesting, participate in political communication and consensus building, and see politics and study as a value. Students who favour socio-economic equality more specifically are to be found among the more religiously inspired and motivated students.

Transformative Orientations among South African Youth

In this article we ask the question of to what extent a group of 538 Grade 11 students from Anglican and Catholic church-affiliated schools in the Johannesburg/Pretoria region show transformative orientations in the fields of ecology, economics and politics, and which population characteristics mark the more transformative students among them. The frame of reference is taken from Habermass colonisation theory and the critical comment on it from the so-called culturalisation perspective. The students appear to be transformatively oriented in the ecological and economic domain, whereas their attitude towards politics is more or less ambivalent. The question of where the more transformatively oriented students may be found, what their characteristic are, and whether religion plays any role in that will be developed in the next article.