One of South Africa’s most exciting research initiatives is about to be launched at Wits University. Wiser – the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research – promises to position the university at the forefront of social and economic inquiry on the continent and internationally. Headed by Professor Deborah Posel, Wiser has been established to grapple with the complexities of change in South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid. In an unprecedented move, Wiser has received in the region of R25-million in core donor funding over a five-year period. This is the first time ever that research in the humanities and social sciences has attracted such donor confidence and enthusiasm.
Five highly topical research areas have been chosen as Wiser’s focus: money, race, sexuality, crime and the state. Within these key thematics, researchers are aiming to pose new kinds of questions central to understanding South African society:
– What are the new cultures of saving and spending?
– How do people live with race in their everyday lives?
– How are sex and sexuality coming to be understood?
– What are the moral parameters which shape individual judgments about criminality?
– What kind of state is being fashioned by new political elites?
Researchers will be considering the lives of the poor and the rich, including the cultures and lifestyles of the new black elite. Moreover, key issues such as HIV/Aids will feed into all of the projects with a strong focus on changing practices around death and burial. Researchers have already been finding that because of the threat of death from Aids, young people are joining burial societies in droves and are insisting on a more modern approach to burial when their time comes. Death and dying are a central part of contemporary South African research.
Wiser’s staff currently comprises 11 people, which will expand to 17 by early 2002. The team is both young and diverse. Intellectually it is thoroughly interdisciplinary, with staff trained in history, sociology, political science, philosophy, economics, law, cultural studies and literature.
Wiser has also succeeded in attracting top black and female scholars, both locally and abroad. In experience and standing, Wiser is a potent mix of internationally established scholars and younger talent. This positions the organisation to play a key academic and publicly located role in producing a new wave of intellectual leaders. Wiser has received funding for five, four-year, full-time doctoral fellowships, which offer unprecedented support for doctoral research among young scholars in this country. These positions will be advertised in the national press.
Wiser’s premises are unusual in their flair and good design, quite unlike the stuffiness for which academic institutions are well known. Designed from scratch, the institute has paid serious attention to its environment. It has exhibition spaces, seminar and conference spaces, and contemporary office design.
A self-contained research institute, Wiser is establishing itself as a hub of intellectual exchange within and beyond the organisation. A very full programme of events is already in place for the forthcoming year, which includes visits by international scholars, seminar series, symposia, public forums and research publications.
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, November 2001.