Reinventing the difference

Understanding the relationship to the body in post-apartheid South Africa.

A professor of Political Studies, Shireen Hassim’s research focuses on feminist theories, social movements and collective action, policies of representations and affirmative action, and social policy. Reinventing difference. Shireen is interested in the politics of the body and how it is invested, rejected or reclaimed as an issue of power in post-apartheid South Africa. Shireen Hassim is the author of Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa and Contesting Authority (2006), and co-edited Go Home or Die Here: Xenophobia, Violence and the Reinvention of Difference in South Africa (Wits University Press, 2009), Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context (2006), and No Shortcuts to Power: Women and Policymaking in Africa (2003).