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Much of the discussion surrounding the antivaccine movement focuses on the decision of parents to not vaccinate their children and the resulting danger posed to others. However, the primary risk is borne by the child left unvaccinated. Although living in a developed country with high vaccination rates provides a certain amount of protection through population immunity, the unvaccinated child is still exposed to a considerably greater risk of preventable diseases than one who is vaccinated. I explore the tension between parental choice and the child’s right to be free of preventable diseases. The chapter’s goal is twofold: to advocate for moving from a dyadic framework – considering the interests of the parents against those of the state – to a triadic one, in which the interests of the child are given as much weight as those of the parent and the state; and to discuss which protections are available, and how they can be improved. Specific legal tools available to protect that child are examined, including tort liability of the parents to the child, whether and to what degree criminal law has a role, under what circumstances parental choice should be overridden, and the role of school immunization requirements in protecting the individual child.

While Hemingway noted that all stories end in death, this story begins with a death in the family. I recount my mother's (Ma's) death from a sociological point of view, making use of an autoethnographic perspective. Such a perspective encourages a frank portrayal of my involvement in the story as well as more detached reflection of various behaviors (enacted by Ma, her children, her grandchildren, and her friends). I also focus on Ma as a child of the Depression, a young adult during World War II, and a casualty of a middle class lifestyle. Her death, while unwanted, allowed her to create and construct authentic encounters with her children, grandchildren, and friends – encounters that she had avoided while living the middle class life. Her story allows me to reflect on her death as encouraging an authentic understanding of my emotions.

In 2001, the rape of “baby Tshepang” triggered a media frenzy in the small community of Louisvale, located in the Northern Cape of South Africa. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how gender discrimination and colonial discourse framed the way the rape of Tshepang was reported in print media.

From the newspaper archives of the Cape Town National Library, the University of Cape Town Library as well as newspaper articles found online, this chapter offers a reading of articles printed between 2001 and 2004. Patterns of troping were identified from the articles examined, and a number of themes were selected to be further examined using a gender perspective. Work already done by African feminist scholars on the grammar of rape was applied to deconstruct the ways in which the media presented this specific case. This chapter works with Sara Ahmed’s (2004) thoughts on shame, Linda Alcoff’s (1991) writing on Othering, Helen Moffett (2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2006) and Jane Bennett’s (1997) work on gender and rape, as well as Achille Mbembe’s (2001) notion of facticity within colonial discourse.

This chapter argues that the ways in which the media understood this event were through well-worn stereotypes of Africa and women. An overarching theme of shame dominated how journalists represented the event. The label “A Town of Shame” stuck onto Louisvale through the mobilization of colonial and gender discourse. Quickly the town was known for its “barbaric” and “savage” existence; a town with no future and a disgrace to the country. Essentialist thinking about women was used to condemn and blame the mother of Tshepang, concretizing the myth that rape is always the fault of women.

Through relying on palatable stereotypes that create a self and Other, we move further away from engaging in the difficult questions of understanding rape. When rape becomes a spectacle, detached from the greater global socioeconomic realities, we deny our responsibilities of difficult and multilayered engagement.

In this chapter, the authors interrogate the structures, natures, processes, and variables that shape globalized collegiate desegregation. The authors pay attention to the history of segregation in South African culture, then proceed to current efforts to dismantle and rebuild the country’s educational enterprise. Drawing parallels with segregation policy in the United States, the authors argue that both nations may draw from global lessons about systemic global anti-Black oppression and its structural forms (e.g., apartheid, inequities in higher education). More specifically, the authors ground arguments in an analysis of the linguistic hegemony that continues to inculcate the college-aspiring students of South Africa. Understanding fundamental desegregation characteristics of racial hegemonic nations (e.g., United States) vis-à-vis racial and linguistic hegemonic nations (e.g., South Africa) is imperative to increase understanding of democratization of educational systems throughout the world.