As with many other genres of storytelling, fables are as much about the socialisation of political values as they are about the amusement of children. Although their timeless appearance presents their truths as absolute, the meanings of fables change as they are reinterpreted through time by particular ideologies. Thus we find that The Ant and the Grasshopper, a children’s favourite about the need for hard work and careful saving, has recently been commandeered by conservative adults who are searching for ever more coded ways of communicating in today’s anti-racist contexts. This story is attributed to Æsop, a mythical sixth century B.C. slave and storyteller (Adrados 1999). During the renaissance, Europe’s fascination with antiquity prompted renewed interest in Æsop’s fables as vehicles of commentary on the politics of the time (Hanazaki 1993-1994 & Patterson 1991). Their popularity accelerated with the industrial revolution since some of the fables, such as The Tortoise and the Hare and The Ant and the Grasshopper, were particularly suited to the socialisation of selfrestraint and a strong work ethic. The Ant and the Grasshopper tells the story of the ant that worked hard collecting food during summer, while the carefree grasshopper did not. During winter, the ant survived while the grasshopper starved. This story conveyed to children that the threat of lean times was ever present but that hard work would stave off starvation.
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The Ant and the Grasshopper
Rationalising Exclusion and Inequality in the Post-apartheid City
Richard Ballard
Dmitry Shlapentokh
food and could endure hunger and thirst. Finally, he was quite restrictive in his sexual mores and engaged in sexual relationships only when they helped him to promote the broader geopolitical agenda. His enemies – the Oriental rulers – behaved in a
Virile Resistance and Servile Collaboration
Interrupting the Gendered Representation of Betrayal in Resistance Movements
Maša Mrovlje
’ qualities ‘in spite of’ her particular role as a mother and housewife. Even though she had a family, six children and a husband, she ‘always had time for everything’ and ‘was never weary’: ‘She would go to the food lines earlier. She would mend the clothes
Distinguishing Injustice, Exploitation and Harm
The Impossibility Result
Elias L. Khalil
’ takes into consideration the uncertainty dimension of any decision, while wellbeing per capita denotes the level of welfare per person in terms of substantive utility arising from the consumption of food, clothes and other welfare-enhancing items. As
Contesting Paradigms in Society’s Poverty Alleviation and Development Arena
Theoretical Debates on Agency
Sunday Paul Chinazo Onwuegbuchulam and Khondlo Mtshali
constitute and help a person to live a life that he or she values ( Sen 1999 ). Functionings can be basic ‘beings’ and ‘doings’ in life, such as one’s ability to be healthy, to have security, food, shelter, and so forth. They can also include more complex
Alex Lichtenstein
of these democratic organisations available to black workers as tools of their own liberation. Aggett, a medical doctor, worked as a trade union organiser for the multiracial Food and Canning Workers Union until his death in February 1982 after
Anthony Egan
simply spoke and acted with the authority of a singular freedom […]. He called his hearers to be without anxiety for the future concerning clothes, food, or shelter, and he supported his words with his own conduct. […] He seems to have been so free of
The Keys to the Economic Kingdom
State Intervention and the Overcoming of Dependency in Africa before the Crisis of the 1970s
Bill Freund
GENCOR. Anton Rupert built a business empire initially based on tobacco, Albert Wessels on assembling Japanese-designed cars and Bill Venter on assembling IT. The successes of Rupert and of the food processing industry (Frankel), supermarkets after 1970s
Whites Cannot Be Black
A Bikoist Challenge to Professor Xolela Mangcu
Keolebogile Mbebe
hair on one’s head, shades of skin colour, facial features, home language, neighbourhoods, friends and associates, kinds of work done, social standing and class, food and drink ( Posel 2001: 62 ) – in essence, their appearance and way of life or, rather
The Ambiguity of Subversion
Resistance through Radio Broadcasting
Gisli Vogler
). Scott further claims that everyday resistance is characterised by little or no planning or coordination and may not even be directed at the oppressors directly and instead addresses immediate needs, such as attaining food and income. Scott therefore