scholarly journals "Xenophobia" in South Africa: Order, Chaos, and the Moral Economy of Witchcraft

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Hickel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
African Populations ◽  
Housing Shortages ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
The City ◽  
People’S Perceptions

This article explores the violent, anti-immigrant riots that swept through informal settlements in South Africa in 2008, during which more than sixty foreigners were killed and more than one hundred thousand displaced. In the first part of the paper, I draw on research conducted in informal settlements around the city of Durban to argue that many people’s perceptions of foreigners are informed by ideas about witches and witchcraft, which articulate with widespread anxieties about rising unemployment, housing shortages, and a general crisis of social reproduction. These ideas provide a semiotic environment in which anti-immigrant violence becomes thinkable. In the second part of the paper, I argue that these ethnographic data help us interrogate existing theories of xenophobic violence, which tend to see it as a reaction to the cultural confusion and social anomie that globalization allegedly triggers. This dominant approach relies on assumptions about order and chaos that are native to Euro-American culture and thus do not necessarily apply cross-culturally. I show that these assumptions have a long and troubling history in South Africa, where colonial administrators and mid-century social scientists drew on them in their attempts to manage African populations.

scholarly journals A Máquina e a Enxada: Economia moral e acumulação flexível no território das confecções em Pernambuco, Brasil

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (52) ◽  
Author(s):  
Berlano Bênis França de Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Small Enterprises ◽  
Family Work ◽  
Family Farmers ◽  
Reproduction Strategies ◽  
Micro And Small Enterprises ◽  
Flexible Accumulation ◽  
The City ◽  
The Universe

Resumo: Procuramos analisar neste artigo um conjunto de práticas realizadas por trabalhadores situados em espaços rurais no âmbito do universo das confecções de vestuários no interior do estado brasileiro de Pernambuco. O Polo de Confecções do Agreste de Pernambuco compreende-se como um aglomerado constituído majoritariamente por micro e pequenas empresas caracterizado por sua estrutura descentralizada em que a produção de peças de roupas se dá sob regime de subcontratação arregimentando grande número de mão de obra informal e familiar. Dessa forma, nos chama a atenção como se combina uma ordem moral camponesa com práticas que caracterizam a acumulação flexível do capitalismo. No nosso entender, a forma como o trabalho familiar é utilizado mobiliza uma economia moral de forma a engendrar relações não mercantis na produção e comercialização de mercadorias. Dialogando com dados tirados de nossa pesquisa realizada no município de Surubim, discutimos as tensões que envolvem as várias estratégias de reprodução social tecidas por unidades familiares com os diferentes padrões de acumulação de capital.Palavras-chave: Agricultores Familiares. Economia Moral. Estratégias de Reprodução Social. Polo de Confecções do Agreste de Pernambuco. Trabalho  MACHINE AND HOE: MORAL ECONOMY AND FLEXIBLE ACCUMULATION IN TERRITORY OF MANUFACTURE IN PERNAMBUCO, BRAZILAbstract: We analyze in this article a set of practices performed by workers located in rural spaces within the universe of clothing manufacturing within the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. The Polo de Confecções do Agreste de Pernambuco is understood as a cluster composed mainly of micro and small enterprises characterized by its decentralized structure in which the production of garments is under subcontracting regimenting large informal and family labor. It strikes us how a peasant moral order is combined with practices that characterize the flexible accumulation of capitalism. In our view, the way family work is used mobilizes a moral economy in order to engender nonmarket relations in the production and marketing of goods. Dialogue with data taken from our research conducted in the city of Surubim, we discuss the tensions surrounding the various strategies of social reproduction woven by family units with different patterns of capital accumulation.Keywords: Family Farmers. Polo de Confecções do Agreste de Pernambuco.  Social Reproduction Strategies. Moral Economy. Work

Transnational Habitus and Sociability in the City: Zimbabwean Migrants’ Experiences in Johannesburg, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khangelani Moyo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The South ◽  
Economic Networks ◽  
Social Field ◽  
Transnational Migrants ◽  
Telephone Calls ◽  
The City

Drawing on field research and a survey of 150 Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, this paper explores the dimensions of migrants’ transnational experiences in the urban space. I discuss the use of communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook as well as other means such as telephone calls in fostering the embedding of transnational migrants within both the Johannesburg and the Zimbabwean socio-economic environments. I engage this migrant-embedding using Bourdieusian concepts of “transnational habitus” and “transnational social field,” which are migration specific variations of Bourdieu’s original concepts of “habitus” and “social field.” In deploying these Bourdieusian conceptual tools, I observe that the dynamics of South–South migration as observed in the Zimbabwean migrants are different to those in the South–North migration streams and it is important to move away from using the same lens in interpreting different realities. For Johannesburg-based migrants to operate within the socio-economic networks produced in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, they need to actively acquire a transnational habitus. I argue that migrants’ cultivation of networks in Johannesburg is instrumental, purposive, and geared towards achieving specific and immediate goals, and latently leads to the development and sustenance of flexible forms of permanency in the transnational urban space.

scholarly journals The Conditions for after Work: Financialization and Informalization in Posttransition South Africa

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 782-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Maria Makhulu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Global South ◽  
First Century ◽  
Informal Employment ◽  
Shop Floor ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Informal Economies ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Modes Of Life

This essay situates the problem of twenty-first-century work in the global South—specifically, in South Africa—to challenge northern theories of the crisis of work. Addressing the break between Fordism and post-Fordism peculiar to the postcolonial context, it argues that new regimes of work should be understood in relation both to longer histories of colonial resistance to proletarianization (to the racisms of the shop floor) and to colonial Fordisms, as well as to the way these two factors inform the current expansion of informal employment. What practices and forms of life emerge from the precarity of informal economies and informal settlements? How are precarious modes of life connected to and informed by the steady dematerialization of the economy through financialization?

scholarly journals The effects of greening the supplier and innovation on environmental performance and competitive advantage

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Unine Van den Berg ◽  
Jean-Pierre Labuschagne ◽  
Hugo Van den Berg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Competitive Advantages ◽  
Latent Constructs ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
Environmental Goals ◽  
The City ◽  
Strength Of Association ◽  
Managerial Innovation

Companies in South Africa should realise the important influence of greening their suppliers and of innovation to achieve environmental goals and competitive advantages. In order to prove this, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 75 companies from 11 industries in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality region, South Africa. A confirmatory factor analysis was done, followed by bivariate correlations to determine the strength of association between the latent constructs. Correlations between greening the supplier, innovation, environmental performance and competitive advantages were done. The research found that a green innovative process had a significant effect on environmental performance. Green managerial innovation further had a significant correlation with competitive advantage. The primary result of the study indicated that all the constructs positively related to each other, meaning that greening suppliers, by means of green innovation, leads to an enhanced environmental performance and to competitive advantages.

Parkour, Masculinity, and the City

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey L. Kidder
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
The People ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Performance Of Gender ◽  
Spatial Appropriation ◽  
The City ◽  
A Performance

Parkour is a new, and increasingly popular, sport in which individuals athletically and artistically negotiate obstacles found in the urban environment. In this article, I position parkour as a performance of masculinity involving spatial appropriation. Through ethnographic data I show how young men involved in the sport use the city (both the built environment and the people within it) as a structural resource for the construction and maintenance of gender identities. The focus of my research highlights the performance of gender as a spatialized process.

scholarly journals An inter-disciplinary approach to the energy transition in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Todd ◽  
Darren McCauley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Static Approach ◽  
Tackle Climate Change ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Energy Justice

AbstractThe compelling need to tackle climate change is well-established. It is a challenge which is being faced by all nations. This requires an approach which is truly inter-disciplinary in nature, drawing on the expertise of politicians, social scientists, and technologists. We report how the pace of the energy transition can be influenced significantly by both the operation of societal barriers, and by policy actions aimed at reducing these effects. Using the case study of South Africa, a suite of interviews has been conducted with diverse energy interests, to develop and analyse four key issues pertinent to the energy transition there. We do so primarily through the lens of delivering energy justice to that society. In doing so, we emphasise the need to monitor, model, and modify the dynamic characteristic of the energy transition process and the delivery of energy justice; a static approach which ignores the fluid nature of transition will be insufficient. We conclude that the South African fossil fuel industry is still impeding the development of the country’s renewable resources, and the price of doing so is being met by those living in townships and in rural areas.

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