NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU)

Labour Studies Seminar Series, Rhodes University

SEMINAR & WEBINAR: Wednesday 22 May 2023 4pm, Sociology A and online via Zoom(details below).

SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Lincoln Addison,  Memorial University in Canada: “ Chiefs of the Plantation: Authority and Contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe Border"

THE PAPER:  How have labour relations changed in South African agriculture since the end of apartheid? Drawing on ethnographic research on a plantation located along the South Africa-Zimbabwe border, I argue that labour control hinges upon a delegation of authority from white land owners to black Zimbabwean managers. These labour relations facilitate intensive fruit production, but also enable lower-ranking migrant workers to access natural resources, steal plantation property and contest piece rates.

SPEAKER:  Lincoln Addison is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University in Canada. He is an economic and environmental anthropologist whose research focuses on labour, gender and agrarian change in South Africa and Zimbabwe. 

JOINING: Please register in advance by going to: https://tinyurl.com/ymdnduhk

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining.
 
HOSTS: The series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University.
 
NALSU, based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Sociology and Economics & Economic History, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.