SWOP: Society, Work and Development Institute

Society, Work and Development Institute
SWOP at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg strives to conduct high quality research on the world of work. We are primarily academic in orientation, with an emphasis on disseminating research through teaching, publications and conferences. We attempt to maintain communication and interaction with a broad range of actors within the world of work, such as organised labour, business, government and other research organisations.
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  • The smoke that calls: Insurgent citizenship, collective violence and the struggle for a place in the new South Africa
    Added: 20/07/2011 - 14:55
    Year: 
    2011
    Author(s): 
    Karl von Holdt, Malose Langa, Sepetla Molapo, Nomfundo Mogapi, Kindiza Ngubeni, Jacob Dlamini & Adele Kirsten

    (Scroll to the end to download the report)

    There are several innovations to the research projects captured in this report. Firstly, it consists of studies of both xenophobic violence and community protests, drawing the links both empirically as one of collective action spawns or mutates into another, and theoretically through the concept of insurgent citizenship (Holston, 2008).

  • From Compounded to Fragmented Labour: Mineworkers and the Demise of Compounds in South Africa
    Added: 07/07/2010 - 09:03
    Year: 
    2011
    Author(s): 
    A Bezuidenhout & S Buhlungu

    At the core of colonial and apartheid social engineering was a spatial strategy based on institutions and infrastructure linking together rural homesteads and villages, and mining centres and towns. In the case of the mining industry, single-sex compounds were set up as the foundation of the infrastructure of control over black labour. In this paper we examine how various forms of control operated. The paper’s contribution is located within the labour geography literature.

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  • Michael Burawoy's conversations with Pierre Bourdieu
    Added: 26/07/2010 - 14:59

    During 2010, Michael Burawoy, currently the President of the International Sociological Association, presented a number of seminars on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. These lectures are in the process of being expanded upon and will be published by Wits University Press. More information on the Pierre Bourdieu series can be accessed here.

  • A survey of the ANC
    Added: 22/01/2010 - 15:14

    During the course of 2008, SWOP formulated a project proposal entitled Towards an Understanding of the ‘Zuma Tsunami’: COSATU and the ANC, 2002 -2009. This was originally conceived as a linked, parallel study to the 2008-09 round of the Cosatu Worker Survey, undertaking a survey of the membership of the African National Congress.

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