Publications

This chapter explores contradictions between black economic empowerment (BEE) and labour subcontracting in the mining industry. The intention of policies that encourage BEE is to bring about structural changes to the economy. These changes do not only relate to issues of ownership and management, but also to the redress of racial inequality within the state and corporations.

An article published as part of a symposium on Steve Lopez's book "Reorganizing the Rust Belt" hosted by the Labor Studies Journal.

Reference: Webster, Edward. 2008. "Recasting Labor Studies in the Twenty-First Century." Labor Studies Journal, 33(3): 249-254.

Download the article.

Chapter published in Buhlungu, S., Daniel, J., Lutchman, B. & Southall, R. 2007. State of the Nation 2007. Pretoria: HSRC Press. The chapter considers the changing context in which South Africa's largest trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers, has to organise solidarity.

Assembling academics, journalists, researchers and analysts, the State of the Nation: South Africa 2007 volume will provide much fuel for debate. It offers 23 diverse angles on contemporary South Africa in one compelling, comprehensive and relevant publication.

The politics section focuses on the outcome of the 2006 local government elections and issues of service delivery. The section on the economy examines the rapidly growing social welfare net, the state of our public hospitals and health delivery systems, issues of water and the environment, and heritage and tourism.

This paper was published in the Journal of International Development in July 2007. It addresses an important but often neglected theme in debates on globalisation - the consequences for workers of engagement in global markets, particularly for those workers who are retrenched in the process. Using the South African textiles industry as a case study, the paper investigates the impact on workers' household livelihoods of industrial restructuring following trade liberalisation in the 1990s.

How responsive are South African corporations to their social and environmental responsibilities? Given the extremes of economic inequality, is business generally proactive in redressing the legacy of apartheid, or does it only respond to regulation?

These are among the questions treated in this new volume, based on research conducted for a UN project. It breaks new ground in emerging from a tradition of applied social sciences rather than industrial sponsorship. It is therefore free to ask and answer questions not usually raised in the debates about corporate behaviour.

For many people, nature means the wilderness and wild animals. It is experienced indirectly through magazines and television programmes or through visiting the highly managed environments of national parks. Nature, however, is not external, separated from the world of people – we live with nature and interact with it daily. The War Against Ourselves compels us to re-examine our relationship with nature, to change our practices and dissolve present binary divisions such as people vs. animals, economic growth vs. environmental protection, ‘nature’ vs. ‘culture’.

This book, co-edited by SWOP associate professor Geoff Wood, provides an overview on the state and nature of industrial relations across Africa, encompassing theoretical and comparative perspectives, and country studies from North, West, East and Southern Africa. It provides insights into the origins of specific national traditions and practices, current issues, and continent-wide trends. To date there have been few studies on the theory and practice of industrial relations in Africa with a continent-wide scope: this study fills an important gap in the literature.

At the core of the crisis of social relations in contemporary SouthAfrica is a privatisation of the public sphere which is forcing individu-als to seek private remedies to socially produced problems. Theway access to clean and adequate water is threatened by both pri-vatisation and pollution illustrates this process. The article arguesthat resistance to these processes has the potential to 'resocialise'the crisis, and could be strengthened by the involvement of sociolo-gists.Keywords: Crisis, privatisation, water, pollution, resistance, public sociology.

A steel works in the industrial heartland of South Africa is the site of a protracted struggle. It is a David and Goliath type struggle because in mobilising against Mittal Steel the local community is challenging one of the giants of corporate globalisation. Its outcome could be a turning point in the history of environmental justice in South Africa. Two of the main actors are Indian millionaire Lakshmi Mittal and South African pensioner Strike Matsepo. The one is the owner of the polluting steel works, the other a victim of its pollution.