SWOP | Society, Work and Politics
The Society, Work and Politics Institute (SWOP) is one of the University of the Witwatersrand’s most enduring research entities. Our work is shaped by the overarching aim of producing knowledge to help understand ‘the making and unmaking of social order’, with a particular focus on disadvantaged communities and the problems they face, as well as collective efforts to effect change.
Our research is shared through publications (both academic and more popular forms of writing), teaching, seminar programmes and conferences, as well as engagement in and with processes of policy formulation, legal processes and other more activist-driven interventions. It is our intellectual endeavour to contribute to different forms of theorising, theory-building and critique from our particular vantage point in ‘the global south’.
Calls
Book Launch: Kally Forrest’s ‘Lydia: Anthem to the Unity of Women’
SWOP associate, Kally Forrest, will be launching her new book with Jacana Media on the 19th September at Love Books in Melville. With great care and meticulous research, Kally Forr
The Land Question and Labour Tenancy in South Africa Today – Raymond Mhlaba Institutional Public Lecture
SWOP Senior Researcher, Dr Dineo Skosana, will act as a respondent to Prof Richard Levin’s public lecture hosted by the Nelson Mandela University. The lecture will take place
“Social and territorial inequality in Mexico and South Africa” a virtual round table
SWOP Director, Dr Prishani Naidoo, will participate in a virtual round table hosted by the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) and the Embassy of Mexico in South Africa. This is th
Call for Submissions – A multidisciplinary approach to the study of Urban Crisis: A focus on the City of Johannesburg
The Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), Society, Work and Politics Institute(SWOP) and the Johannesburg Crisis: Concerned Academics*, launch a seminarseries to offer scholars
ArtTalk 50/30 | Reparation. Redux at the National Arts Festival
The ArtTalk 50/30 series explores the deep existential questions humanity faces with key thinkers, artists and healers. This multi-disciplinary ritual seeks to cleanse and heal the
Reacting to coalitions: ANC-DA, EFF, MK, IFP and the 2024 election
Tasneem Essop analyses various coalition options as SA enters a new phase in its politics on SMWX.
Reacting to the Election Results: ANC vs DA vs MK Party vs EFF
Tasneem Essop, unpacks the Election Results on Day 2 of counting & finalising of results on SMWX.
Tasneem Essop on 2024 election, ANC, DA, EFF, Zuma & MK Party, Election Day
Tasneem Essop on 2024 election, ANC, DA, EFF, Zuma & MK Party, Election Day on SMWX
Dineo Skosana presents at the Faculty of Engineering and The Built Environment Inaugural Seminar
Unpacking the Just Energy Transition: Myths, Fuss, Buzzword or Reality?
Land, Labour, Life are commonly significant to different experiences of colonisation, proletarianisation, and social, economic and political transitions away from them. While the study of each, on their own (as concept, question, theme) has produced (and continues to produce) important insights into the character of society, thought together they provide different paths and windows to unravelling what has been and become, what is, and what is yet, to come. At SWOP, this has been an important shift in how research about society is imagined and undertaken, especially when considering what is foreclosed when thinking them separately.
Coal mining and burning are a major driver of environmental inequality in South Africa. Such inequality is evident in the poor’s exposure to toxic pollution, in the lack of universal access to critical resources such as clean water and air, the land, clean, affordable energy, and their vulnerability to the extreme weather events, such as droughts, heat waves, crop failures and floods, associated with climate change. To mitigate the later, South Africa is undergoing a transition from coal to renewable energy. This project, therefore, aims to investigate the implications of a just transition from coal for workers and people living near coal mines and coal-fired power-stations, many of whom have experienced the dispossession of their land, graves and livelihoods amongst other things because of coal mining.
The Popular Politics programme at SWOP considers the popular and the political broadly. Popular Politics covers work on protests, the movement landscape, the shaping of political alternatives, representative politics and democracy. The programme has covered three main projects over the last five years; Movement Landscapes – focusing on deepening this concept through the study of cycles of protest since 1994 – , Mapping the Fault-lines in the Rising South – that looks at popular politics in the BRICS countries – , and Contentious Democracy – looking at the relationship between protest, electoral politics and democracy.
Questions of research method have come to form a core part of the ongoing research and knowledge production at SWOP. SWOP, as a research institute, has continuously engaged with critical questions relating to research methods – from debates about public sociology, to the concept of critically engaged sociology, and beyond. More recently, there has been a rethinking of some of these terms and renewed experimentation with ‘method’ that often happens across disciplinary boundaries.
This programme brings an alternative perspective to bear on violence. We seek to foreground the acts, processes, meanings and moralities of violence, and in so doing to gain a deeper understanding of violence, why it occurs and how it is embedded in society. We attempt to suspend immediate and ‘common sense’ judgements about violence in favour of a deeper understanding. This programme is a collaboration between SWOP and the School of Human and Community Development
SWOP Lunch Break: After the rainbow: South Africa’s interregnum through Brazil’s lens
SWOP Lunch Break: After the rainbow. South Africa's interregnum through Brazil's lens with Fabio Luis
Urban Crisis Seminar Series
Research Workshop Seminar Series - A multidisciplinary approach to the study of Urban Crisis: a focus on the City of Johannesburg
SWOP Lunch Break: After the rainbow: South Africa’s interregnum through Brazil’s lens
SWOP Lunch Break: After the rainbow. South Africa's interregnum through Brazil's lens with Fabio Luis
SWOP Lunch Break: ‘Historicising Crisis in a South African Rural Municipality: Spatial, Administrative and Extractivist Dimensions’
https://youtu.be/9264bDGHzbk ‘Historicising Crisis in a South African Rural Municipality: Spatial, Administrative and Extractivist Dimensions’ By Joel Pearson This seminar cont
SWOP Lunch Break: ‘Active Waiting at the Mine Recruitment Centre: Youth, Unemployment and Everyday Contention in Bethanie’
https://youtu.be/B6s9n6DDX58 Active Waiting at the Mine Recruitment Centre: Youth, Unemployment and Everyday Contention in Bethanie Kefuoe Makena Bethanie, home to the Bakwena ba M