First published by Ravan Press in 1985, Cast in a Racial Mould was a pioneering book. It is now republished by Wits University Press with a new foreword by Michael Burawoy and with support from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.Entering what Marx called the hidden abode of capitalism; the labour process; this book analyzes the nature of work and worker resistance in the metal industry which lies at the core of South Africa manuf...

Analyses the fragmentation and future of labour movements in South Africa and globally in the context of globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting work and workers in the Global South.Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality ...

It is a great privilege to launch our series with A Working Life, Cruel Beyond Belief, by Alfred Temba Qabula, with a new Foreword by the original translator, BE Nzimande. Qabula was a central figure in the cultural movement among working people that emerged in and around Durban in the 1980s. It was an innovative attempt to draw on the oral poetry developed among the Nguni people over many centuries. Alfred Temba Qabula was a forklift driver in the Dunlop tyre factory in Durban at the time...

This is the second volume, after Democratizing Democracy, of the collection *Reinventing Social Emancipation: Towards New Manifestoes.*Here, the author examines alternative models to capitalist developmentthrough case studies of collective land management, cooperatives ofgarbage collectors and women's agricultural cooperatives. He alsoanalyzes the changing capital-labor conflict of the past two decadesand the way labor solidarity is reconstituting itself under new formsfrom Brazil...

This book offers an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to thinking about inequality, and to understanding how inequality is produced and reproduced in the global South.Without the safety net of the various Northern welfare states, inequality in the global South is not merely a socio-economic problem, but an existential threat to the social contract that underpins the democratic state and society itself. Only a response that is firmly grounded in the context of the global South ...

This volume examines the way in which various strands of left thought have addressed the National Question.The re-emergence of debates on the decolonisation of knowledge has revived interest in the National Question, which began over a century ago and remains unresolved. Tensions that were suppressed and hidden in the past are now being openly debated. Despite this, the goal of one united nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive. T...

*Winner of the 2009 Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Prize, awarded by the American Sociological Association Labor and Labor Movements section*Claims have been made on the emergence of a new labour internationalism in response to the growing insecurity created by globalization. However, when persons face conditions of insecurity they often turn inwards. The book contains a warning and a sign of hope. Some workers become fatalistic, even xenophobic. Others are atte...

These reflections can be described as a personal journey, wrestling with varying experiences in order to gain some existential understanding of life. They were written over a period of ten years during which time they were shared with a wide cross section of persons both in Jamaica and overseas. The contents are varied, incorporating real life experiences, during which the author assumed the role of student, learning from the inexhaustible examples from persons who can be described as livi...

In this informative critique of contemporary leadership renowned political scientist Donald Savoie poses and answers the crucial questions: where is power located and who is in charge? In recent years it has become extremely difficult to pinpoint the location of political and economic power making it complicated to determine who is to blame for political and economic catastrophes and leading to increased disenchantment with Western politicians and bureaucrats. Power considers how forces such...

The collapse of Britain's powerful labor movement in the last quarter century has been one of the most significant and astonishing stories in recent political history. How were the governments of Margaret Thatcher and her successors able to tame the unions?In analyzing how an entirely new industrial relations system was constructed after 1979, Howell offers a revisionist history of British trade unionism in the twentieth century. Most scholars regard Britain's industrial relations ...

In a time when multinational corporations have become truly globalised, demands for global standards on their behaviour are increasingly difficult to dismiss. Work conditions in sweatshops, widespread destruction of the environment, and pharmaceutical trials in third world countries are only the tip of the iceberg.This timely collection of essays addresses the interface between the calls for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the demands for an extension of international hum...