Z Levenson
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 54720 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Z Levenson |
| NOMBRES | Z |
| APELLIDO | Levenson |
| FIRMA | LEVENSON Z |
| AFILIACIONES | Florida International University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9077-4664 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 67 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2011 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
The stakes of postcolonial sociology in an age of racial capitalism
This article interrogates the theoretical tensions between postcolonial sociology and analyses of racial capitalism, engaging critically with Andrew Smith's materialist critique of postcolonial thought. While sympathetic to efforts to resituate colonial epistemologies in material contexts, the paper argues that collapsing postcoloniality into racialized capitalism risks erasing the specificity of postcolonial development trajectories. It highligh…
Enacting transition in the post-apartheid city
Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City is an inventive book, compellingly argued and incorporating a vast cross-section of literature across multiple disciplines. What makes it unique, I w
Excavating Early Burawoy
This paper intervenes in contemporary sociological debates over the relationship between race and class by excavating the early writings of Michael Burawoy. Against the prevailing polarization between twin absolutist models in which either racism or capitalism alone possesses causal force, we argue that Burawoy articulates a third position—one that grants relative autonomy to both racism and capitalism while rejecting their causal reduction to on…
Confronting racial authoritarianism
In the face of burgeoning authoritarianism in the United States, this article turns to South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement for lessons in contesting this regime. The authors highlight two tensions in the 1970s and 1980s that are relevant for organisers today. First, South African activists worked to construct a mass coalition with popular support. But they did so at the expense of core demands, abandoning anti-capitalism in the name of democra…
Communists and Black liberation movements
In the 1920s, the Moscow-based Comintern began to promote a Black Communist movement, with specific emphasis on the United States and South Africa. Despite this common point of departure, the United States and South African Communist parties followed opposite trajectories. By the mid-20th century, the former dwindled as it grew increasingly detached from Black movements, while the latter developed a close relationship with the African National Co…
Durban’s long twentieth century
Race, Class, and the Politics of Liberation in the Life of Eddie Webster
This essay recovers, documents, and shares some of Eddie Webster’s formulations regarding the relationship between race and class in the politics of liberation. Drawing on an extended interview we conducted with him in November 2022, we discuss his radicalization as a student activist, his early research on race and class, his emphasis on the importance of Black Consciousness, and the meaning of workerism. In contrast to class reductionist approa…
South Africa's Radicals
Absorbed in Struggle
If South Africa appeared to be on the verge of socialist revolution in the mid-1980s, a decade later the country's ruling party was presiding over a regime of privatization and the removal of capital controls. At the center of this process was the abolition of apartheid and the rise to power of the African National Congress (ANC). Previous scholarship appropriately characterizes South Africa's democratic transition as what Gramsci called a 'passi…
Moralization as class war
Two Racial Capitalisms
The popularity of the concept of “racial capitalism” has exploded over the past decade, penetrating both academic and activist circles. Two thinkers have been foundational to this revival: Cedric Robinson and Stuart Hall. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to merge these two thinkers into a single framework, we argue that they develop divergent, and potentially irreconcilable, theories of racial capitalism. Robinson and Hall both challenge a…
Cracking the Iron Ceiling
There is no alternative to theory-driven ethnography. Some ethnographers may refuse to acknowledge the epistemological bases of their respective methodological approaches, but this amounts to unreflexive rather than atheoretical fieldwork. This essay elaborates three theses along these lines with the aim of sketching out a self-consciously theory-driven approach to ethnography. First, all ethnography is necessarily theoretical whether researchers…
The South African tradition of racial capitalism
This introduction to the special issue on “The South African Tradition of Racial Capitalism” situates the South African tradition of racial capitalism (SAT) against the organizational backdrop of the anti-apartheid movement, outlines the key theses of the SAT, and presents the contributions of the special issue. We argue that the SAT rests upon four key theses: 1) class struggle from above – the pursuit of profit – generates racism; 2) the capita…
Is There a Du Boisian Sociology
The Three Dialectics of Racial Capitalism
The current popularity of “racial capitalism” in the American academy is typically attributed to the work of Cedric Robinson. But in this paper, we demonstrate that Robinson was riding a wave that began a decade before: in the South African movement against apartheid. We trace the intellectual history of the concept through two heydays, one peaking in the 1970s and 1980s and another emerging following the 2008 financial crisis. To make sense of r…
The Dangerous Class
Governing the Urban in China and India
South African Evictions Today
In Cape Town, South Africa, some residents risk eviction and even arrest by participating in land occupation. However, occupying land for many residents happened out of necessity. This article follows South African residents and their fight for “adequate housing,” freedom from eviction, and a government that will progressively realize both of these goals
Can Liberation Be National
As Fanon memorably argues, the project of national liberation in Africa was hijacked by an "acquisitive, voracious, and ambitious petty caste, dominated by a small-time racketeer mentality, content with the dividends paid out by the former colonial power" (2004 [1961]: 119). He repeatedly describes the national bourgeoisie in newly decolonizing countries using this term: caste. This class, claiming to lead the liberation struggle, turns out to mi…
Ethnographies of Power
generations, classes, genders and societies.He introduces
The Social Life of the State
Becoming a Population
Such elements do not belong in an ordered society
In South Africa, the scale of rural-urban resettlement after apartheid continues to overwhelm the capacity of the government to house city dwellers in need of shelter. But the legitimacy of the postapartheid government rests on its ability to secure the rights of citizens who enjoy constitutional guarantees, including the right to housing. Because the government cannot simply repress this unhoused surplus population, it seeks instead to delegitim…
The road to TRAs is paved with good intentions
Dispossession need not be the product of malicious intentions or a deliberate programme of accumulation. As I argue in this article, it may paradoxically be the consequence of social spending, or what I call dispossession through delivery. Using as a case study the proliferation of temporary relocation areas (TRAs) in post-apartheid Cape Town, I show how what appears as adequate housing from the municipal government’s perspective exacerbates soci…
Precarious welfare states
This article demonstrates how popular struggles over housing distribution lead to the transformation of the welfare state. In post-apartheid South Africa, municipal governments distribute free, formal housing to recipients registered on waiting lists. But as formally rational distribution fails to keep pace with growing demand, residents begin to organize mass land occupations. Municipalities respond to these land struggles by either organizing r…
Two Racial Capitalisms
The popularity of the concept of “racial capitalism” has exploded over the past decade, penetrating both academic and activist circles. Two thinkers have been foundational to this revival: Cedric Robinson and Stuart Hall. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to merge these two thinkers into a single framework, we argue that they develop divergent, and potentially irreconcilable, theories of racial capitalism. Robinson and Hall both challenge a…
The Social Life of the State
Precarious welfare states
This article demonstrates how popular struggles over housing distribution lead to the transformation of the welfare state. In post-apartheid South Africa, municipal governments distribute free, formal housing to recipients registered on waiting lists. But as formally rational distribution fails to keep pace with growing demand, residents begin to organize mass land occupations. Municipalities respond to these land struggles by either organizing r…
The road to TRAs is paved with good intentions
Dispossession need not be the product of malicious intentions or a deliberate programme of accumulation. As I argue in this article, it may paradoxically be the consequence of social spending, or what I call dispossession through delivery. Using as a case study the proliferation of temporary relocation areas (TRAs) in post-apartheid Cape Town, I show how what appears as adequate housing from the municipal government’s perspective exacerbates soci…
Governing the Urban in China and India
Becoming a Population
South Africa's Radicals
Absorbed in Struggle
If South Africa appeared to be on the verge of socialist revolution in the mid-1980s, a decade later the country's ruling party was presiding over a regime of privatization and the removal of capital controls. At the center of this process was the abolition of apartheid and the rise to power of the African National Congress (ANC). Previous scholarship appropriately characterizes South Africa's democratic transition as what Gramsci called a 'passi…
Cracking the Iron Ceiling
There is no alternative to theory-driven ethnography. Some ethnographers may refuse to acknowledge the epistemological bases of their respective methodological approaches, but this amounts to unreflexive rather than atheoretical fieldwork. This essay elaborates three theses along these lines with the aim of sketching out a self-consciously theory-driven approach to ethnography. First, all ethnography is necessarily theoretical whether researchers…
Can Liberation Be National
As Fanon memorably argues, the project of national liberation in Africa was hijacked by an "acquisitive, voracious, and ambitious petty caste, dominated by a small-time racketeer mentality, content with the dividends paid out by the former colonial power" (2004 [1961]: 119). He repeatedly describes the national bourgeoisie in newly decolonizing countries using this term: caste. This class, claiming to lead the liberation struggle, turns out to mi…
Such elements do not belong in an ordered society
In South Africa, the scale of rural-urban resettlement after apartheid continues to overwhelm the capacity of the government to house city dwellers in need of shelter. But the legitimacy of the postapartheid government rests on its ability to secure the rights of citizens who enjoy constitutional guarantees, including the right to housing. Because the government cannot simply repress this unhoused surplus population, it seeks instead to delegitim…
Occupying Education
(2011). Occupying Education: The Student Fight Against Austerity in California. NACLA Report on the Americas: Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 25-28
Precarious welfare states
This article demonstrates how popular struggles over housing distribution lead to the transformation of the welfare state. In post-apartheid South Africa, municipal governments distribute free, formal housing to recipients registered on waiting lists. But as formally rational distribution fails to keep pace with growing demand, residents begin to organize mass land occupations. Municipalities respond to these land struggles by either organizing r…
The road to TRAs is paved with good intentions
Dispossession need not be the product of malicious intentions or a deliberate programme of accumulation. As I argue in this article, it may paradoxically be the consequence of social spending, or what I call dispossession through delivery. Using as a case study the proliferation of temporary relocation areas (TRAs) in post-apartheid Cape Town, I show how what appears as adequate housing from the municipal government’s perspective exacerbates soci…
Such elements do not belong in an ordered society
In South Africa, the scale of rural-urban resettlement after apartheid continues to overwhelm the capacity of the government to house city dwellers in need of shelter. But the legitimacy of the postapartheid government rests on its ability to secure the rights of citizens who enjoy constitutional guarantees, including the right to housing. Because the government cannot simply repress this unhoused surplus population, it seeks instead to delegitim…
South African Evictions Today
In Cape Town, South Africa, some residents risk eviction and even arrest by participating in land occupation. However, occupying land for many residents happened out of necessity. This article follows South African residents and their fight for “adequate housing,” freedom from eviction, and a government that will progressively realize both of these goals
Can Liberation Be National
As Fanon memorably argues, the project of national liberation in Africa was hijacked by an "acquisitive, voracious, and ambitious petty caste, dominated by a small-time racketeer mentality, content with the dividends paid out by the former colonial power" (2004 [1961]: 119). He repeatedly describes the national bourgeoisie in newly decolonizing countries using this term: caste. This class, claiming to lead the liberation struggle, turns out to mi…
Ethnographies of Power
generations, classes, genders and societies.He introduces
The Social Life of the State
Becoming a Population
The Three Dialectics of Racial Capitalism
The current popularity of “racial capitalism” in the American academy is typically attributed to the work of Cedric Robinson. But in this paper, we demonstrate that Robinson was riding a wave that began a decade before: in the South African movement against apartheid. We trace the intellectual history of the concept through two heydays, one peaking in the 1970s and 1980s and another emerging following the 2008 financial crisis. To make sense of r…
The Dangerous Class
Governing the Urban in China and India
The South African tradition of racial capitalism
This introduction to the special issue on “The South African Tradition of Racial Capitalism” situates the South African tradition of racial capitalism (SAT) against the organizational backdrop of the anti-apartheid movement, outlines the key theses of the SAT, and presents the contributions of the special issue. We argue that the SAT rests upon four key theses: 1) class struggle from above – the pursuit of profit – generates racism; 2) the capita…
Is There a Du Boisian Sociology
Moralization as class war
Two Racial Capitalisms
The popularity of the concept of “racial capitalism” has exploded over the past decade, penetrating both academic and activist circles. Two thinkers have been foundational to this revival: Cedric Robinson and Stuart Hall. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to merge these two thinkers into a single framework, we argue that they develop divergent, and potentially irreconcilable, theories of racial capitalism. Robinson and Hall both challenge a…
Cracking the Iron Ceiling
There is no alternative to theory-driven ethnography. Some ethnographers may refuse to acknowledge the epistemological bases of their respective methodological approaches, but this amounts to unreflexive rather than atheoretical fieldwork. This essay elaborates three theses along these lines with the aim of sketching out a self-consciously theory-driven approach to ethnography. First, all ethnography is necessarily theoretical whether researchers…
Communists and Black liberation movements
In the 1920s, the Moscow-based Comintern began to promote a Black Communist movement, with specific emphasis on the United States and South Africa. Despite this common point of departure, the United States and South African Communist parties followed opposite trajectories. By the mid-20th century, the former dwindled as it grew increasingly detached from Black movements, while the latter developed a close relationship with the African National Co…
Durban’s long twentieth century
Race, Class, and the Politics of Liberation in the Life of Eddie Webster
This essay recovers, documents, and shares some of Eddie Webster’s formulations regarding the relationship between race and class in the politics of liberation. Drawing on an extended interview we conducted with him in November 2022, we discuss his radicalization as a student activist, his early research on race and class, his emphasis on the importance of Black Consciousness, and the meaning of workerism. In contrast to class reductionist approa…
South Africa's Radicals
Absorbed in Struggle
If South Africa appeared to be on the verge of socialist revolution in the mid-1980s, a decade later the country's ruling party was presiding over a regime of privatization and the removal of capital controls. At the center of this process was the abolition of apartheid and the rise to power of the African National Congress (ANC). Previous scholarship appropriately characterizes South Africa's democratic transition as what Gramsci called a 'passi…
The stakes of postcolonial sociology in an age of racial capitalism
This article interrogates the theoretical tensions between postcolonial sociology and analyses of racial capitalism, engaging critically with Andrew Smith's materialist critique of postcolonial thought. While sympathetic to efforts to resituate colonial epistemologies in material contexts, the paper argues that collapsing postcoloniality into racialized capitalism risks erasing the specificity of postcolonial development trajectories. It highligh…
Enacting transition in the post-apartheid city
Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City is an inventive book, compellingly argued and incorporating a vast cross-section of literature across multiple disciplines. What makes it unique, I w
Excavating Early Burawoy
This paper intervenes in contemporary sociological debates over the relationship between race and class by excavating the early writings of Michael Burawoy. Against the prevailing polarization between twin absolutist models in which either racism or capitalism alone possesses causal force, we argue that Burawoy articulates a third position—one that grants relative autonomy to both racism and capitalism while rejecting their causal reduction to on…
Political science (17 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Law (11 obras) · South African History and Culture (10 obras) · Political economy (9 obras) · Gender Studies (7 obras) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (6 obras) · Epistemology (5 obras) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (5 obras)