M Paret
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 5854 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | M Paret |
| NOMBRES | M |
| APELLIDO | Paret |
| FIRMA | PARET M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Utah |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1031-2270 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 45 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 259 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Race, class, and development from below
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…
Race and biopolitical struggle
South Africa’s volatile electorate
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
Redistribution and Exclusion
Was the populist moment of the 2010s also a redistributive moment, marked by popular support for equalizing incomes? To what extent did support for redistribution align with exclusionary values that scholars frequently associate with right-wing populism? Building on the neo-Gramscian theory of Stuart Hall, we use the World Values Survey to track post-2008 shifts in what we call 'value articulations': specific combinations of attitudes, in this ca…
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 RCM triangle
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…
Reconstructing Burawoy
Michael Burawoy's writings lay a foundation for critical sociologies of immigration, social movements, race, and postcolonial society. To realize these promises, however, it will be necessary to reconstruct Burawoy, as he has done with the theories of so many others. In this piece, I trace my own engagements with Burawoy in three areas: migrant labor, the politics of economic precarity, and postcolonial and racial transformations. For each area, …
South Africa’s Community Trenches
Over the past two decades, South Africa has experienced a consistent wave of local protests rooted in impoverished residential areas. Given the centrality of ideas about community within these protests, and building on Gramsci and Katznelson, this paper characterizes low-income residential areas as the “community trenches” of contemporary working-class struggle. Drawing on 29 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 287 interviews, I probe the meanin…
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…
Voting Decisions and Racialized Fluidity in South Africa’s Metropolitan Municipalities
Do racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa? To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress, whereas Coloured, Indian, and especially white vo…
Fragmenting Urban Movements
How do political parties shape urban movements in developing countries? This paper examines struggles for urban inclusion in two informal settlements within Johannesburg: Thembelihle and Motsoaledi. I argue that the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), fragmented and weakened these movements through four mechanisms: place-specific governance, electoral encouragement, co-optation, and fostering loyalty. Both responding to and prompti…
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…
Trevor Ngwane, Amakomiti
Resistance within South Africa’s Passive Revolution
Panic City
The persistent protest cycle
For more than a decade, widespread protests have erupted within South Africa's impoverished black townships and informal settlements. The mobilizations resembled what Sidney Tarrow refers to as a 'cycle of contention' or 'protest cycle,' as they represented a diffusion of heightened conflict across society. In contrast to Tarrow's protest cycle, however, resistance failed to converge around 'objective coalitions' and a generalized challenge, and …
Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States
Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some ac…
The community strike
How do insecure layers of the working class resist when they lack access to power and organization at the workplace? The community strike represents one possible approach. Whereas traditional workplace strikes target employers and exercise power by withholding labor, community strikes focus on the sphere of reproduction, target the state, and build power through moral appeals and disruptions of public space. Drawing on ethnography and interviews …
Building Labor Solidarity in Precarious Times
In a global context of union decline and widening economic insecurity, unions must decide how to relate to extra-workplace struggles and those without stable or unionized employment. One possibility is that unions will adopt a paternalistic view, in which they attempt to serve the interests of nonunion individuals and groups by disciplining them or speaking for them. Drawing on seventy-five brief interviews with participants in a protest led by t…
Precarity and agency through a migration lens
This special issue leverages the migrant experience to better understand precarity and agency in the contemporary world. By way of introduction, we examine the broader bodies of literature on precarity and agency, relate them to research on migration, and link them to the contributions in the special issue. Laying a foundation for further research, we illuminate three approaches to study the precarity–migration–agency nexus: an industry-specific …
Violence and democracy in South Africa's community protests
Community protests in South Africa are often described as violent. Drawing from newspaper articles, interviews with protesters and statements by public officials, this paper unpacks the meaning of ‘violent protest'. It shows that violence is both ambiguous and deeply entangled with democracy. On the one hand, violent practices may become a tool of liberation, promoting democracy by empowering marginalised groups. On the other hand, democracy may …
Gender differences in mathematics achievement
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…
Legality and exploitation
A second double movement? Polanyi and shifting global opinions on neoliberalism
Karl Polanyi's theory of the 'double movement' has gained great currency in recent years to explain the global growth of contemporary social movements resisting neoliberalism. However, there has been no statistical research demonstrating whether these protest movements represent a more general trend of growing discontent with 'disembedding' markets from public control. This article uses questions from the World Values Survey to construct an 'embe…
Contested ANC hegemony in the urban townships
Is ANC hegemony stable or in decline? The 2014 election provided support for both interpretations, as the ANC registered its fifth consecutive victory but with a declining share of the vote, especially in urban areas. In what ways and among which groups is the ANC maintaining its hegemony? This study draws on an exit survey of 3,782 voters in sixteen communities in and around Gauteng Province, with a particular focus on impoverished and protest-a…
Precarious Labor Politics
The growing precariousness of the working class and the declining significance of unions has given rise to precarious politics: non-union struggles by insecurely employed and low-income groups. Under what conditions do unions incorporate these struggles as part of a broader labor movement? This article examines how unions responded to two particularly visible examples of precarious politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s: the struggles of low-…
The politics of local resistance in urban South Africa
Between 2009 and 2014, South Africa experienced widespread protests. In contrast to prominent examples of global protest during the same period, they were localized and did not push for broad political and economic transformation. To explain these features, this article draws from three ethnographic and interview-based case studies of local protest and organizing within informal settlements in and around Johannesburg. The author argues that urban…
Beyond post-apartheid politics? Cleavages, protest and elections in South Africa
Declining electoral support for South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), suggests a potential weakening of the anti-apartheid nationalism that defined the immediate post-apartheid period. Using two surveys of voters in primarily poor and working-class black areas, conducted during the 2014 (national) and 2016 (local) elections, as well as three case studies of protest by workers, poor communities and students, this articl…
Migration politics
From the mid-2000s, the United States and South Africa, respectively, experienced significant pro-migrant and anti-migrant mobilizations. Economically insecure groups played leading roles. Why did these groups emphasize politics of migration, and to what extent did the very different mobilizations reflect parallel underlying mechanisms? Drawing on 41 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 119 interviews with activists and residents, I argue that th…
The community strike
How do insecure layers of the working class resist when they lack access to power and organization at the workplace? The community strike represents one possible approach. Whereas traditional workplace strikes target employers and exercise power by withholding labor, community strikes focus on the sphere of reproduction, target the state, and build power through moral appeals and disruptions of public space. Drawing on ethnography and interviews …
Working-class fragmentation, party politics, and the complexities of solidarity in South Africa's United Front
Recent scholarship laments the growing fragmentation of the working class due to flexible labour regimes and unemployment. This paper examines an emerging effort in South Africa to counter this fragmentation: the United Front project, initiated and led by the National Union of Metalworkers South Africa (NUMSA). Drawing on 74 interviews conducted at two different NUMSA-led protests in Johannesburg, the analysis unpacks two sets of tensions. One se…
Apartheid Policing
Marcel Pareta*a Humanities Research Village, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park 2006, Johannesburg, South Africa
Precarious Class Formations in the United States and South Africa
Recent scholarship highlights the global expansion of precarious layers of the working class. This article examines the growth and collective struggles of such precarious layers in two very different places: California, United States and Gauteng, South Africa. The comparison challenges and extends existing research in two ways. First, it shows that the spread of insecurity is far from uniform, taking different forms in different places. Lack of c…
South Africa's Radicals
Resistance within South Africa’s Passive Revolution
Failed Redistribution or Failed Administration? Official Union Narratives of Community Protest in South Africa
How do unions relate to struggles being waged by those who are poor and lack secure employment? Drawing on a content analysis of 176 press releases, this article examines how two South African unions, the private manufacturing union NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) and the public services union SAMWU (South African Municipal Workers Union), officially responded to protests in township communities ravaged by unemployment. Bot…
Voting Decisions and Racialized Fluidity in South Africa’s Metropolitan Municipalities
Do racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa? To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress, whereas Coloured, Indian, and especially white vo…
Citizenship and work in global capitalism
The sociology of citizenship emerged during an exceptional period in which workers benefitted from economic growth and gains in productivity. Yet the field grew against the backdrop of a market‐oriented global capitalism defined by high levels of precarious work, surplus labor, and economic insecurity. Tracing the evolution of global capitalism in the wake of World War II, and across the unequal regions of the world, I outline three different per…
Golden state uprising
Dominant narratives of migrant resistance focus on the massive protests of 2006, but migrant protest was significant well before this landmark event. Drawing on an original database of 222 migrant protest events, this paper traces the development of migrant resistance in California between 1990 and 2010. We argue that migrant protest may be understood as political 'acts of citizenship', which vary as they respond to specific vulnerabilities and p…
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 RCM triangle
Reconstructing Burawoy
Michael Burawoy's writings lay a foundation for critical sociologies of immigration, social movements, race, and postcolonial society. To realize these promises, however, it will be necessary to reconstruct Burawoy, as he has done with the theories of so many others. In this piece, I trace my own engagements with Burawoy in three areas: migrant labor, the politics of economic precarity, and postcolonial and racial transformations. For each area, …
The persistent protest cycle
For more than a decade, widespread protests have erupted within South Africa's impoverished black townships and informal settlements. The mobilizations resembled what Sidney Tarrow refers to as a 'cycle of contention' or 'protest cycle,' as they represented a diffusion of heightened conflict across society. In contrast to Tarrow's protest cycle, however, resistance failed to converge around 'objective coalitions' and a generalized challenge, and …
Law, Race, and Education in the United States
After describing many of the features that structure educational opportunity, and how race interacts with these structures, we briefly relate a set of important orienting perspectives on the law-race relation. We divide issues of education into three categories: (a) inherently racialized aspects of law and education; (b) aspects of education that intersect race and the law; and (c) emerging issues in race, education, and the law. Treating desegre…
Gender differences in mathematics achievement
A second double movement? Polanyi and shifting global opinions on neoliberalism
Karl Polanyi's theory of the 'double movement' has gained great currency in recent years to explain the global growth of contemporary social movements resisting neoliberalism. However, there has been no statistical research demonstrating whether these protest movements represent a more general trend of growing discontent with 'disembedding' markets from public control. This article uses questions from the World Values Survey to construct an 'embe…
Legality and exploitation
Violence and democracy in South Africa's community protests
Community protests in South Africa are often described as violent. Drawing from newspaper articles, interviews with protesters and statements by public officials, this paper unpacks the meaning of ‘violent protest'. It shows that violence is both ambiguous and deeply entangled with democracy. On the one hand, violent practices may become a tool of liberation, promoting democracy by empowering marginalised groups. On the other hand, democracy may …
Failed Redistribution or Failed Administration? Official Union Narratives of Community Protest in South Africa
How do unions relate to struggles being waged by those who are poor and lack secure employment? Drawing on a content analysis of 176 press releases, this article examines how two South African unions, the private manufacturing union NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa) and the public services union SAMWU (South African Municipal Workers Union), officially responded to protests in township communities ravaged by unemployment. Bot…
Is Global Governance the Solution for Labor
Apartheid Policing
Marcel Pareta*a Humanities Research Village, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park 2006, Johannesburg, South Africa
Precarious Labor Politics
The growing precariousness of the working class and the declining significance of unions has given rise to precarious politics: non-union struggles by insecurely employed and low-income groups. Under what conditions do unions incorporate these struggles as part of a broader labor movement? This article examines how unions responded to two particularly visible examples of precarious politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s: the struggles of low-…
Precarious Class Formations in the United States and South Africa
Recent scholarship highlights the global expansion of precarious layers of the working class. This article examines the growth and collective struggles of such precarious layers in two very different places: California, United States and Gauteng, South Africa. The comparison challenges and extends existing research in two ways. First, it shows that the spread of insecurity is far from uniform, taking different forms in different places. Lack of c…
Contested ANC hegemony in the urban townships
Is ANC hegemony stable or in decline? The 2014 election provided support for both interpretations, as the ANC registered its fifth consecutive victory but with a declining share of the vote, especially in urban areas. In what ways and among which groups is the ANC maintaining its hegemony? This study draws on an exit survey of 3,782 voters in sixteen communities in and around Gauteng Province, with a particular focus on impoverished and protest-a…
Golden state uprising
Dominant narratives of migrant resistance focus on the massive protests of 2006, but migrant protest was significant well before this landmark event. Drawing on an original database of 222 migrant protest events, this paper traces the development of migrant resistance in California between 1990 and 2010. We argue that migrant protest may be understood as political 'acts of citizenship', which vary as they respond to specific vulnerabilities and p…
Precarity and agency through a migration lens
This special issue leverages the migrant experience to better understand precarity and agency in the contemporary world. By way of introduction, we examine the broader bodies of literature on precarity and agency, relate them to research on migration, and link them to the contributions in the special issue. Laying a foundation for further research, we illuminate three approaches to study the precarity–migration–agency nexus: an industry-specific …
South Africa's Divided Working-Class Movements
South Africa's organized labor movement is now, arguably, weaker and more fragmented than at any other time in the past three decades. Disagreement over how unions should relate to the ruling party, the ANC, is central to this fragmentation
Working-class fragmentation, party politics, and the complexities of solidarity in South Africa's United Front
Recent scholarship laments the growing fragmentation of the working class due to flexible labour regimes and unemployment. This paper examines an emerging effort in South Africa to counter this fragmentation: the United Front project, initiated and led by the National Union of Metalworkers South Africa (NUMSA). Drawing on 74 interviews conducted at two different NUMSA-led protests in Johannesburg, the analysis unpacks two sets of tensions. One se…
Citizenship and work in global capitalism
The sociology of citizenship emerged during an exceptional period in which workers benefitted from economic growth and gains in productivity. Yet the field grew against the backdrop of a market‐oriented global capitalism defined by high levels of precarious work, surplus labor, and economic insecurity. Tracing the evolution of global capitalism in the wake of World War II, and across the unequal regions of the world, I outline three different per…
Migration politics
From the mid-2000s, the United States and South Africa, respectively, experienced significant pro-migrant and anti-migrant mobilizations. Economically insecure groups played leading roles. Why did these groups emphasize politics of migration, and to what extent did the very different mobilizations reflect parallel underlying mechanisms? Drawing on 41 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 119 interviews with activists and residents, I argue that th…
Beyond post-apartheid politics? Cleavages, protest and elections in South Africa
Declining electoral support for South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), suggests a potential weakening of the anti-apartheid nationalism that defined the immediate post-apartheid period. Using two surveys of voters in primarily poor and working-class black areas, conducted during the 2014 (national) and 2016 (local) elections, as well as three case studies of protest by workers, poor communities and students, this articl…
The politics of local resistance in urban South Africa
Between 2009 and 2014, South Africa experienced widespread protests. In contrast to prominent examples of global protest during the same period, they were localized and did not push for broad political and economic transformation. To explain these features, this article draws from three ethnographic and interview-based case studies of local protest and organizing within informal settlements in and around Johannesburg. The author argues that urban…
Critical Nostalgias in Democratic South Africa
Evidence suggests that some black residents in South Africa experience nostalgia for the racist and authoritarian apartheid regime. What dynamics generate apartheid nostalgia, and what work does it do? This article draws on in-depth interviews with black residents of impoverished urban townships and informal settlements. I argue that by eliminating formal racial discrimination and redirecting popular aspirations towards the state, South Africa’s …
Building Labor Solidarity in Precarious Times
In a global context of union decline and widening economic insecurity, unions must decide how to relate to extra-workplace struggles and those without stable or unionized employment. One possibility is that unions will adopt a paternalistic view, in which they attempt to serve the interests of nonunion individuals and groups by disciplining them or speaking for them. Drawing on seventy-five brief interviews with participants in a protest led by t…
Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States
Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some ac…
The community strike
How do insecure layers of the working class resist when they lack access to power and organization at the workplace? The community strike represents one possible approach. Whereas traditional workplace strikes target employers and exercise power by withholding labor, community strikes focus on the sphere of reproduction, target the state, and build power through moral appeals and disruptions of public space. Drawing on ethnography and interviews …
Resistance within South Africa’s Passive Revolution
Panic City
Political science (40 obras) · Sociology (36 obras) · Politics (33 obras) · Political economy (32 obras) · Law (31 obras) · Gender Studies (22 obras) · South African History and Culture (20 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Economics (13 obras) · Geography (13 obras)