Karl Von Holdt
Biographic Data
| ID | 273763 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karl Von Holdt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karl |
| FAMILY NAME | Von Holdt |
| SIGNATURE | VON HOLDT K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6934-7713 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 136 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Karl von Holdt in conversation: The impact of political crisis on sociological engagement
Southern interregnum: Remaking hegemony in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa
Eddie Webster and Me: A Reflection on Intellectual Journeys, Generational Change and Mortality
One of death’s gifts, I find, is that the person who dies comes into view as a whole, shorn of the immediacy of the current state of your relationship with them, allowing you to reflect on the very
Michael Burawoy: Inspiration and Joy
Critical Engagement with Public Sociology: A Perspective from the Global South
The idea of public sociology, as introduced by Michael Burawoy, was inspired by the sociological practice in South Africa known as ‘critical engagement’. This volume explores the evolution of critical engagement before and after Burawoy’s visit to South Africa in the 1990s and offers a Southern critique of his model of public sociology. Involving four generations of researchers from the Global South, the authors provide a multifaceted exploration…
Critical Engagement with Public Sociology: A Perspective from the Global South
The idea of public sociology in its global form was inspired by sociological practice in South Africa, conceptualized as ‘critical engagement’, when the US sociologist Michael Burawoy visited the country in the 1990s. This volume explores the trajectory of critical engagement before and after Burawoy’s visit, comparing this to the trajectory of ‘public sociology’, which was forged in the very different context of US sociology. Contributors to the…
Arguing with Bourdieu: A South African Encounter
This paper holds together biographical materials, field analysis, position-taking preferences, and Bourdieu's influence. A late adopter of the bourdieusian toolbox, the author explains his attempt to confront South African reality with Bourdieu's thought rather than the other way around, also trying to establish the unconscious determinants behind apparently intentional choices. The author considers self-analysis as a conduit to self-awareness, p…
Reading Bourdieu in South Africa
Pierre Bourdieu is the quintessential theorist of domination and social order. South Africa presents an exemplar from the Global South—fractured, contested, disputative, disorderly, violent. This chapter examines Bourdieu’s concepts of order through the jagged realities of South African society, at the same time exploring South African society through the conceptual lenses provided by Bourdieu, and in the process rethinking both. The author uses …
Rising powers, people rising: Neo-liberalization and its discontents in the BRICS countries
The rise of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa – has called into question the future of Western dominance in world markets and geopolitics. However, the developmental trajectories of the BRICS countries are shot through with socio-economic fault lines that relegate large numbers of people to the margins of current growth processes, where life is characterized by multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities. These soc…
Mapping movement landscapes in South Africa
The concept of a movement landscape is used to analyse continuities and changes in popular mobilization since the end of formal apartheid. Focusing on four different episodes of protest since 1997, the article examines their relationship to the ANC movement and traditions, and their organizational forms. It finds a general theme of fluid and ephemeral organization, and a distrust of formal hierarchal organization, that is relatively new in South …
Our Common but Fragmented World: Questions of Law, Power, Community
On Violent Democracy
Violence and democracy are generally treated as antithetical. However, this article argues for the concept of violent democracy using the South African case to explore the ways in which violence and democracy may be mutually constitutive in countries of the global South, with their particular histories of violence, power, inequality and contestation. The article draws on research into intra-elite conflict and violence, as well as subaltern collec…
Critical engagement in fields of power: Cycles of sociological activism in post-apartheid South Africa
In this article, the author argues that socially engaged sociology cannot be understood as a practice isolated in the quadrant of 'public sociology' as suggested by Michael Burawoy's organization of sociology into four distinct quadrants but that it is closely associated with critical policy sociology as well as critical professional sociology. The author uses a case study of hospital transformation in post-apartheid South Africa to demonstrate t…
South Africa: The transition to violent democracy
South Africa is torn between the persistence of an exclusionary socioeconomic structure marked by deep poverty and extreme inequality on the one hand, and on the other the symbolic and institutional rupture presented by the transition to democracy. This relationship produces a highly unstable social order in which intra-elite conflict and violence are growing, characterised by new forms of violence and the reproduction of older patterns of violen…
The violence of order, orders of violence: Between Fanon and Bourdieu
This article uses the high levels of collective violence associated with contentious politics in South Africa as a prism through which to explore the confrontation between a sociology of the West, represented by Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence, and a sociology of the colonial and postcolonial South, represented by Fanon's theory of revolutionary violence. The article analyses cases of strike violence, community protests, vigilante violence…
Collective violence, community protest and xenophobia
Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment
Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is the most influential sociologist of our time. His works take in education, culture, sport, literature, painting, class, philosophy, religion, law, media, intellectuals, methodology, photography, universities, colonialism, kinship, schooling and politics. Not much remains outside Bourdieu's sociological eye. His works are widely read across disciplines and he was one of the most prominent public intellectuals in Fran…
Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment
Nationalism, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State: The South African Case
This article undertakes a concrete analysis of the workings of the post-apartheid South African state bureaucracy, within the state hospitals and provincial health departments, in an effort to understand the reasons for its poor functioning. The research points to a contradictory set of rationales shaping the workings of the bureaucracy, which may be ascribed to the tensions identified within the nationalist project by Partha Chatterjee. The arti…
Social Movement Unionism: The Case of South Africa
In the context of renewed international debates about the significance of social movement unionism, this article undertakes a detailed analysis of social movement unionism in a South African steelworks. The study investigates the importance to union formation of political, racial, migrant and ethnic identities forged beyond the workplace, and assesses the impact of the transition from apartheid to democracy on union social structure. It argues th…
Social Movement Unionism: The Case of South Africa
In the context of renewed international debates about the significance of social movement unionism, this article undertakes a detailed analysis of social movement unionism in a South African steelworks. The study investigates the importance to union formation of political, racial, migrant and ethnic identities forged beyond the workplace, and assesses the impact of the transition from apartheid to democracy on union social structure. It argues th…
South Africa: The transition to violent democracy
South Africa is torn between the persistence of an exclusionary socioeconomic structure marked by deep poverty and extreme inequality on the one hand, and on the other the symbolic and institutional rupture presented by the transition to democracy. This relationship produces a highly unstable social order in which intra-elite conflict and violence are growing, characterised by new forms of violence and the reproduction of older patterns of violen…
On Violent Democracy
Violence and democracy are generally treated as antithetical. However, this article argues for the concept of violent democracy using the South African case to explore the ways in which violence and democracy may be mutually constitutive in countries of the global South, with their particular histories of violence, power, inequality and contestation. The article draws on research into intra-elite conflict and violence, as well as subaltern collec…
The violence of order, orders of violence: Between Fanon and Bourdieu
This article uses the high levels of collective violence associated with contentious politics in South Africa as a prism through which to explore the confrontation between a sociology of the West, represented by Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence, and a sociology of the colonial and postcolonial South, represented by Fanon's theory of revolutionary violence. The article analyses cases of strike violence, community protests, vigilante violence…
Mapping movement landscapes in South Africa
The concept of a movement landscape is used to analyse continuities and changes in popular mobilization since the end of formal apartheid. Focusing on four different episodes of protest since 1997, the article examines their relationship to the ANC movement and traditions, and their organizational forms. It finds a general theme of fluid and ephemeral organization, and a distrust of formal hierarchal organization, that is relatively new in South …
Critical engagement in fields of power: Cycles of sociological activism in post-apartheid South Africa
In this article, the author argues that socially engaged sociology cannot be understood as a practice isolated in the quadrant of 'public sociology' as suggested by Michael Burawoy's organization of sociology into four distinct quadrants but that it is closely associated with critical policy sociology as well as critical professional sociology. The author uses a case study of hospital transformation in post-apartheid South Africa to demonstrate t…
Rising powers, people rising: Neo-liberalization and its discontents in the BRICS countries
The rise of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa – has called into question the future of Western dominance in world markets and geopolitics. However, the developmental trajectories of the BRICS countries are shot through with socio-economic fault lines that relegate large numbers of people to the margins of current growth processes, where life is characterized by multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities. These soc…
Arguing with Bourdieu: A South African Encounter
This paper holds together biographical materials, field analysis, position-taking preferences, and Bourdieu's influence. A late adopter of the bourdieusian toolbox, the author explains his attempt to confront South African reality with Bourdieu's thought rather than the other way around, also trying to establish the unconscious determinants behind apparently intentional choices. The author considers self-analysis as a conduit to self-awareness, p…
Social Movement Unionism: The Case of South Africa
In the context of renewed international debates about the significance of social movement unionism, this article undertakes a detailed analysis of social movement unionism in a South African steelworks. The study investigates the importance to union formation of political, racial, migrant and ethnic identities forged beyond the workplace, and assesses the impact of the transition from apartheid to democracy on union social structure. It argues th…
Nationalism, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State: The South African Case
This article undertakes a concrete analysis of the workings of the post-apartheid South African state bureaucracy, within the state hospitals and provincial health departments, in an effort to understand the reasons for its poor functioning. The research points to a contradictory set of rationales shaping the workings of the bureaucracy, which may be ascribed to the tensions identified within the nationalist project by Partha Chatterjee. The arti…
Collective violence, community protest and xenophobia
Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment
Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) is the most influential sociologist of our time. His works take in education, culture, sport, literature, painting, class, philosophy, religion, law, media, intellectuals, methodology, photography, universities, colonialism, kinship, schooling and politics. Not much remains outside Bourdieu's sociological eye. His works are widely read across disciplines and he was one of the most prominent public intellectuals in Fran…
Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment
South Africa: The transition to violent democracy
South Africa is torn between the persistence of an exclusionary socioeconomic structure marked by deep poverty and extreme inequality on the one hand, and on the other the symbolic and institutional rupture presented by the transition to democracy. This relationship produces a highly unstable social order in which intra-elite conflict and violence are growing, characterised by new forms of violence and the reproduction of older patterns of violen…
The violence of order, orders of violence: Between Fanon and Bourdieu
This article uses the high levels of collective violence associated with contentious politics in South Africa as a prism through which to explore the confrontation between a sociology of the West, represented by Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence, and a sociology of the colonial and postcolonial South, represented by Fanon's theory of revolutionary violence. The article analyses cases of strike violence, community protests, vigilante violence…
On Violent Democracy
Violence and democracy are generally treated as antithetical. However, this article argues for the concept of violent democracy using the South African case to explore the ways in which violence and democracy may be mutually constitutive in countries of the global South, with their particular histories of violence, power, inequality and contestation. The article draws on research into intra-elite conflict and violence, as well as subaltern collec…
Critical engagement in fields of power: Cycles of sociological activism in post-apartheid South Africa
In this article, the author argues that socially engaged sociology cannot be understood as a practice isolated in the quadrant of 'public sociology' as suggested by Michael Burawoy's organization of sociology into four distinct quadrants but that it is closely associated with critical policy sociology as well as critical professional sociology. The author uses a case study of hospital transformation in post-apartheid South Africa to demonstrate t…
Our Common but Fragmented World: Questions of Law, Power, Community
Reading Bourdieu in South Africa
Pierre Bourdieu is the quintessential theorist of domination and social order. South Africa presents an exemplar from the Global South—fractured, contested, disputative, disorderly, violent. This chapter examines Bourdieu’s concepts of order through the jagged realities of South African society, at the same time exploring South African society through the conceptual lenses provided by Bourdieu, and in the process rethinking both. The author uses …
Rising powers, people rising: Neo-liberalization and its discontents in the BRICS countries
The rise of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa – has called into question the future of Western dominance in world markets and geopolitics. However, the developmental trajectories of the BRICS countries are shot through with socio-economic fault lines that relegate large numbers of people to the margins of current growth processes, where life is characterized by multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities. These soc…
Mapping movement landscapes in South Africa
The concept of a movement landscape is used to analyse continuities and changes in popular mobilization since the end of formal apartheid. Focusing on four different episodes of protest since 1997, the article examines their relationship to the ANC movement and traditions, and their organizational forms. It finds a general theme of fluid and ephemeral organization, and a distrust of formal hierarchal organization, that is relatively new in South …
Critical Engagement with Public Sociology: A Perspective from the Global South
The idea of public sociology, as introduced by Michael Burawoy, was inspired by the sociological practice in South Africa known as ‘critical engagement’. This volume explores the evolution of critical engagement before and after Burawoy’s visit to South Africa in the 1990s and offers a Southern critique of his model of public sociology. Involving four generations of researchers from the Global South, the authors provide a multifaceted exploration…
Critical Engagement with Public Sociology: A Perspective from the Global South
The idea of public sociology in its global form was inspired by sociological practice in South Africa, conceptualized as ‘critical engagement’, when the US sociologist Michael Burawoy visited the country in the 1990s. This volume explores the trajectory of critical engagement before and after Burawoy’s visit, comparing this to the trajectory of ‘public sociology’, which was forged in the very different context of US sociology. Contributors to the…
Arguing with Bourdieu: A South African Encounter
This paper holds together biographical materials, field analysis, position-taking preferences, and Bourdieu's influence. A late adopter of the bourdieusian toolbox, the author explains his attempt to confront South African reality with Bourdieu's thought rather than the other way around, also trying to establish the unconscious determinants behind apparently intentional choices. The author considers self-analysis as a conduit to self-awareness, p…
Southern interregnum: Remaking hegemony in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa
Eddie Webster and Me: A Reflection on Intellectual Journeys, Generational Change and Mortality
One of death’s gifts, I find, is that the person who dies comes into view as a whole, shorn of the immediacy of the current state of your relationship with them, allowing you to reflect on the very
Michael Burawoy: Inspiration and Joy
Karl von Holdt in conversation: The impact of political crisis on sociological engagement
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Social science (6 works) · South African History and Culture (6 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works)