Faculty of Humanities
School of Basic Social Sciences
Department of Dean's Office: Human Economy Programme
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
This is on-going research analysing the ability of the urban poor to develop their own informal housing and informal jobs, their self-organised initiatives that lie between the stark alternatives of the free market and state planning. I attempt to go beyond the general criticisms of the negative effects of neoliberal globalisation on the countries and people of the South - directing my research towards seeing beyond the sterile models of free market or command economies that distort our understanding of the economic behaviour of ordinary people for selfish ends and with devastating consequences. My findings include discovery that most sectors of the formal economy are already informalised. Ruling elites and their associates have expropriated the commanding heights of the informal economy, for their own benefit, while claiming to "provide basic commodities to the poor at affordable prices". I thus attempt to analyse the nature of this "rentier" type of economy, which is sometimes backed by dubious indigenisation and empowerment laws, and its effects on the majority of the populations in the South.
Contact person: Dr B Mpofu.
My research findings explore changing conceptions of nationalism amongst a transnational mercantile elite in Mozambique and the Indian ocean. I am interested in changing ideas of belonging and citizenship since democratisation.
Contact person: Dr J Sumich.
A macro-social phenomenon cannot be overlooked while studying overlaps between social and commercial lives. This chapter considers how alliances among the multiple status groups are necessary for maintaining a national order, and how such alliances are renegotiated during political transitions. An ethnographic analysis of the Marwari business community situated in the Nepal-India border town of Birgunj reveals how old institutions of caste and ethnicity continue to underpin the new alliances among businessmen and their alliances with the state and local communities. Old Marwari charities of temples and travellers’ lodges may have partly given way to new charities of schools and hospitals, but both remain important aspects of the overall merchant duty that balances ventures of profit with duties of social harmony. What my ethnography argues is that these individual and social acts should not be isolated from the national and regional politics of ethnic federalisation and Hindu nationalism. The current episode of shifting Marwari alliances in Birgunj bears uncanny similarities with those of the past, thereby highlighting the centrality of trader-ruler alliances in maintaining national order and managing change.
Contact person: Dr M Shakya.
Dr Juliana Braz Dias is one of the members of the Human Economy Group. The main objective of the HE project is to bring back human concerns into economic studies, examining how people insert themselves into economic life. Dr Braz Dias contributes to the project with a research on the political economy of popular cultures in South Africa. She is currently studying South African popular culture forms within the debate on the global cultural industries. The project is especially focused on: (1) creative processes of production and consumption of music; (2) alternative ways that people engage with the logics and technologies brought about by the market; (3) the attribution of new meanings to commodified cultural products; and (4) the ability to combine aesthetic and political goals.
One of the major findings of the project so far relates to the way people have been reacting to the alleged crisis in the music market since the advent of the digital revolution. The analysis of the global music scene shows that the crisis faced by big record labels cannot be understood without taking into consideration countless small-scale musical performances around the world. The way people experience music in their everyday lives (as producers and/or consumers) confirms that is not possible to trace a clear-cut distinction between recorded and live music, global and local processes. This argument is better developed in an article to be published as part of the volume put forward by the HE Group, “The Human Economy: Perspectives from the South”.
Contact person: Dr J Braz-Dias.
This research is an on-going, comparative project focusing on the emergence of black middle classes in South Africa and Brazil. Ethnographic data previously collected in Brazil will be compared to similar data in South Africa based on a smaller scale project that involves the collection of at least 15 life history interviews among three families as well as individuals living in Gauteng, South Africa. Research in South Africa is in progress and 5 life history interviews have been collected. This process of data collection and analysis will continue into 2013. The research highlights how people practically negotiate with issues of racial and social inequalities in their everyday lives, which includes a mixture of economic, social, political and cultural strategies. The research has significance for looking at the role of middle classes in contexts of rapid social change.
Contact person: Dr D Gordon.
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