Research & Methodology Seminars
ARCHIVE
2014
SEMINAR TITLE: Change from below - the people and the state
Lessons from democracy and development from Ntinga Ntaba ka Ndoda
PRESENTER: Mazibuko Jara
DATE: 2 October 2014
TIME: 12h00 - 12h30
JOINTLY CONVENED:
SWOP & PARI
SEMINAR TITLE: Demanding the impossible? Platinum mining profit and wage demands in context
PANEL MEMBERS:
Author: Andrew Bowman, a visiting researcher from CRESC at the University of Manchester, currently based at the Wits Department of Political Studies and Gilad Isaacs, a PhD student at SOAS (University of London) and part-time researcher at CSID.
Discussant: The Rt Rev. Jo Seoka, Anglican Bishop of Pretoria and President of the Benchmarks Foundation
Chair: Gavin Capps, Senior Researcher at SWOP, specialising in the political economy of platinum
DATE: 6 June 2014
SEMINAR TITLE: South Africa: Developmental failure or neoliberal success? Review of African Political Economy
PRESENTERS: Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Karl von Holdt
DATE: 13 March 2014
2013
SEMINAR TITLE: SWOP, Sociology and GLU invites you to a Seminar by Guy Standing (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) to discuss his new book: 'The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class'
PRESENTER: Guy Standing
DATE: 25 September 2013
LECTURE TITLE: Feminism, Activism and the Commons
Silvia Federici, Emerita Professor at Hofstra University, is a long time feminist activist, teacher and writer and has published widely influential essays on political philosophy, feminist theory, cultural studies and education.
PRESENTER: Silvia Federici
DATE: 16 & 17 September 2013
2012
SEMINAR TITLE: Gun violence: how mobilisation and strong law reduced death rates 2000-10
PRESENTER: Adele Kirsten
(Independent)
DATE: 8 November, 2012
SEMINAR TITLE: Understanding and intervening in youth violence
PRESENTER: Andy Dawes (UCT)
DATE: 10 October, 2012
SEMINAR TITLE: Claustrophobic criminality: intimate violence and the desire for the state
PRESENTER: Kelly Gillespie
(Anthropology)
DATE: 12 September, 2012
SEMINAR TITLE: The riot in South African history
PRESENTER: Phil Bonner
(History Workshop)
DATE: 8 August, 2012
SEMINAR TITLE: The violence of order, orders of violence
PRESENTER: Karl von Holdt
(SWOP)
DATE: 13 June, 2012
SEMINAR TITLE: Narratives on Trial: The Vaal Uprising as an Events and Discourse
PRESENTER: Franziska Rueedi (Oxford)
DATE: 9 May, 2012
SEMINAR TITLE: Conflict, com-promise and insurgent citizenship: Violence on the South African gold mines during the transition to democracy (1988-1996)
PRESENTER:
Prof Dunbar Moodie (SWOP)
DATE: 11 April, 2012
FIRST SEMESTER | 2016
MONDAYS | 13H00 - 14H30
Room CB248
(Central Block, Braamfontein Campus East)
27 JUNE:
Alberto Arribas - From researching others to ‘thinking together’: collaborative research with social movement networks
06 JUNE:
Stanley Malindi - Continuity or rupture? The shaping of the rural political order through contestation of land, community, and mining in the Bapo- ba-Mogale Traditional Authority area
23 MAY:
Edward Webster - Choosing sides: the promise and the pitfalls of public sociology in apartheid South Africa
09 MAY:
Tracy Humby - Conflict about coal mining in the Mabola Protected Area
25 APRIL:
Sepetla Molapo - Xenophobic violence, insurgent citizenship and the battle for belonging: a view from Jacobshoek
18 APRIL:
Alf Nilsen - Passages from Marxism to Postcolonialism: critical reflections on Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital
11 APRIL:
Karl von Holdt & Malose Langa - Bourdieu in the ‘grey zone’ of community protests: destabilising and rethinking field theory
04 APRIL:
Gavin Capps - Tribal-landed property: the value of the chieftaincy in contemporary South Africa
14 MARCH:
Victor Munnik - Steel Valley: environmental justice, the politics of knowledge and the power to pollute
29 FEBRUARY:
Hannah Dawson - Making a living on the urban periphery: are young people ‘waiting’ for work or ‘hustling’ to get by?
22 FEBRUARY:
Andrew Bowman - Changes in the platinum industry
SECOND SEMESTER | 2016
MONDAYS | 13H00 - 14H30
Wits Anthology Museum
(Next to CB15, Central Block, East Campus)
31 OCTOBER
Liz Fouksman - Work, cash grants and the political imagination in Southern Africa
17 OCTOBER
Luke Sinwell & Book launch: The Spirit of Marikana: The Rise of Insurgent Trade
Siphiwe Mbatha - Unionism in South Africa
10 OCTOBER
Crispen Chinguno - #Feesmustfall: hierarchies and shifting solidarities
03 OCTOBER
Jacklyn Cock - Illustrating how the past is congealed in the present: a river story
03 OCTOBER
Sonwabile Mnwana - Mining and struggles over land and meaning on the platinum belt
26 SEPTEMBER
Alberto Arribas - Revisiting public sociology: limitations and ways forward
19 SEPTEMBER
Rob Lambert - The China price: the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the repressed question of international labour standards
12 SEPTEMBER
Malose Langa - Masculinities in community protests: tensions and contradictions
05 SEPTEMBER
Isaac Tchuwa - Deconstructing uneven spaces of water access in informal settlements in Southern Africa: a case study of Blantyre, Malawi
29 AUGUST
Sepetla Molapo - Localisation by locals: xenophobic violence, insurgent citizenship and the struggle for a place in South Africa after 1994
22 AUGUST
Ben Scully - Rethinking the rural: households and internal migration in contemporary South Africa
15 AUGUST
Farai Mtero - Rural livelihoods, large-scale mining and agrarian change in Mapela, Limpopo
08 AUGUST
Robin Turner - Perceptions matter: how participant perceptions shape our data
01 AUGUST
Tasneem Essop - Branching down: the Economic Freedom Fighters in Marikana and local politics
25 JULY
Thabang Sefalafala - Experiences of unemployment and the meaning of work: the dilemma of waged work in post-apartheid South Africa
LUNCH-HOUR SEMINARS
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25 APRIL 2017
SEMINAR: ‘Radical Economic
Transformation’ versus ‘White Monopoly Capital’? The Case of the Mining Industry
Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is back in the news. On the one hand, the ANC government has renewed its commitment to radically transform the racial structure of the post-apartheid economy. Yet, on the other, it is locked in a bitter dispute with the mining corporations over the extent to which they have met the 2004 Mining Charter requirement that 26% of their ownership should be transferred to black people by 2014.
Duma Gqubule is the Director of the Centre for Development and Economic Transformation (CDET), and the country’s leading commentator on BEE in the mining industry. At the Wits launch of his major new report - South African Mining at the Crossroads: An Analysis of the Mining Charter, 2004-2014.
Duma will discuss how far the mining sector has fallen short of its ownership and other Charter targets, the issues raised by the current standoff over the ‘once empowered, always empowered’ principle, and the prospects for its meaningful transformation over the next decade.
SPEAKERS:
Presenter: Duma Gqubule - Centre for Development and Economic Transformation
Respondents: Carol Paton - Deputy Editor, Business Day
Mbuyiseni Ndlozi - National Spokesperson, EFF
TIME:
14h00 - 16h00
VENUE:
Graduate Humanities Seminar Room, South West Engineering Building, Braamfontein (East Campus)
CLICK the button BELOW to view the launch on our youtube channel >>
11 SEPT I 18 SEPT I 23 SEPT 2019
WORKSHOP: Questions of Method with Gillian Hart (Wits Distinguished Professor)
This set of workshops departs from the common tendency to frame questions of method in terms of 'quantitative' versus 'qualitative' methods. The focus instead will be on the deep interconnections between theory and method, and on the centrality of comparison to questions of method.
VENUE:
Graduate Humanities Seminar Room, South West Engineering Building, Braamfontein (East Campus)
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SEMINARS
22 JULY 2015
Thinking about SWOP in our post-apartheid world: research, theory, social justice ‘violent democracy’
Karl interrogates whether the concept of ‘violent democracy’ provides an adequate lens through which to think about the emerging post-apartheid order and its disorders, and at the same time whether it provides an adequate frame for the SWOP research programme in its investigation of the ‘making and unmaking of social order’. ABSTRACT.
PRESENTER: Karl von Holdt - SWOP Director
TIME: 13h00 - 14h30
VENUE: Central Block 8
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23 FEBRUARY 2015
SEMINAR: Police in Parliament? Violence in Democracy?
Was the clash in Parliament and the eviction of the EFF a constitutional crisis or merely the workings of a robust democracy? What about the events outside Parliament? How are we to understand the increasing violence and threats of violence that attend democratic processes in South Africa?
PRESENTERS:
Chair: Ferial Haffajee (City Press, Editor)
Welcome: Professor Adam Habib (Wits Vice-Chancellor)
Discussion: Karl von Holdt (SWOP Director) will launch the discussion with a talk on ‘violent democracy’
Open Forum: Engagement from the floor
TIME:
16h30 - 18h30
VENUE:
Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room, Ground Floor, South West Engineering Building, Braamfontein Campus East