Research Articles (Sociology)

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Writing the 1973 Durban strikes : the 'birth of independent trade unions'
(Transformation, 2024) Bonnin, Debby
The 'Durban strikes' is a signifier of many things – the 'start' of the independent labour movement, the onset of a period of labour reform, and the impetus for the resistance that eventually bought down the apartheid regime. While a Google Scholar search yields thousands of references, research specifically focusing on the strikes themselves has been limited. What, then, constitutes the scholarship of the Durban strikes? This article locates, documents and analyses the archive of research and writing on the 1973 Durban strikes. It poses the following questions: How extensive is the literature on the Durban strikes? What are the narratives of the strikes? What are the main themes in this literature? Does the literature change over time? The article argues that three distinct narratives emerge from the writings on the Durban Strikes. First, there is a focus on the causes of the strikes. Second, there is an argument suggesting that the strikes were unorganised and spontaneous. Third, there is the assertion that the 1973 Durban strikes marked the birth of the independent trade union movement. The narrative of the Durban strikes as the genesis of the independent trade union movement has become the dominant narrative over time. The article concludes by arguing that 50 years later, the IEE publication The Durban Strikes 1973 remains the seminal research on the strikes.
Commemorating the 1973 Durban strikes : 50 years on
(Transformation, 2024) Bonnin, Debby; WeNkosi, uMbuso; Sitas, Ari
This Special Issue of Transformation commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the 1973 Durban Strikes. The papers are drawn from a conference held at the Durban University of Technology in January 2023. Initiated by Omar Badsha, the conference (as discussed in the piece by Bianca Tame) was organised by a small group of labour sociologists, historians and activists – Omar Badsha (South Africa History Online), Sithembiso Bhengu (Chris Hani Institute), Debby Bonnin (University of Pretoria), Musawenkosi Malabela (Chris Hani Institute), Monique Marks (Durban University of Technology), Noor Nieftagodien (University of Witwatersrand), Ari Sitas (University of Cape Town), Nicole Ulrich (University of Fort Hare) and the late Eddie Webster (University of Witwatersrand).
Trade unions in my time - an intergenerational discussion
(Transformation, 2024) Bonnin, Debby
This is an edited version of the panel discussion that took place at the Conference ‘1973 Durban Strikes – Celebrating 50 Years’ January 26-28, 2023, held at the Durban University of Technology, Durban. The panel discussion was set for two hours on the first day of the conference; it was followed by questions and debates from the floor. These continued in the first session of the second day. The discussions were recorded, transcribed and then edited by Debby Bonnin. Questions and comments from the floor have been kept anonymous as participants were not asked to give permission for their questions to be published.
Negotiating the boundaries of farmerhood : class, race, and identity in the new rural South Africa
(Routledge, 2025) Dyzenhaus, Alex; Holmes, Carolyn E.
Farmers play a veto role in democratization because of their economic standing and their symbolic status as keepers of a conservative rural space. In South Africa, the classification of “farmer” was historically reserved for white land-owners, but democratization promised land reform and rural integration. This paper examines the ways the category of “farmer” has changed with these reforms. Using qualitative interviews with white and Black farmers, the paper finds distinct variation in the levels of integration of the category of “farmer” between white English-speaking and white Afrikaans-speaking farmers. Despite their reputation for liberality, there is less meaningful integration within English-speaking farming communities. Afrikaans-speaking farmers, who have a reputation for conservatism, have higher barriers to entry, but emerging farmers who meet these criteria are more meaningfully integrated into the farming community. These findings elucidate the complex interactions of threat, class, and politics that create rural identity in democratic transitions.
Factors influencing intimate partner controlling behaviour against rural women in South Africa
(BioMed Central, 2025-08) Ojogiwa, Oluwaseun T.; Sulaiman, Lanre Abdul-Rasheed; Issah, Moshood
BACKGROUND : The widespread issue of gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa profoundly affects various aspects of life, necessitating government intervention for prevention. While numerous studies have found intimate partner controlling behaviour (IPCB) to be more prevalent in rural areas, the factors contributing to its high prevalence have not been unmasked. This study, therefore, investigates the factors influencing IPCB against rural women in South Africa. METHODS : The study was based on the 2016 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey (SADHS). Data was extracted for married rural women aged 15–49 years. Frequency distribution, mean, and standard deviation were the descriptive statistics used, while bivariate and multivariate logistics regression were the inferential statistics used to establish the factors associated with IPCB in rural areas of South Africa. RESULTS : Age, race, partner alcohol consumption, years in current residence, account ownership, and household wealth index were the factors associated with the high prevalence of IPCB among rural women in South Africa. Women who were younger, had partners who drank alcohol, lived in poorer households, or had no personal bank account had higher odds of experiencing IPCB. CONCLUSION : Age, race, partner alcohol consumption, years in current residence, account ownership, and household wealth index were the factors influencing IPCB against rural women in South Africa. Thus, younger women, Black African women, those in poor households, and women with partners who consume alcohol, are more vulnerable to IPCB.
Amplifying global majority youth voices through creating safe(r), brave(r), and riskier spaces : the theatre of climate action (ToCA) project
(MDPI, 2025-06) Arya, Dena; Hiraide, Lydia Ayame; Mahali, Alude; Johnstone, Kristina
Youth make up a fifth of the world’s population and will suffer the consequences of the climate catastrophe to differing extents depending on their social and geographical locations. The climate crisis is thus a matter of both intergenerational and racial/imperial injustice. Intersectional and interdisciplinary climate justice approaches are growing in the field of youth climate activism and, more often, these are necessarily engaging with collaborative methods to platform the voices of marginalised youth and those who live the colonial difference. Our paper provides early reflections from a youth climate activism artistic research project titled ‘Theatre of Climate Action: Amplifying Youth Voices for Climate Justice in Guadeloupe and South Africa’ (ToCA). In this project, sixteen young people aged 18-30 from South Africa and Guadeloupe collaborate to design, produce, and create theatre performances that reflect their exploration of climate justice through their lived experiences using artistic research methods. Specifically, we examine the opportunities and challenges in using the framework of Safe(r), Brave(r), and Riskier Spaces to support collaborative and emancipatory art-making practices that allow youth to become co-creators in this project. Insights revealed that an intentional embrace of safety, bravery, and risk as an ethico-political basis for art making was critical to cultivate a sense of community, trust, and belonging for youth co-creators.
Towards urban alter-politics : scholar-activists situated solidarities in Philippine housing struggles
(Cambridge University Press, 2025) Arcilla, Chester Antonino Cunan
In this paper, I marked the critical alter-political works of urban scholar-activists in the Philippines. Slums are at the heart of capitalist dispossessions. Slumdwellers live, survive, negotiate, and resist on an everyday basis. In the Philippines, the struggles of slum community organisations are strongly influenced, formed, and pulled in divergent ideological trajectories by contending larger political formations. I draw on my own experience and that of 20 Filipino urban scholar-activists with varied political commitments, reflecting on decades of community work, to highlight the alter-works and challenges of navigating the web of political heterogeneity within urban poor organisations and movements. By scholar-activists, I do not refer solely to those who are based in universities, but to the many who struggle every day to unearth subaltern political knowledges and collectively fight for the right to adequate housing, as well as, for some, the right to the city. I enumerate the multiple functions and necessary labours of being 'embedded' in these complex politics. We engage in political advising, framing, networking, organizing, translating, and capacity-building. Caught in a complex web that may necessitate strategic essentialisation, silencing, and foreclosures, scholar-activists play a crucial role of strategic facilitation that connects collective forms of living among urban surplus lives and corrodes neoliberal urban dispossessions. These alter-works are continuous efforts towards situated solidarities, where urban scholar activists critically draw from and reshape ‘inherited’ social movement frames and strategies grounded on actually existing subaltern realities, capacities, and political opportunities.
Making Miss Diva : idealizing femininity and new embodied nationalism in India
(Routledge, 2024) Roy, Ahonaa
This paper summarizes a narrative-based account of a beauty pageant in India that highlights gender-liminal representations and identities. The title of the pageant – Miss Diva – suggests the internationalization of beauty, body and aesthetics. This essay has three major aims: 1) to reveal the primacy of sexuality over gender that corresponds to gender pluralism and varied gender transgressive politics within the imperative of embodied desires; 2) to discuss the ‘local’ commercial conditions and how gender-liminal subjectivities are patterned within modernity’s commodified cultural representation which is pluralistic in nature; and 3) to envision beauty and representational politics within the vocabulary of the nation-based identity. This paper provides an account of the complex interconnections between the modern nation and its gender(ed) subjectivities, maintaining a balance between global/local standards.
Emerging powers and the political economy of the southern interregnum
(Routledge, 2025) Nilsen, Alf Gunvald
How do we best conceptualize the global South and its role in the rapidly changing world system of the early twenty-first century? This article approaches this question through a critical engagement with narratives centred on the idea of a rising South, and especially of claims that emerging powers across Asia, Latin America and Africa are spearheading progressive transformations across the contemporary world system. Against such claims, the article argues that whereas emerging powers have been instrumental in driving a reconfiguration of global wealth hierarchies, governing elites in the global South confront deep disjunctures between accumulation and legitimation. These disjunctures, I argue, originate in processes of neoliberalization that have deepened inequality and precarity and manifest in widespread political unrest. Rather than a simple story of a rising South, I argue that the current conjuncture is best understood as a Southern interregnum – that is, as a protracted moment of crisis in which governing elites in emerging powers mobilize new hegemonic projects to achieve legitimacy. I then discuss what the character and trajectory of these hegemonic projects – and the wider political economy of the southern interregnum – entail for the future of fracturing and turbulent world order and popular classes in the global South. Specifically, I focus on southern authoritarian populism as a distinctive type of right-wing hegemonic project, and how such projects attempt to reconcile accumulation and legitimation.
Sexual and gender-based violence in artisanal and small-scale mining in Ghana : implications for African women's socioeconomic empowerment and well-being
(Elsevier, 2025-09) Arthur-Holmes, Francis; Busia, Kwaku Abrefa; Amponsah, Enoch Boafo; Mengba, Jennifer Dokbila
This paper examines the complexities of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Africa, drawing from qualitative interviews with 38 women miners and 9 non-miners in Ghana. Our findings revealed five themes; 1) sex for mining jobs/roles and trading space protection, 2) physical aggression towards women miners during work, 3) sexual exploitations and manipulations, 4) everyday sexual harassment at mine sites: body touching and sexist comments, and 5) emotional/psychological abuse – which underlie women's experiences of SGBV in ASM spaces. These findings have implications for women's empowerment in ASM as discussed in the paper.
The utilization of the concept of profession to understand social problems : sharing preliminary results from systematic review
(Frontiers Media, 2025-04) Wildschut, Angelique; Mbatha, Nomkhosi A.; Meyer, Tamlynne
The nature of work has experienced steady shifts that have accelerated over the last three decades, raising important sociological questions; for instance, what does this mean for individuals and groups, and their relation to society, markets and the political systems that contextualize attempts and opportunities for different forms of livelihood? The concept of profession has been a key construct for sociological analysis to understand, study and theorise the implications of such shifts in different countries, workplaces and even particular occupational groups. Studies of professions have thus contributed to knowledge in many ways, not only by highlighting the implications for individuals and groups within work contexts but also illustrating importantly how this relates or not to wider societal phenomena. However, there are strong contentions that because its function as a mechanism of social structure formation has weakened significantly over time, as a sociological category and construct, the concept of profession is no longer relevant in contemporary times. This paper shares preliminary results from a systematic review of literature on the application and conceptualisation of the term profession between 2022 and 2023 to start engaging with the question of whether it has exhausted its sociological relevance. The findings suggest firstly that while there has been an overall decline in the utilization of profession-related terms, a slight increase in the utilization of profession is apparent. Secondly, in the reviewed papers, limited engagement with the conceptual underpinning of the construct exists. Finally, while critical engagement with the concept is not always apparent, most papers recognize a clear link between social phenomena and the role of the profession/s toward maintaining or dismantling such challenges in society.
Intimate partner controlling behaviour and intimate partner violence among married women in rural areas in South Africa
(BioMed Central, 2025) Sulaiman, Lanre Abdul-Rasheed; Ojogiwa, Oluwaseun T.; Ajayi, Chinyere Elsie; u24141072@tuks.co.za
BACKGROUND : Violence against women is a critical public health issue, and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is prevalent globally as its predominant form. Despite extensive research on its prevalence, the connection between IPV and controlling behaviour has not been sufficiently researched, especially within the context of rural living. This study contributes to this gap by assessing the relationship between intimate partner controlling behaviour and IPV among rural dwellers in South Africa. METHODS : The study used the domestic violence module data from the 2016 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey (SADHS). The data were analysed using both descriptive statistics- percentages, mean, and standard deviation- and inferential statistics-logistic regression. RESULTS : The study found intimate partner controlling behaviour as a predictor of IPV among married women residing in rural communities in South Africa. Accusations of infidelity, restrictions on seeing family members, general movement control, and jealousy were the forms of intimate partner controlling behaviour that predicted the occurrence of IPV. CONCLUSION : Intimate partner controlling behaviour is associated with intimate partner violence. Based on this finding, we argue that preventative, and responsive approaches that combine education, awareness raising, pathways to help seeking, women’s personal development and empowerment will have greater benefits in helping to tackle the problem of controlling behaviour and intimate partner violence against rural women in South Africa.
A case for the inclusion of informal social protection in social policy theory and practice—lessons from Nigeria and Pakistan
(Sage, 2025) Mumtaz, Zahid; Enworo, Oko Chima; Mokomane, Zitha
This paper argues for the integration of informal social protection into social policy theory and practice through a comparative analysis of informal mechanisms in Pakistan and Nigeria. In developing countries, especially in Asia and Africa, where formal social protection coverage is limited, informal social protection plays a crucial role in addressing gaps in the welfare system. The findings not only contribute to a comprehensive understanding of welfare systems but also support for the cohesive integration of formal and informal social protection, providing evidence for policy improvements in developing and less developed countries.
The question of feminist critique
(Sage, 2024-08) Chadwick, Rachelle Joy
This article engages the contested question of feminist critique, suggesting that reflecting on how we ‘do’ critique as feminist scholars is integral to the work of examining the broader politics of feminist worldmaking and knowledge production. Building on the work of Rosalyn Diprose and Audre Lorde, I suggest that the concept of ‘epistemic generosity’ opens space for the development of a lexicon in which the nuances of an open and receptive attitude to feminist critique can be explored. As a stance of open receptivity, epistemic generosity is associated with waiting, slowness and listening, rather than pursuit, suspicion, vigilance and self-affirmation. Furthermore, as a non-directive mode of relating, epistemic generosity does not presume to know. Open to surprise, wonder and connection, it is fundamentally an orientation to thinking and knowing rooted in hopefulness. At the same time, epistemic generosity is not without risks. What thinking generously means, its risks and its costs, differs according to social positioning. For those located in privileged positions, epistemic generosity is only possible in conjunction with constant practices of self-critique that involve attending to friction, discomfort, difference and difficulty.
Rights-based analysis of basic education in South Africa
(Faculty of Law, University of the Free State, 2024-12) Chirowamhangu, Raymond
The right to basic education is a fundamental human right, the realisation of which is dependent on the holistic fulfillment of all educational needs. The study reflects on the interpretation of basic education by the South African legislation, supported by regional and international treaties and case law. The analysis is anchored on the rights-based approach, as prescribed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment 13. The study adopts a qualitative methodology which outlines thematic education challenges faced by children in South Africa, especially in the rural areas. These issues include poor schooling infrastructure, lack of water and sanitation services, discrimination, inclusive education, and harmful cultural practices. Thus, considering the role of various stakeholders in promoting basic education, the study recommends that concerted efforts be made to enhance engagement with local communities and civil society, and advocates for effective accountability mechanisms on implementing education policies in South Africa
Just participatory research with young people involved in climate justice activism
(Springer, 2024-09) Mayes, Eve; Arya, Dena
This commentary reflects on the tensions inherent in enacting creative, co-produced, and participatory methods with younger co-researchers who are also climate justice advocates. Whilst participatory research with young people involved in climate justice work has the potential to build intergenerational networks of solidarity, such research is contoured with complexity. The authors, two university-based researchers, juxtapose the social justice agenda at the foundation of participatory research, with the climate justice agenda, and consider the resonances and tensions between research and social movements. They advocate for an intersectional climate justice approach to participatory research that positions young people as co-researchers and co-authors, aiming to counter epistemic injustices and amplify the voices of those first and worst affected by climate change. Simultaneously, the felt value-action gap (between the justice sought and the injustices that persist within research) generates questions about the profound differences, even incommensurability, between university-generated research and the pursuit of climate justice in movement spaces. A series of questions are offered to those engaged in participatory research with younger people to prompt collective reflection on research processes and practises. The commentary concludes with a call for university-based researchers to engage critically with the power structures within academia and to prioritise the needs and goals of younger climate justice advocates over institutional demands.
“That’s what we think of as activism” : solidarity through care in queer Desi diaspora
(Routledge, 2024) Bhardwaj, Maya; u21769118@tuks.co.za
This article examines a framing of solidarity as both activism and community care work in diasporic South Asian (sometimes referred to as “Desi”) communities in the US and the UK. From the vantage point of the researcher as a pansexual Indian-American activist herself, this article draws conclusions based on ethnographic research and interviews conducted with lesbian, gay, queer, and trans activists during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black-led uprisings against police and state violence in the US and the UK. These conversations and this article particularly examine the participation of Desi activists and their peers in these movements, and their explorations of different modes of solidarity, from joint struggle to allyship to coconspiratorship and community transformation. They ultimately argue that queerness in Desi diaspora fosters solidarity through care that nurtures relationships across and between the diverse groups that make up LGBTQ + communities and the Desi diaspora, as well as between Desi, Black, and other racialized and diasporic communities. By examining lesbian, gay, trans, and broadly queer South Asian activists’ relationships to each other and to other racialized groups in struggle, this article conceptualizes a framing of solidarity and Black and Brown liberation together that transcends difference, transphobia and TERFism, and anti-Blackness through centering kinship and care. Through the intimacies borne out of months and years on the frontlines of struggle together, this article argues that deepening an understanding of activism, kinship, and care together in Desi diasporic organizing is key to building a solidarity that imagines and moves toward new and liberated worlds.
Enhancing gender-responsive social protection among informal and traditionally uncovered workers in sub-Saharan Africa : an assessment of access to maternity protection
(Wiley, 2024-10) Mokomane, Zitha; Grzesik-Mourad, Laurel; Heymann, Jody
A wide and established body of research evidence has consistently shown how the effective provision of social protection benefits and the promotion of gender equality are among the key tools for addressing shocks, vulnerability and poverty. It is largely to this end that these ideals implicitly feature throughout the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and explicitly in two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first is SDG 1 on poverty reduction, target 1.3 of which calls for the implementation of nationally appropriate social protection systems, measures and floors for all. The second is SDG 5, which aims to achieve gender equality and empowerment for all women and girls. Despite this, women across the world continue to receive contributory social security benefits that are notably lower than those of men. There is, therefore, a need for a critical and deeper understanding of policy, legislative and programmatic factors that underlie gender gaps in social protection provision. To contribute to knowledge in this regard, and while not aiming to address the intractable challenge of labour market formalization, this article draws on qualitative data from case studies conducted in 2022 among informal economy and other traditionally unprotected workers in three countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Mozambique, United Republic of Tanzania, and Togo), the region with the highest proportion of informal workers. The aim was to explore the extent to which these workers, who are predominantly women, have access to the various elements of maternity protection. The results showed the extent to which explicit legislative and policy frameworks as well as knowledge and service context often limit women’s access to maternity protection. The article draws on the key findings to provide strategic recommendations for designing and effectively implementing more gender-responsive social protection benefits in developing economy contexts.
Planned stitching practical suturing : assembling community voices and mobilisation across difference in Johannesburg’s corridors of freedom
(Routledge, 2024-10) Makwela, Mike; Dittgen, Romain; Rubin, Margot
The City of Johannesburg’s Corridors of Freedom (CoF), launched in 2013, were intended to cut across the economically and racially divided city using infrastructure and interventions in the built environment around new transport nodes. Undertaken in haste for political reasons and projected to be delivered as swiftly as possible, those driving this mega project oversaw substantial consultation exercises, but provided relatively few spaces for direct engagement to shape the project. This paper presents the experiences of a team of engaged-researchers, a long-standing NGO in partnership with University-based scholars jointly investigating the CoF development process. Interested in the ways in which the CoF initiative sought to ‘stitch’ the city together, our contribution to the project was to engage with different communities, clarify their different experiences with participation in the Corridors development and explore the possibility of collaboration across these different communities. Using the conceptual framework of stitching and suturing, the paper, in two parts, interrogates the roles that engaged partners can have in complex and diverse communities and our ability to support engagement. We reveal the limitations of engaged research when faced with political and institutional cycles that do not synchronise with the research projects, and point to the cleavages and disruptions that result when the local state does not systematically incorporate the needs and lived realities of its residents.
Towards the desired city of compromise : the politics of negotiating large-scale transformation across diversity in Johannesburg
(Routledge, 2024-11) Dittgen, Romain; Cochrane, Allan; Robinson, Jennifer
How to reinvent Johannesburg, a metropolis whose geography of inequality has remained stubbornly entrenched since the end of apartheid? By launching the ‘Corridors of Freedom’ (CoF) initiative in 2013, the municipal government decided to take bold and deliberate steps towards conceiving and promoting a more inclusive and peoplecentred city. The goal was to disrupt the prevailing spatial and social pattern by connecting different parts of the city via a large public transit network and altering these same areas through increased levels of (affordable) accommodation, density, and mixed-use development. Cutting across the existing urban fabric and affecting a significant number of distinct neighbourhoods, both in terms of socio-economic and racial characteristics, this ambitious project, unsurprisingly, triggered a wide spectrum of reactions. To successfully embed this initiative required securing support (or countering opposition) from both the majority poor and black electorate demanding accessible housing and jobs, and the highly mobilised middle-class groups on whom the City authorities were financially dependent. Taking the CoF public participation process as analytical entry point, we reflect on the diverse power relations of ‘building consensus’ across highly divided neighbourhoods and populations to take forward this largescale urban transformation. While there was widespread agreement on the broad vision outlining the need for transformation, interpretations of the ‘good’ or ‘desired’ city, views on priorities to be considered, and acceptance of required adjustments, varied greatly. Through this case, the paper offers insights into the uneven landscape of politics associated with large-scale urban developments which stretch across highly differentiated urban areas. We note the initial scope for building shared visions and a ‘consensual arena’ between state and society across such diversity, but as the project unfolded the varied challenges of implementation at scale saw a diversity of forms of power relations shaping the dynamic processes of urban development along the multifaceted landscape of the Corridors. Initially, a powerful vision, innovative technologies of planning and fast paced consultation sought to corral actors into a tight delivery schedule driven by electoral cycles. But over time actors engaged in persuasion, contestation and collaboration, as well as moments of violence and heated disruption as the development process unfolded. Drawing theoretical insights from the geographies of power and learning from analyses of the close entwining of state-citizen relations in South African urban politics, the paper suggests that in assessing the politics of largescale developments, an agile analytical lens is needed to reflect on the diversity of power relations associated with governance and decisionmaking, as well as engagements and contestations, in the light of shifting political terrains, and diverse urban environments.

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