The effects of a globalised agricultural system on South African farm workers : a political ethnographic exploration of Malapeng citrus farm in Limpopo

Abstract

The South African citrus industry was extensively regulated during apartheid. However, after 1994 the industry (as part of the agricultural industry) has been extensively deregulated and liberalised. This dissertation applies a Bourdieusian lens to ethnographic data gathered at Malapeng citrus farm in Limpopo in order to understand how the lives of farm labourers are being shaped by the global agricultural economy that they are situated in. The data is discussed in two data chapters, each looking at a different level of analysis. The first data chapter discusses the micro-field on Malapeng and interrogates power and capital in relation to an institution referred to as farm bank. The second data chapter investigates the global field that Malapeng is situated in, and the impacts of state withdrawal. The dissertation finds that the withdrawal of the South African state has led to the outsourcing of the enforcement of labour regulations, which has created a vacuum where farm labourers are not being adequately protected by any actor in the field. This has directly created the structure of the field we see on Malapeng, where labourers are at the mercy of the farm owner, and are, in some ways, in more precarious positions than before.