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Abstract
This article presents a comparison of central debates in South African labor sociology in the1970s and the contemporary era. I argue that scholars can break through impasses in currentlabor sociology debates by reviving attention to the land-labor-livelihood (LLL) connections thatinspired theoretical advancements in the South African literature of the 1970s. After anintroduction and definition of LLL connections, the paper analyzes an exemplary work of thelabor literature of the 1970s, giving special attention to the way in which the LLL focus shapedthe questions asked by the authors. The article proceeds to a review of central debates from thecurrent labor literature, which focuses primarily on issues of the labor movement. It is arguedthat this focus on movements has limited the scope of labor scholarship, resulting in an impassein South African labor debates. An emerging literature that renews attention to the LLLconnections is proposed as a model for moving beyond this impasse. I close the article bydiscussing the implications for this review of South African literature for global laborscholarship.
Highlights
Michael Burawoy (2008:378) has noted the irony that over the past few decades labor scholars have increased their focus on the labor movement, despite this being a period in which unions themselves have “seemed to be in free fall.” For Burawoy, this period of labor scholarship has been defined by a “public turn” away from questions about the experiences of workers in the factory and toward questions of labor as a social movement
In recent years a growing number of South African labor sociologists have begun to return to these issues
A number of scholars working on South and Southern Africa are following the suggestions of these authors, examining the effects of this crisis of reproduction on the households of South African workers
Summary
Michael Burawoy (2008:378) has noted the irony that over the past few decades labor scholars have increased their focus on the labor movement, despite this being a period in which unions themselves have “seemed to be in free fall.” For Burawoy, this period of labor scholarship has been defined by a “public turn” away from questions about the experiences of workers in the factory and toward questions of labor as a social movement. Analyzing the class structure in post-apartheid South Africa, they conclude that the employed-unemployed divide is the most significant driver of contemporary inequality They see the labor force as divided into two classes, “insiders” and “outsiders.” Seekings and Natrass argue that in this situation the most pro-poor strategy is not to protect wages and working conditions as unions attempt to do, but to expand employment, thereby transferring some outsiders to insider status. Renewed attention to the laborlivelihood connection would show that the relationship between organized and unorganized members of the labor force is not shaped primarily by strategies of labor organizations, as the optimists seem to assume, nor by their position of individuals vis-a-vis wage labor, as the pessimists argue This is because the fact remains that, despite the removal of apartheid, individuals' reproduction and well-being is not determined solely by their wages, but by the diverse sources of livelihood that their household and broader social networks connect them to. These kinds of questions get at the heart of how the end of apartheid has affected the broad livelihood networks which South African labor sociologists of the 1970s argued were essential to understanding the well-being and collective strength of the country's workers
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