Social Movements in the South Lecture Tour Series: Mobilizations after Apartheid

We are pleased to invite you to the 2011 installment of the SEPHIS-TWSC Social Movements in the South Lecture Tour. The specific theme of this year's lecture tour is “Social Movements in South Africa: Mobilizations after Apartheid.” Social movement actors incited and escalated internal resistance to apartheid. Coupled with significant external pressures to abandon institutionalized racial segregation, this resistance brought about the abandonment of apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s, culminating in the election of Nelson Mandela as the nation’s first president elected by the entire South African electorate. In the aftermath of this landmark victory, the problems of the labor sector and widespread poverty, as well as residual racism, remain pressing issues in South Africa. The rampant spread of AIDS in South Africa is also a concern that cuts across divides throughout the nation. These are now the primary concerns of the nation’s social movement actors. Without the rest of the world strongly condemning the inaction of the South African government in resolving these issues, as was the case in the movement against apartheid, how are social movements faring? What adjustments did South African social movement actors need to make in order to fight for their advocacies in a new political milieu? The recent experiences of South African social movements is instructive to social movement actors in Indonesia and the Philippines, which face similar problems in a similar setting, i.e., following an advance in increasing formal democratization.

This year's lecture tour features Dr. Ari Sitas, Professor of Sociology from the University of Capetown, South Africa.

LECTURE ONE:

REWIRING THE WORLD ECONOMY – STATES AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH

January 24, 2011, 9:30a.m.-12:00nn, Bulwagang Claro M. Recto, Faculty Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Quezon City

ABSTRACT:

The lecture starts with a discussion of the real world economy as opposed to disembedded theories of globalization and provides a critical reflection on the work of Castells, Wallerstein, Amin, and Mamdani, and explores how unwittingly the BRICSA (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) states are facilitating the renewal of new forms of intensive accumulation. It then explores the contrasting debates about global unionism versus social movements, and the "multitude" versus class, and explores some of the significant breakthroughs of movements in the South.

(click here for the lecture program)


photos:

(more photos can be found here)

LECTURE TWO:

THE MANDELA DECADE (1990-2000) – LABOR MOVEMENTS, POLITICS, AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA

January 25, 2011, 9:30a.m.-12:00nn, Bulwagang Claro M. Recto, Faculty Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman, Quezon City

ABSTRACT:

The lecture explores the transition in South Africa, which begins in earnest a year after the Berlin Wall collapsed. It traces the four pillars of the "grand compromise" that ushered the first democratic election and brought the African National Congress into power. It traces how the most mobilised labour movement anywhere opted for strategic unionism and explores how by 1996 South Africa's government chose neo-liberal protocols and what the lecturer terms "deep globalisation." It deals with the long term effects on industrial unionism by the 2000s and how poverty and wealth expand exponentially. It concludes by outlining some of the comparative points of reference for the global South.

(click here for the lecture program)

photos: 

(more photos can be found here)

ABOUT THE LECTURER:

Dr. Ari Sitas has been a professor of Sociology at the University of Capetown, South Africa since 2009. Previously, he spent 26 years as a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa, spending part of that time as programme director of UKZN’s Industrial Organizational Labor Studies department. He is considered one of the leading intellectuals and activists during the anti-apartheid struggle. His work focuses on labor, politics, and culture within the parameters of the “new” global economy. He is also a fictionist, dramatist, and poet.

Dr. Sitas received his doctorate degree in Sociology from the University of Witwatersrand in 1984, at the height of the anti-apartheid movement. He has served as president of the South African Sociological Association, vice-president of the International Sociological Association, and executive member of the African Sociological Association. Among his most recent publications are The Ethic of Reconciliation (2008) and The Mandela Decade 1990-2000 (2009).

ORGANIZED BY THE THIRD WORLD STUDIES CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN

CO-SPONSORS:

The South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS)

Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines-Diliman

Department of Sociology, University of the Philippines-Diliman

the Labor Education and Research Network (LEARN)

Focus on the Global South

THE SEPHIS LECTURE TOUR PROGRAMME

The idea of the lecture tours is to establish connections between different research traditions and networks in the South. This programme enables universities in the South to invite established scholars from another part of the South, representing a specific historical school or scholarly approach, to give a number of lectures at different institutes. During his or her tour the scholar can meet colleagues and advanced students, advise on academic programmes, and explore the possibilities for collaborative research.

For details, please visit: http://www.sephis.org/node/36