THE PAPER: There is a widespread view that labour, as a counter-hegemonic force, has come to an end. There is a lot going for these arguments; there is no question that there has been a decline of union membership and density in the Global North. But the problem with the pessimistic 'end of labour thesis' is that it reifies globalisation and the digital age, giving them a logic and coherence that they do not have. Most importantly, the pessimists present workers as victims. The result is that labour is seen as an actor without agency that cannot think of alternatives or imagine a future towards which labour can work. In this lecture, Professor Webster will draw on the power resources approach to examine the new forms of worker organisation emerging among large swathes of precarious and informal labour in Africa and South Africa. He will identify examples where workers on the margins are beginning to cross the divide between the protected and the unprotected, the established workers and those marginalised by liberalisation.

SPEAKER: Professor Emeritus Eddie Webster, public intellectual and prolific scholar, is Distinguished Research Professor at the Southern Centre of Inequality Studies (SCIS) and founder of the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). Webster headed the Chris Hani Institute, helped establish the GLU (Global Labour University), and his decades of engagement with the labour movement include research, policy and workers' education. Author of nine books including the ground-breaking "Cast in a Racial Mould" and 130 academic articles, he has reshaped economic and industrial sociology, and mentored generations of unionists, students and academics. A winner of the American Sociological Association's best labour monograph award, and recipient of the Ela Bhatt Professorship, he was rated South Africa's top sociologist by the NRF. Webster hails from the Eastern Cape, starting his academic studies at Rhodes University, Makhanda, where he was also SRC President. In 2016, Rhodes awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his many accomplishments.

JOINING ONLINE: the event will be blended, with the Lecture held in person and live streamed via Zoom.  Please register in advance for Zoom by going to: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0scOGsqDorGdTgDIygf9bONr34rPNz51Pi

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Some DATA available for people outside Rhodes. Apply mailto: v.wessels@ru.ac.za / 072 183 6632 in advance.

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