1,720,968 research outputs found
Small scale artisanal diamond mining and rural livelihood diversification in Lesotho
Full text linkThesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017.This thesis examines how individuals and households of Kao and Liqhobong villages in Lesotho responded to economic challenges resulting from, amongst other factors, the implementation of structural adjustment policies; a decline in work opportunities for Basotho migrants in South Africa; the wider collapse of the regional mining complex, and; continued failure in developing agricultural production. More specifically, the study focuses on individuals and households implicated in unrecognised and unlicensed artisanal diamond mining and who use such mining, in the midst of these economic challenges, as a supplementary means of income or livelihood diversification. Artisanal diamond mining in Lesotho is a livelihood for rural households that is masked by the dominant representation of Lesotho as a labour reserve. Making use of the 'moral economy' and 'human economy' approaches, the thesis explores how artisanal miners in Lesotho engage in diamond digging and selling. It also investigates the constraints they face in a sector that was heavily regulated historically and remains so in post-independence Lesotho, a state which is itself constrained by a regional and global context that makes it difficult to raise the living standards of its citizens. In order to understand the responses of individuals and households in the implicated villages, the thesis combines an historical with an ethnographic approach. As such it examines the conditions artisanal diamond miners have operated under from the 1950s to 2014 when fieldwork for this thesis was conducted. It looks at how artisanal miners and artisanal mining collectives with their own moral economies negotiated the contestation over natural resources with the Lesotho state and international commercial mining companies. In doing so it investigates how the artisanal miners positioned themselves in relation to the law; claims to ownership over land; the international market for diamonds; and society. As an economic activity artisanal diamond mining is viewed in relation to the larger social processes in which it is embedded and from which it derives meaning. As such this thesis tells a story of conflict, violence and resistance; a story that remains pertinent, given the current debates about economic democracy in contexts of natural resource wealth. In my analysis, I pay particular attention to the role of women in ASM in Lesotho.Anthropology and ArchaeologyPhDUnrestricte
‘We are running for a living’ : work, leisure and speculative accumulation in an underground numbers lottery in Johannesburg
Full text linkIn this paper the author presents a historically-informed ethnography of a Johannesburg underground lottery. The meaning of this lottery is tied up with the local-level sociological organisation of lottery banks and the various actors who participate in it, with changing notions of social class, work and leisure under the conditions of growing inequality and jobless economic growth, and with the everyday strategies and agency of lottery runners and punters. The author uses the instance of this lottery to argue for a contextualised, multi-leveled and historically-grounded interpretation of the notions 'occult economies' and 'mysterious modes of accumulation' (Comaroff & Comaroff 1999a, 2000). The prominence of speculative accumulation in the context of this lottery and in the livelihood strategies of those living at the margins of the state and society are strikingly similar to financial practices under the conditions of casino capitalism, financialisation and securitisation in financial markets. In this way the author links local practices of speculative accumulation with translocal processes generated by present-day neoliberal policies and financial capitalism.Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersran
Mobile money discounting and currency abandonment : livelihoods and monetary practices in rural Binga, Zimbabwe
Full text linkThesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020.The convergence of money with technology is dominated by the drive to eradicate cash by digitization, this is legitimised by arguments that digital forms of money will promote financial inclusion and, in the process, alleviate poverty in developing countries. However, the positive societal benefits attributed to digital money are increasingly being contradicted by empirical evidence from developing countries. The emerging contestation of digitization of money as a tool for poverty alleviation creates an opportunity to reconceptualise monetary innovations for people living in poverty. Thus, in this thesis I answered the following question; what new insights can monetary practices of rural households and persons reveal about money and monetary innovations (or needs) of the low-income group? To answer this question, I draw on the SLA and infrastructure concept not only to examine monetary practices of households and persons in Binga, a rural district of Zimbabwe with a colonial and postcolonial history of economic and political marginalization, but also to evaluate the technical and or functional properties of the money which they use. My research revealed a number of interrelated phenomena, the most important of which is currency abandonment phenomena. It takes two forms, namely, outright refusal to use and adopt a currency and or by discounting (price inflation of goods and services mediated in the currency that is being abandoned). Pertinent examples include; (1) mobile money discounting (this is due to excessive mobile money transaction fees), (2) financial disintermediation, in which users of both mobile and bank money deliberately made their financial affairs opaque by rejecting digital money in preference for cash and commodity money. There are historical antecedents for what I call currency abandonment, these include; (1) the black Friday (holders of capital devalued the Zimbabwe dollar by dumping it on the stock and money market after the Zimbabwe government paid out ex-combatant’s gratuities from money that it did not have, (2) the catalytic role of households in dollarization, which is the rejection (by ordinary users) of the inflationary Zimbabwe dollar in preference for foreign currency. These activities were a means by ordinary users to resist the fact that digitization is experienced as a form of exploitation, in particular rent seeking and indiscriminate identity harvesting (monetization of personal identity) by both the government and mobile network operators. The most relevant research and policy theme which emerged from this study is the economic exclusion problem, in turn, the most important solution to economic exclusion was found to be sharing and redistribution, exemplified by provisioning of public infrastructures, Zimbabwe government elderly and disabilities cash grant, mulala cattle (livestock sharing), poor to poor mobile remittances and rotational saving scheme in which interest rates were not a reward for risk, but shared by all members as a reward for cooperation and collaboration. This study concludes by proposing a locally informed sociotechnical framework of monetary innovations for people living in poverty. The framework divides monetary needs into secondary and primary needs, the former consists of the Public Authority Deficit, which emphasises the need to address the subjugated position of developing countries in defining and addressing monetary needs of the unbanked-poor and the Quantitative Deficit (mutually exclusive relationship between the role of money as a medium of exchange and store of value) while the latter is represented by the Qualitative Deficit (failure of notes and coins to combine the unit of account role of money with the identity of transacting parties). The framework presented here relegates digital money to a secondary need (or innovation) which is inconsequential to poverty alleviation, but necessary only in facilitating remote payments.The Mellon FoundationAnthropology and ArchaeologyPhDUnrestricte
Environment-making, cheap-nature, and care : an anthropological study of the Hazel Food, arts, and crafts market in Tshwane
Full text linkDissertation (MSocSci (Social Anthropology))--University of Pretoria, 2022.This anthropological study identifies the actors involved in processes of environment-making at the Hazel Food, Arts, Craft and Culture Market (Hazel Food Market) in the capital city Pretoria, South Africa, and analyses such environment-making through the concepts of cheap nature, care and inclusion/exclusion. Existing studies of urban food markets in South Africa and elsewhere typically focus on products, consumers and the social and economic functions of market exchanges including tourism, gentrification and income generation. This study, constructed on the basis of participant observation and semi-formal interviews with vendors, visitors and managers, explores the market in the context of environment-making. By focusing on this activity, this dissertation contributes to the existing literature by bringing into view the various aspects and persons involved in it, including actors who constitute the market, the products that are being sold, online and offline advertising through text and visuals as well as aesthetic and other dimensions that put nature to work in the context of this market. The consequences of the kind of environment-making and deployment of nature that are documented in this dissertation are then analysed by examining forms of inclusion and exclusion among customers, vendors, products and ethnic groups within the market and its wider surrounds. In this way, the dissertation seeks to show that nature, in addition to race, and class and gender, is a potent concept for urban anthropological analysis.Anthropology and ArchaeologyMSocSci (Social Anthropology)Unrestricte
Indigenous knowledge systems or practical everyday performances? A theoretical reconsideration of indigenous knowledge in anthropology and development studies
No full textThis article was written by Detlev Krige before he joined the University of Pretoria.Much recent writing in the social sciences - boosted by inter alia substantial
funding programmes and valid questions concerning the relationship between
identity politics, knowledge and power - have applauded the formulation of
and research into various forms of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (lKS).
This interest in and advocacy for IKS, at times formulated in the context of
debates on postcolonial identity as an alternative to paradigms constructed on
particular Western-scientific assumptions, has run parallel to a more general
shift in thinking about development initiatives as requiring participatory
research methodologies and bottom-up implementation strategies. Within
development studies and anthropology, this shift has stimulated much
research on localised knowledge practices. There is, however, little evidence
that this body of anthropological (and ethnographic) literature has informed
the thinking of those writing and working within the theoretical paradigm of
Indigenous Knowledge Systems (lKS). Making use of a number of recent
ethnographic studies on Africa, the author argues for a theoretical
reconsideration of the IKS paradigm. He highlights important criticisms of the
ways in which many indigenous knowledge systems proponents essentialise
concepts such as knowledge and culture, as well as the methodological
limitations of much current IKS research. It is argued that a focus on the nonverbal
and local knowledge embodied in everyday practices, as well as the
performance of such knowledge, signals not only the limitations of much IKS
research but also redirects our attention to reformulating and invigorating
ideas about much needed local research
Dumpsite bricolage : the responses of the urban waste precariat to the formalisation and privatisation of waste management in the City of Tshwane
Full text linkDissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2016.This dissertation examines how sections of the urban waste precariat, positioned in the City of Tshwane, responded to the formalisation and privatisation of the waste management system by the city's public authorities. Focusing on two landfill sites, it consists of an ethnographic description and analysis of the nexus between waste makers, waste governors and the waste precariat, including waste-pickers. Drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives, the ethnography brings to light aspects and dynamics of the waste management system which are invisible to the waste governors. These include a typical instance of "accumulation by dispossession" (Harvey 2004, Samson 2012), which involved the closure of three municipal landfill sites and the relocation of a section of the city's waste precariat to other landfill sites, as the state sought to capture the value of the waste generated by the waste makers in the city. Moreover, the closure of one landfill site located in the midst of a wealthy suburb also shows how this process of dispossession is constructed on older distinctions of race and class (Malan 1996, Ballard 2004). As those sections of the waste precariat move to another landfill they are confronted with new dynamics which include access to soft waste being controlled by an established waste-picker committee and city-supported cooperatives that have formed an alliance with the waste governors. As a result, the 'newcomers' are pushed into fringe recycling. This thesis contributes to the debate around the formalisation of waste picking in demonstrating how the process of formalisation, often pushed for and initiated by third sector organisations (Alexander 2009), engenders the exclusion of fringe recycling practices. As such this thesis contributes to a gap in the literature on fringe recycling, in the process also working towards portraying waste-pickers as a differentiated group. In theorising fringe recycling as part of the broader response of the waste precariat to formalisation and privatisation, this thesis deploys the concept of bricolage (Levi-Strauss 1966) in order to make sense of the creative and autonomous actions implied in improvisation. This emphasis on improvisation and creativity pushes the thesis into a consideration of 'things' (Ingold 2010) and the processes of formation, flows and the transformation of materials. Tracing the complex lines of flow and entanglement that exists between people and things in the context of landfill sites gives credence to the idea of a thing as a "gathering together of the threads of life" (Ingold 2010:2-3) and challenges our established understanding of agency and indeed the effort by Appadurai (1986) to theorise value through tracing 'the social life of things'.Anthropology and ArchaeologyMSocSciUnrestricte
An ethnography of the Mandela Peace Park senior citizens food garden in Mamelodi Township Tshwane : a social critique of the economism in contemporary urban agriculture policies and projects
Full text linkDissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2018.This dissertation examines one community garden situated in Mamelodi in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality. Using qualitative research methods, including participant observation and interviews, the dissertation presents a descriptive account of the history and functioning of the community garden as well as the motivations and benefits that gardening at the community garden offers the research participants. The five research participants were all senior residents of Mamelodi who had volunteered to join the community garden at various points since its inception in 1997. Furthermore, the dissertation makes use of the life history method to present the lives of the five research participants, thereby situating them as actors within an unfolding history. The research presented in this dissertation is then situated within the current scholarly debate in Development Studies about the role of urban agriculture in addressing food insecurity on the one hand and achieving food sovereignty on the other. In doing so the dissertation reviews the relevant literature and debates while taking community gardens as one instance of urban agriculture. Community gardens are receiving much attention in the literature on urban agriculture and it is lauded as an important mechanism through which poverty and food insecurity among the urban poor can be addressed, while also offering the promise of providing urban households with a source of income as wage labour seems to be on the decline. This dissertation presents a number of findings based on an analysis of the data regarding the non-economic aspects of urban gardening. In the process the dissertation speaks to the importance of gardening and the garden as a site for the expression of belonging, a right to the city, nostalgia and learning. In this the dissertation builds on a growing scholarship pointing to the personal, symbolic and social aspects of urban agriculture. The main contribution this dissertation makes is to offer a critique of the economism inherent in some of the scholarly literature and development policies concerning urban agriculture which continues to neglect the centrality of the social aspects entailed in growing and exchanging fresh food produce.Anthropology and ArchaeologyMSocSciUnrestricte
Mattering the world of a mobile phone app : an anthropological study of design decision-making in a South African corporate context
No full textDissertation (MSocSci (Social Anthropology))--University of Pretoria, 2023.How users integrate mobile phones and their apps into their lives is well-documented in scholarly literature (Kusimba, 2021; Miller et al., 2021), but their design and construction processes are understudied. As mobile apps increasingly become integral in human interactions globally, I suggest that an ethnographic examination of the processes and relations of their production in one corporate contact in South Africa is essential in ‘mattering’ and ‘worlding’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) apps. Furthermore, as the Global South is often absent in emerging discourse about technology’s construction (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012), this study seeks to contribute to understandings of app development in the Global South. The inequitable underpinnings of both the labour involved in creating technologies (Ashworth, 2022) and in how technologies are deployed to users have recently become controversial, evident in Couldry and Meijas’ (2019) arguments about datafication and data colonialism. In this dissertation, I suggest that the political economy tradition of exposé anthropology in S.A. is a useful starting point for exploring the power relations in data colonialism. Specifically, Spiegel’s (2005) call for exposé anthropology to progress from exposing relations of power and exploitation under colonialism and Apartheid to embracing an ethics of care, enabled by the theoretical developments on “thinking with care”, allows me to deploy Puig de la Bellacasa (2012) and others to trace the harmonious and non-harmonious relations in the work of building an app in South Africa. In analysing the data I made through participant observation in this corporate, office environment from mid-February to mid-May 2022, which focused not on users and their exploitation but on design decision-making as member of the Design Team, I reformulate Latour’s “network” towards Ingold’s (2013) “meshwork” to position human and non-human actors involved in the making of apps. Specifically, I take ideas from more-than-human anthropology and Science and Technology Studies to depict Jira – a software task allocation system deploying ‘agile methodologies’ in the company that was the field site – as both a focal actor in the meshwork (Silva, 2019) and a companion (Haraway, 2003), showing the way in which translations (Silva, 2019) and boundaries (Bowker & Star, 2000; Sachs, 1995) feature in decision-making processes and the worlds of apps.Anthropology and ArchaeologyMSocSci (Social Anthropology)Unrestricte
Becoming South African' : Examining the Experiences of Caribbean Immigrants Living in Pretoria
Full text linkDissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2019.The problem this dissertation engages with is the role of state-defined pathways available for ‘legal’ Caribbean migrants to South Africa, to effectively become South African citizens through practices of assimilation; enabling them to claim citizenship, and thus belonging to a new national community. The concept of a singular, state-defined citizen, a conception that has dominated academic debates over the last hundreds of years, is today challenged by the activities and presence of migrants from everywhere in nearly every place. This new and contemporary dynamic is prompting scholars to conceptualise other images of belonging, images that transcend, move beyond, stretch and displace the centrality of national borders in defining citizenship. One view shifts the source of citizenship rights from the state to the individual, bringing to the fore a cosmopolitan or post-national citizenship. Conversations concerning the significance, or lack thereof, of the state in migration share a tendency to analyse migration from the macro-level that the state represents and interpret individual actions and outcomes from that point of view. In this dissertation I address the problem by investigating the lived experiences of immigrants, and analysing from the micro-level of individuals and their families, in order to understand their relationship to the meso- and macro-levels available within the wider society. In the process, I illuminate the pathways that are available to ‘legal’ Caribbean migrants as they seek to deepen their belonging to a new national community whilst retaining their connections to other national and transnational communities.Anthropology and ArchaeologyMSocSciUnrestricte
Greece, like Kronos, is Eating its Children : Small-Business People’s Responses to the Ongoing Economic Crisis in Athens, Greece
Full text linkDissertation (MSocSci) University of Pretoria, 2017.This dissertation is concerned with the documentation and analysis of contemporary responses of a particular segment of Greek society to the economic crisis that has impacted on Greece, Europe and the wider capitalist world. Based on ethnographic research conducted in multiple sites, including the city of Athens and the village of Kandyla, I argue that dynamic contemporary connections exist between rural and urban Greece in relation to these responses. I also argue that contemporary responses to the crisis among this segment of society, notably small-business people, are constructed through and built upon strategies that have long histories in Greek village life and that are informed by responses to earlier crises, the memories of which are kept alive both materially and discursively. These responses are rooted in and performed in what Herzfeld has called “collective identification” evident in a set of shared sentiments among research participants regarding the valorisation of hard work and the principle of self-sufficiency, the parasitic nature of the Greek state, the constant production of insiders and outsiders in relation to the state, the use of reciprocity in business contexts, and the deployment of stereotypes regarding youths and politicians.Anthropology and ArchaeologyMSocSciUnrestricte
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