Disabling Globalization
Subtitle: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: October 7, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 480
ISBN-13: 9780520237551
Subjects: African studies; Globalization; POLITICS & GOVERNMENT; Politics and government; History: World; Economic aspects; South Africa; History; Politics / Current Events; Republic of South Africa; Investments, Taiwan; Anthropology - General; History / Africa; Economic Conditions; Social aspects; Africa - General; KwaZulu-Natal; KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)
Description: Combining richly detailed empirical research on transnational connections with bold and imaginative theoretical argument, this innovative study offers fresh critical understandings of globalization and unique insights into post-apartheid South Africa. Based on research conducted between 1994 and 2001, Gillian Hart traces political dynamics in two former white towns and adjacent black townships in the province of KwaZulu-Natal that are major sites of Taiwanese investment. Focusing on East Asian connections with these places, and on histories and memories of racialized dispossession, she highlights the fragility of the neoliberal project in post-apartheid South Africa. She also suggests how rethinking the "land question" in terms of a social wage could connect a variety of ongoing struggles. Hart provides a clear sense of how and why both popular and academic discourses of globalization are so deeply disabling. Readers will come away with more politically empowering understandings of social change in an increasingly interconnected world.