Land-Labor Seminars

Land, Labor and Environmental Rights and Struggles Seminars and Workshop

Co-sponsored by the JHU Center for Africana Studies

Monday, March 23, 2015

11 a.m.- 1 p.m. (526 Mergenthaler)

Gillian Hart

Professor, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley; Visiting Professor, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of the Witwatersrand

“Relational Comparison Revisited: South Africa and India since the 1990s” 

Background Readings:

  1. “Relational Comparison Revisited” Abstract
  2. Rethinking the South African Crisis, Chapters 1 & 5
  3. Denaturalizing Dispossession

Comments by:

  • Rina Agarwala (Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University)
  • Sefika Kumral (Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University)
  • Juan Obarrio (Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University)

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

3-5 p.m. (526 Mergenthaler)

Arrighi’s “Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective” Revisited

Open meeting of Beverly Silver’s graduate seminar on “Labor in the World System” with discussion taking off from Arrighi’s 1973 “Labor Supplies in Historical Perspective” and Arrighi, Aschoff, Scully’s 2010 “Accumulation by Dispossession and Its Limits”

Background Readings:

  1. Giovanni Arrighi Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia
  2. Giovanni Arrighi, Nicole Aschoff and Ben Scully, Accumulation by Dispossession in Its Limits: The Southern Africa Paradigm Revisited

Opening comments by:

  • Gillian Hart, University of California, Berkeley and University of the Witwatersrand
  • Lungisile Ntsebeza, University of Cape Town, South Africa
  • Peter Jacobs, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa
  • Benjamin Scully, University of Witswatersrand, South Africa

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Workshop: Land, Labor & Environmental Rights Struggles:
South Africa and India in World-Historical Perspective

Location: 526 Mergenthaler

8:30 a.m. – Coffee

9-9:30 a.m.

Opening Comments by Beverly J. Silver, Director, Arrighi Center for Global Studies

“An Arrighi Center Perspective on Land, Labor & Environmental Rights and Struggles”

9:30-10 a.m.

Peter Jacobs, Chief Research Specialist, Economic Performance and Development Research Programme, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa

“New Forms of Elite Land Accumulation in South Africa”
Comment: Bill Martin, Department of Sociology, Binghamton University

Background Readings:

  1. Propoor Rural Development (from State of the Nation 2014, HSRC Press)
  2. Workshop Presentation Outline
  3. Whither Agrarian Reform in South Africa

10-10:30 a.m.

Ricardo Jacobs, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University

“An Urban Proletariat with Peasant Characteristics: Land Occupations and Livestock Raising in the City of Cape Town”

Comment: Gillian Hart, Geography, UC Berkeley and University of Witswatersrand

10:30-11 a.m. – General Discussion

11-11:30 a.m. – Coffee Break

11:30 a.m.-noon

Michael Levien, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University

“From Primitive Accumulation to Regime of Dispossession: Theses on India’s Land Question”

Comment: Ali Khan, Department of Economics, Johns Hopkins University

noon-12:30 p.m.

Lungisile Ntsebeza, AC Jordan Chair in African Studies, Sociology and Center for African Studies, University of Cape Town

“Contemporary Agrarian and Land Struggles in South Africa”

Comment: Sara Berry, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University

12:30-1:30 p.m. – General Discussion

Thursday, March 26, 2015

6-7:30 p.m. (526 Mergenthaler)

Global Social Protest Research Working Group Meeting

Friday, March 27, 2015

noon-1:30 p.m. (266 Mergenthaler)

Satendra Kumar, Delhi School of Economics

“Aspirations without Opportunities: Agrarian Change & Inequality in Rural North India”