More from RC (Research Committee 44): New Books on South African Labour

Peter sez:

Radically innovative labour studies seem to be pouring out right now. I really can't keep track of them even if I try. The two below seem likely to belong to this category. Both welcome to me in so far as 1) I have been long arguing for the necessity of a 'new social movement unionism', or 'new social unionism' and 2) because the anarchist tradition was buried by social-democratic and communist traditions during most of the 20th century.

Now read on:

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http://groups.google.com/group/rc-44/msg/966815c773cd3fea

Book announcement:

Ercüment Çelik (2010)

Street Traders: A Bridge Between Trade Unions and Social Movements in Contemporary South Africa. Baden-Baden:
Nomos Publishers.

How much did the transition from apartheid to post-apartheid change the lives of the 'truly disadvantaged' in South Africa? How do these people struggle against their marginalisation and exclusion in post-apartheid era?
This book seeks answers by exploring the new democratic street traders'
organisations, the shack-dwellers' movement, their relations with trade unions
and their alliance in the 'World Class Cities For All' Campaign on the way to
the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The author explains how the mobilisation of street
traders' struggles inadvertently brought together social movements with trade
unions, emphatically signalling the potential reactivation of 'social movement
unionism' in contemporary South
Africa.

Ercüment Çelik's ambitious study illustrates how the South Africa's disenfranchised reinvented linkages between social movements and the trade union movement through the spirited mobilisation and strategic inquests of
their leadership. This book is essential reading for all socio-political
enthusiasts fascinated by the reinvention of a new type of social movement
unionism in the global south.

Review copies available.

For more information from the publisher:

http://www.nomos-shop.de/productview.aspx?isbn=9783832957216.

In North America available from International Specialised Book Services, ISBS: http://www.isbs.com<http://www.isbs.com/>;

Dr. Ercüment Çelik is researcher and lecturer in the Institute of Sociology at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Ercuement.Ce...@soziologie.uni-freiburg.de<mailto:Ercuement.Ce...@soziologie.uni-freiburg.de>

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Achievement by RC44 member:

From "WITS NEWS" 06.05.2010

"WITS SCHOLAR LUCIEN VAN DER WALT WINS CODESRIA AWARD

Lucien van der Walt of Sociology, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, was recently awarded the 2008/2009 Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa
(CODESRIA) prize for best African doctoral thesis.

His PhD thesis on "Anarchism and Syndicalism in South Africa, 1904-1924: rethinking the history of labour and the left" was praised by the jury of leading African scholars as "a major contribution
to the re-reading of the social history of Southern Africa".

This is the second international prize that Professor van der Walt has received for his thesis. It was also awarded the 2008 international "Labor History" prize for the best dissertation in the
field. Congratulations!"