Southern Resistance in Critical Perspective ─ The Politics of Protest in South Africa's Contentious Democracy

In recent years the globe has erupted in protest. From the Arab Uprising, to anti-austerity protests in Europe, to the Occupy Movement in the United States, to uprisings in Brazil, Turkey, and Ukraine, resistance from below is flourishing. Whereas analysts have tended to look North in their analysis of this protest wave, Global Resistance in Southern Perspective provides a Southern perspective on contemporary global protest through a deep engagement with the case of South Africa. Though often overlooked in discussions of the new global protest, South Africa has experienced a wave of sustained and often insurrectionary resistance since 2004. The Marikana Massacre in August 2012, when the police responded to a massive worker uprising by killing 34 striking mineworkers, exposed this resistance to the world. As in other parts of the globe, much of the resistance in South Africa is taking place outside of conventional social movements and the organised Left. It is also shaped profoundly by South Africa’s political legacy and the country’s relationship to the uneven development of global capitalism. The book illuminates the contemporary wave of mobilisation in South Africa and its relation to global protest. Combining rich ethnographic case studies with new theoretical perspectives, it integrates worker and community struggles into a broader narrative of resistance, thus bridging the historical divide between social movement studies and labor studies.

Marcel Paret is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Utah, USA. Carin Runciman is Postdoctoral Research Fellow and South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Luke Sinwell is Senior Researcher and South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. All three have written and published widely on contentious politics in South Africa.