Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

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Date

2018

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Abstract

This paper connects Marxist approaches to the agrarian political economy of South Africa with post-Marshallian and Foucauldian analyses of distributional regimes and late capitalist governmentality. Looking at South Africa’s stalled agrarian transition through the lens of biopolitics as well as class analysis can make visible otherwise disregarded connections between processes of agrarian change and broader contests about the terms of social and economic incorporation into the South African social and political order before, during and after Apartheid. This can bring a fresh sense of the broader political implications of the course of agrarian change in South Africa, and helps contextualise the enduring salience of land as a flashpoint within South Africa’s unresolved democratic transition.

Description

Keywords

Governmentality, Biopolitics, De-agrarianization, Critical theory, South Africa

Citation

du Toit, A. (2018). Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post– Apartheid South Africa. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45(5-6): 1086-1107.