Using historical-ethnographical methods, and a spatial lens, my research aims to provide an original perspective on the social roots of everyday inequalities in health, education, addiction, and labour--that is I am concerned with documenting, theorizing, and challenging "structural violence." I hope to unravel the political economic forces at work while recording, with all the contradictions of a white man undertaking the research, the humanity and struggles of marginalized groups. Focused on South Africa, a country I have had the privilege of working in for more than 30 years, my research thus addresses how acts embedded in sexuality, friendship, labour, families, education, and addiction, are shaped by and shape social and spatial inequalities. I am/have been involved in four areas of research.
Drugs at Work
Drugs and Work. Like oil and water, surely. In fact, the view that drugs and work are polar opposites is relatively new: cannabis, coca, opium-- not to mention psychoactive substances that remained legal, notably sugar and caffeine--have long helped to offset tiredness, hunger, and boredom, and provide relaxation after activities.
As I show in this project, South Africa's racialized inequalities drive the continued entanglement of drugs and work. Heroin using young men--stereotyped as lazy criminals--can work diligently sweeping yards, collecting scrap, and washing cars to afford to buy the drug. They are part of a global laboring poor. Mandrax, the sleeping medicine, was long smoked after work in a 'white pipe' to relax. Xanax is illicitly bought at the poorest schools for R5 (30 cents) when learners face pressure not to drop out but view, at the end of schooling, youth unemployment rates of over 60%. For more, see this web page.
Families, Race and the Marketization of Basic Education
When apartheid ended in 1994, the ANC government placed education at the centre of its plans to build a nonracial and more equitable society. Yet by the 2010s a wave of student protests—beginning with the #RhodesmustFall movement—voiced powerful demands for decolonised and affordable education. Drawing on ethnography, archival research, and more than 500 interviews, this project followed families and schools in Durban over nearly a decade. Shedding new light on South Africa’s political transition and the global phenomenon of education marketisation, the study rejects simple descriptions of the country’s move from “race to class apartheid.” It reveals how “white” phenotypic traits like skin colour retain value in the schooling system even as the multiracial middle class embraces prestigious linguistic and embodied practices the book calls “white tone.” But the story is also one of family love and sacrifice: white parents’ efforts to preserve past educational privileges and the rise of the “black tax”—the support black wage earners provide to families who fund school fees and other expenses. This project will result in a book published in January 2019 by Cambridge University Press called Race for Education: Gender, White Tone, and Schooling in South Africa. Here and here are some shorter pieces I have written.
The Political Economy of Intimacy and AIDS
My 2010 book Love in the Time of AIDS (Indiana and University of KwaZulu-Natal Presses) is based on ethnographic work from 2000-9 in an “informal settlement” and "township" in South Africa where around 1 in 3 residents are HIV positive. It is an attempt to write a political economy analysis of AIDS but to understand the embodiment of inequality in emotions and everyday practices, including love. I am critical of simplistic political economy and gender models in understanding AIDS in "Africa"--a continent long seen as diseased and loveless.
Labour and Industrial Restructuring
I worked for a union in the U.K. before studying for a Master's Degree in South Africa and have a longstanding interest in labour issues. My Masters degree was a critique of post-fordist industrial restructuring models in South Africa.
University Worlds
University Worlds is an interdisciplinary, two-year, SSHRC funded project that explores a deceptively simple question: what is a university? We follow this question into lecture halls, boardrooms, student group meetings, planning documents, and archives to develop a complex but vivid portrait of Toronto’s largest academic institution. See universityworlds.ca.
Two recent reports I co-authored are on why students drop out of UTSC, and equity and online learning.
Drugs at Work
Drugs and Work. Like oil and water, surely. In fact, the view that drugs and work are polar opposites is relatively new: cannabis, coca, opium-- not to mention psychoactive substances that remained legal, notably sugar and caffeine--have long helped to offset tiredness, hunger, and boredom, and provide relaxation after activities.
As I show in this project, South Africa's racialized inequalities drive the continued entanglement of drugs and work. Heroin using young men--stereotyped as lazy criminals--can work diligently sweeping yards, collecting scrap, and washing cars to afford to buy the drug. They are part of a global laboring poor. Mandrax, the sleeping medicine, was long smoked after work in a 'white pipe' to relax. Xanax is illicitly bought at the poorest schools for R5 (30 cents) when learners face pressure not to drop out but view, at the end of schooling, youth unemployment rates of over 60%. For more, see this web page.
Families, Race and the Marketization of Basic Education
When apartheid ended in 1994, the ANC government placed education at the centre of its plans to build a nonracial and more equitable society. Yet by the 2010s a wave of student protests—beginning with the #RhodesmustFall movement—voiced powerful demands for decolonised and affordable education. Drawing on ethnography, archival research, and more than 500 interviews, this project followed families and schools in Durban over nearly a decade. Shedding new light on South Africa’s political transition and the global phenomenon of education marketisation, the study rejects simple descriptions of the country’s move from “race to class apartheid.” It reveals how “white” phenotypic traits like skin colour retain value in the schooling system even as the multiracial middle class embraces prestigious linguistic and embodied practices the book calls “white tone.” But the story is also one of family love and sacrifice: white parents’ efforts to preserve past educational privileges and the rise of the “black tax”—the support black wage earners provide to families who fund school fees and other expenses. This project will result in a book published in January 2019 by Cambridge University Press called Race for Education: Gender, White Tone, and Schooling in South Africa. Here and here are some shorter pieces I have written.
The Political Economy of Intimacy and AIDS
My 2010 book Love in the Time of AIDS (Indiana and University of KwaZulu-Natal Presses) is based on ethnographic work from 2000-9 in an “informal settlement” and "township" in South Africa where around 1 in 3 residents are HIV positive. It is an attempt to write a political economy analysis of AIDS but to understand the embodiment of inequality in emotions and everyday practices, including love. I am critical of simplistic political economy and gender models in understanding AIDS in "Africa"--a continent long seen as diseased and loveless.
Labour and Industrial Restructuring
I worked for a union in the U.K. before studying for a Master's Degree in South Africa and have a longstanding interest in labour issues. My Masters degree was a critique of post-fordist industrial restructuring models in South Africa.
University Worlds
University Worlds is an interdisciplinary, two-year, SSHRC funded project that explores a deceptively simple question: what is a university? We follow this question into lecture halls, boardrooms, student group meetings, planning documents, and archives to develop a complex but vivid portrait of Toronto’s largest academic institution. See universityworlds.ca.
Two recent reports I co-authored are on why students drop out of UTSC, and equity and online learning.