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Both European colonialism and apartheid shaped the economic history of South Africa, at the heart of which was the super exploitation of Black labour for the benefits of capital, the state, and white labour. While the early mercantile and agricultural economic stages influenced South Africa’s racial capitalism, it was the era of the mineral revolution in the late 19th century – as well as the attendant imperative for cheap, Black labour – which formed the bedrock of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and later necessitated the rise of the apartheid state. With vested interests in the racist and later racialist order, which constituted them as the racialised labour aristocracy, white labour conceived of its identity – in racial and cultural terms – as part of European society. Consequently, an increasing social gulf emerged between Black/African labour and white labour, whose world outlooks were deeply immersed in racist metaphysics. Post-apartheid South Africa has inherited this dual, contradictory, and mutually antagonistic historical consciousness. This has been exacerbated by poor economic performance based on a neo-liberal framework, the social visibility of the often-self-assertive emerging Black middle class resulting from government affirmative policies, and the relative impoverishment of the white working class as they begin to face the cut and thrust of labour market with no preferential state cover. In view of this history of racialised capitalism, racism in post-apartheid South Africa is largely located within the Black and white working-class socio-economic space, as the latter forfeited its racially vested interests while the former derive the benefits of corrective state action.

This text discusses the contribution of recent studies about class relations in Brazil. In it, the author makes the point that ethnographic studies on this topic are rare, in spite of their obvious interest in terms of data and analytical perspectives. He shows this through a survey of texts about poor students at university, as well as by describing popular consumer practices and class relations within psychiatric establishments. These texts demonstrate in particular that class relations cannot be predicted a priori, since they depend upon the context of the interactions; economic, social and local situations; and mutual representations of the groups themselves.

This article examines the epistemological and methodological issues involved in carrying out committed research on power relations around water in Chile. Through an exercise in reflexivity, I give a reflection and an analysis of my interactions with ethnographers at each stage of the practice of research : construction of the subject, entry to the field, collection of data then knowledge production. The politicization of the subject and the fact of being a young foreign woman explains both the complexity of my research and their heuristic wealth despite difficulties of access on the field.

This paper focuses on the interpretation made by different schools of economics about the relations of production and the capital-labor conflict, in order to connect with the social and political study of economic reality. For this, we will perform a comparative literature, beginning with Marx’s contributions about class relations, law of value, price formation and profit, and its connection with Ricardo’s theory. So, we will examine the influence exercised by the Marxian theory in neoclassical approach, Schumpeter thought and Kalecki analysis.

This paper is concerned with circular migration between the agriculture and construction sectors in Karnataka, South India. It analyses the class and household-based outcomes of migration during the 2000s between Karnataka’s poorest district and the building sites of Bangalore – a city seen internationally as one of the epicentres of globalisation in South Asia. Its central argument is that migration’s spatial extension of exploitation slightly shifts the balance of class forces in favour of the labouring class in source areas. 62 percent of households are found to gain from migration, but better design and implementation of welfare policies intended for migrant labourers (primarily those relating to health) would significantly increase migration’s contribution to labouring class socio-economic and socio-political mobility. Positive outcomes are restrained, though, by the broader social relations of production and the ways in which capital shapes the outcomes of public policy. It is found that class-based impacts and household investments in productive assets are greater in villages with higher levels of migration and socio-economic and socio-political inequality, whilst household gains amongst unskilled labourers are more likely where socio-economic inequalities are lower.

Albert Memmi’s Le Prince is the unique trial of drama work the French-Tunisian sociologist and writer has undertaken so far, and which has not been edited yet. The principal problems raised in Memmi’s works are present in this draft : domination relationships first of all ; then class ones, but moreover : gender relations and therefore – female oppression. This theatrical attempt offers also a reflection about power’s nature – central theme of the novel Le Désert which is synchronic to Le Prince. Finally, the study of play’s genetic dossier reveals a very interesting perspective of what drama work and its visual dimension should be according to Memmi : a première.