Society, Work and Development Institute

The Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) is one of the University of the Witwatersrand’s most enduring research organisations. The central problem investigated through the current SWOP research programmes is the precarious nature of social order. In the second decade after the democratic elections of 1994, it is clear that slow-burning contestations over the dissolution of the old order and the shape of the emerging order are wide-ranging, with implications for development, democracy, law, gender relations and society as a whole.

SWOP researchers, associates, PhD fellows and MA interns are exploring these problems through research into work and worklessness, society and nature, households, social reproduction, gender orders and welfare regimes, civil society, class formation, citizenship, movements and violence. A major emerging research area is on mining, society and environment. Read more…

Conversations with Bourdieu Year: 2012 Author(s): Michael Burawoy & Karl von Holdt ISBN: 978-1-86814-540-9 The publication is on sale from SWOP. The smoke that calls: Insurgent citizenship, collective violence and the struggle for a place in the new South Africa Year: 2011 Author(s): Karl von Holdt, Malose Langa, Sepetla Molapo, Nomfundo Mogapi, Kindiza Ngubeni, Jacob Dlamini & Adele Kirsten   View more   See more publications by year: 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999

Breakfast seminars In the first semester of 2013, The Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) will convene a series of 4 breakfast seminars that engage with different aspects of the "Marikana moment". Date: 1 March - 10 May       Venue: Hofmeyr House, University of the Witwatersrand View more   Colloquium on the politics of precarious society - a comparative perspective on the global South September 2012   Papers now available online.   Cosatu Conference, 12 – 14 March 2013 Decent work for some or decent work for all? A strategy for triggering a campaign to organise vulnerable workers, Prof Eddie Webster.   Download paper  Building the union with democracy or sjamboks?, Karl von Holdt   Download paper