Staging a special economic zone (SEZ): Economic representation amid uncertainty

Labour dynamics and SEZs

Julia Hampton is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). Based on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Special Economic Zone in South Africa, her thesis investigates how, in a context of chronic long-term unemployment, an intervention aimed at fostering market inclusion ends up reproducing and legitimising poverty and inequality. She joined ODID in 2019 as a Rhodes Scholar to pursue an MPhil in Development Studies. Prior to Oxford, Julia completed an Honours degree in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in English, Economics, and Economic History at the University of Cape Town.

Abstract:

This seminar will be based on a paper that examines the staging of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in South Africa. It shows that economic policy concepts do not format the economy in their image but instead animate documentary representations of the economy in the abstract, as a manageable, future-oriented object. Going further, the paper explores the productive role of doubt in sustaining this abstraction. The doubtful spectacle of technical control is stabilised on a fragile basis through the everyday labours of differently positioned actors to suspend disbelief in scripted economic futures: state officials’ commitments to inclusion; consultants’ trade-offs between technical certainty and optimism; and unemployed participants’ tactical engagements for the sake of marginal livelihoods, recognition, and influence. In doing so, the paper expands theories of performativity by showing how ‘the economy’ is sustained not just by economics, but by the pragmatic, affective, and ethical reasons diverse actors have to instrumentalise economics in their own lives.

Add event to calendar