Neoliberal Apartheid in South Africa and Palestine/Israel

• In Event: 167 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Paper Session. Can Comparative Historical Sociology Save the World? (1) Israel/Palestine

Abstract

With the discovery of gold and diamonds, South African capital became highly dependent on access to an African labor force. As part of the Zionist project, on the other hand, Israeli firms adopted a preference for Jewish over Arab workers. Despite these differences, by the 1980s Israel and South Africa were both ethnocratic states managing racial Fordist economies. And they both confronted economic crises and political uprisings that destabilized the existing modes of regulation. Social transformations in both states since the early 1990s involve an interplay between the neoliberalization of racial capitalism and the restructuring of governmental power. While the democratization of the South African state produced a recognizably postcolonial society, the Israeli state maintained a fundamentally colonial relationship with the occupied Palestinian population – merely incorporating a form of indirect rule into its system of military domination. In both contexts, however, neoliberal restructuring has deepened inequality and generated insecurity.

Author

• Andy Clarno, University of Illinois-Chicago