An Urban Proletariat with Peasant Characteristics: Land Occupations and Livestock Raising in Cape Town City

• In Event: 552 - Section on Political Economy of the World-Systems Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Global South and the World-System

Abstract

Urbanization, it is assumed in the sociological literature, goes hand-in-hand with proletarianization and a definitive shift in the nature of social struggles towards demands for wage labor, housing, and basic services. However in the City of Cape Town long-term urban residents are currently engaged in land occupations for raising livestock--a quintessential peasant activity in South Africa. These land occupations raise questions about the relationship between urbanization and proletarianization as well as the relationship between urbanization and class-consciousness and collective action in cities today. Drawing on in depth interviews and participant observation carried out between 2009 and 2014 at land occupation sites in Cape Town, this paper argues there is what we might call a “latent reserve army of peasants” in urban South Africa today that would revert to peasant activities if land were available. In other words, the handful of land occupations for raising livestock that are observable today are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential demand for land in cities for agriculture by urban residents. The current occupations predate the neoliberal period and therefore cannot just be understood as a response to the deepening crisis of subsistence induced by neoliberalism. Rather it is an outcome of longer-term relationship between the development of capitalism, wage labor and urbanization in much of the global South. I argue that there exists an urban proletariat with peasant characteristics today that is contesting and reshaping urban space, not only in South Africa, but in much of the global South.

Author

• Ricado E Jacobs, Johns Hopkins University