Abstract of a talk to be delivered at the
Arrighi Center for Global Studies
Johns Hopkins University
March 23 2015
RELATIONAL COMPARISON REVISITED:
South Africa and India since the 1990s
Gillian Hart
The end of the Cold War and the global triumph of free market capitalism and
liberal democracy marked a major turning point in both India and South Africa.
This was the moment when the parties of liberation in both countries ushered in
neoliberal forms of capitalism; when subaltern groups and classes, long subjected
to extreme forms of caste (India) and race (South Africa) oppression, wrested a
degree of formal political power and recognition; and when intensifying – albeit
varied – expressions of nationalism erupted in both India and South Africa.
How can we understand the entanglements of neoliberal forms of capitalism,
liberal and popular expressions of democracy, and proliferating nationalisms in
India and South Africa in mutually illuminating ways? In taking up this
challenge, I will revisit and revise the approach of relational comparison that
grew out of my research into connections between South Africa and East Asia in
the 1990s, and suggest a related – although distinctively different – idea of
conjunctural comparison. I will also suggest some possible ways that this
approach might shed light on struggles around land, labor, and environmental
rights.
Gillian Hart is Professor of Geography and co-chair of Development
Studies at the University of California Berkeley, and Visiting Professor in
the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa at the University of the
Witwatersrand. Her books include Disabling Globalization: Places of
Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa (2002); Gramsci: Space, Nature,
Politics (co-edited) (2013); and Rethinking the South African Crisis:
Nationalism, Populism, Hegemony (2013).