Eric Worby | University of the Witwatersrand (original) (raw)

Papers by Eric Worby

Journal of Southern African Studies, 1998

in: The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology online, 2018

Privatization is most often taken today to describe the process whereby a state‐owned enterprise ... more Privatization is most often taken today to describe the process whereby a state‐owned enterprise is transferred to private ownership. Evoking long‐standing debates concerning the morality and social consequences of enclosing the commons and the responsibility of states for ensuring the welfare of citizens, privatization provides an especially apt lens for bringing into focus the broad sweep of social, political, and economic history—in particular the relationship between states, corporations, and markets. At the same time, the concept permits anthropologists to interrogate uncertainties in the alignment of property, law, and morality that have accompanied neoliberalism and globalization, advances in biotechnology, and the emergence of a new information commons.

Routes and Rites to the City: Mobility, Diversity and Religious Space in Johannesburg, edited by Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Lorena Nunez, Peter Kankonde Bukasa and Bettina Malcomess, 2016

American Ethnologist the Journal of the American Ethnological Society, 2001

Africa Development a Quarterly Journal of Codesria, 1985

Journal of Agrarian Change, 2001

South African Historical Journal, 2009

Until the 1960s, the Gokwe region of northwestern Zimbabwe was perceived as the wild, remote, and... more Until the 1960s, the Gokwe region of northwestern Zimbabwe was perceived as the wild, remote, and culturally backward domain of the "Shangwe" tribe. Since the introduction of small-holder cotton production in the 1960s, and the influx of immigrants from the south, it has been represented as a miracle of agrarian transformation, a frontier of commoditization, and more broadly, as an exemplar of the transition to modernity. In this thesis, I explore how alternative narratives of commoditization inform modes of state intervention, representations of ethnic difference, and forms of agrarian labour in Gokwe. Using my own ethnographic journey through Gokwe as a referent, I examine the different ways in which colonial maps, indigenous myths, and ritual exchanges variously locate relations of power, labour and identity in social space. Labour forms and commodity relations are continually remade as farmers, traders, ethnographers and administrators argue over the signs of modernity...

South African Historical Journal, 2009

... Unnoticed by the authorities precisely because it was regarded as a religious newspaper,Al-Qa... more ... Unnoticed by the authorities precisely because it was regarded as a religious newspaper,Al-Qalam became a key outlet for alternative news. At the same time, it helped to ... What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007). SAHJ-61-2-Introduction.indd 6 ...

South African Historical Journal, 2008

How does one live a religious life, or secure a religious identity while also being a citizen of ... more How does one live a religious life, or secure a religious identity while also being a citizen of a secular state? The question is as old as the establishment of the French Republic. But it is also strikingly new. A Marxist would argue that religion is a 'private matter'but identity ...

Social Science & Medicine, 2009

This study examines alcohol use, transactional sex (TS), and sexually transmitted infection (STI)... more This study examines alcohol use, transactional sex (TS), and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk among sugar plantation residents near Moshi, Tanzania, from 2002 to 2004. We compare popular discourse gathered through ethnographic methods with cross-sectional questionnaire and STI prevalence data to illuminate the close correspondence of alcohol use and TS with STI transmission. People attributed to alcohol varied consequences: some socially desirable (relaxing, reducing worries) and others (drunkenness, removing shame) thought to put alcohol abusers at risk for STIs. TS-exchanging money, food, gifts, alcohol or work for sex-was not stigmatized, but people believed that seeking sexual partners for money (or providing money to sexual partners) led to riskier sexual relationships. We explore popular discourse about how alcohol use and TS independently and in combination led to increased STI exposure. Popular discourse blamed structural circumstances-limited economic opportunities, few social activities, separated families-for risky sex and STIs. To understand individual behavior and risk, we surveyed 556 people. We measured associations between their self-reported behaviors and infection with herpes simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2), syphilis, and HIV in 462 participants who were tested. Alcohol abuse was associated with prevalent STI and HIV infection. Exchanging sex for alcohol and work were both associated with prevalent STI. Participants who both abused alcohol and participated in TS had greatest risk for STI. Findings from the two analytic methods-interrogation of popular discourse, and association between self-reported behavior and STIs-were largely in agreement. We posit explanations for discrepancies we found through the concepts of sensationalization, self-exceptionalization, and the influence of an authoritative moral discourse.

Social Dynamics, 2013

ABSTRACT Departing from a consideration of Jacob Dlamini's book, Native Nostalgia, this e... more ABSTRACT Departing from a consideration of Jacob Dlamini's book, Native Nostalgia, this essay critically reviews the conceptual terrain implied by nostalgia, re-situating it in relation to memory, especially where it intersects with debates over the status of truth in relation to history. We explore nostalgia through three dualities that underpin a burgeoning literature: remembering and forgetting, witnessing and testimony, and mourning and melancholia. Against conceptual oppositions that pit remembering against forgetting, or alternatively, that seek to remedy the fallibility of memory by seeking access to the truth of history, we suggest that nostalgia is probably more usefully understood as a practice of coincident temporalities. Nostalgia, in this sense, denotes a specific way of enfolding the past into the present, and indeed the future. We discuss two projects of post-apartheid testimony that work from, and on, the presumed antagonism that nostalgia sets up between truth and its possible distortions in memory: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996-1998, and the Apartheid Archive Project initiated in 2009. We conclude by suggesting that South Africans may need to pursue what Ackbar Abbas has called an affective politics of disappointment if the past is to be brought more creatively to bear on South Africa's future.

Journal of Southern African Studies, 1994

... 2 See G. Carter Bentley, 'Ethnicity and Practice&amp... more ... 2 See G. Carter Bentley, 'Ethnicity and Practice', Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, 1 (1987), pp. ... Africans Kalanga Group Kalanga tribes/clans Karanga Group Karanga tribes/clans Shona Korekore Group Korekore tribe/clans Zezuru Group (incl.Shangwe) Manyika ...

Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2009

India and South Africa have long been mutually implicated in a common ethical field. The principa... more India and South Africa have long been mutually implicated in a common ethical field. The principal motivation for both scholars and inhabitants of these two large social formations to take an interest in one another — to make comparisons as much as to actively recall or forge connections — derives from a shared preoccupation with civic virtue and private ethics.

Journal of Southern African Studies, 1998

in: The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology online, 2018

Privatization is most often taken today to describe the process whereby a state‐owned enterprise ... more Privatization is most often taken today to describe the process whereby a state‐owned enterprise is transferred to private ownership. Evoking long‐standing debates concerning the morality and social consequences of enclosing the commons and the responsibility of states for ensuring the welfare of citizens, privatization provides an especially apt lens for bringing into focus the broad sweep of social, political, and economic history—in particular the relationship between states, corporations, and markets. At the same time, the concept permits anthropologists to interrogate uncertainties in the alignment of property, law, and morality that have accompanied neoliberalism and globalization, advances in biotechnology, and the emergence of a new information commons.

Routes and Rites to the City: Mobility, Diversity and Religious Space in Johannesburg, edited by Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Lorena Nunez, Peter Kankonde Bukasa and Bettina Malcomess, 2016

American Ethnologist the Journal of the American Ethnological Society, 2001

Africa Development a Quarterly Journal of Codesria, 1985

Journal of Agrarian Change, 2001

South African Historical Journal, 2009

Until the 1960s, the Gokwe region of northwestern Zimbabwe was perceived as the wild, remote, and... more Until the 1960s, the Gokwe region of northwestern Zimbabwe was perceived as the wild, remote, and culturally backward domain of the "Shangwe" tribe. Since the introduction of small-holder cotton production in the 1960s, and the influx of immigrants from the south, it has been represented as a miracle of agrarian transformation, a frontier of commoditization, and more broadly, as an exemplar of the transition to modernity. In this thesis, I explore how alternative narratives of commoditization inform modes of state intervention, representations of ethnic difference, and forms of agrarian labour in Gokwe. Using my own ethnographic journey through Gokwe as a referent, I examine the different ways in which colonial maps, indigenous myths, and ritual exchanges variously locate relations of power, labour and identity in social space. Labour forms and commodity relations are continually remade as farmers, traders, ethnographers and administrators argue over the signs of modernity...

South African Historical Journal, 2009

... Unnoticed by the authorities precisely because it was regarded as a religious newspaper,Al-Qa... more ... Unnoticed by the authorities precisely because it was regarded as a religious newspaper,Al-Qalam became a key outlet for alternative news. At the same time, it helped to ... What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007). SAHJ-61-2-Introduction.indd 6 ...

South African Historical Journal, 2008

How does one live a religious life, or secure a religious identity while also being a citizen of ... more How does one live a religious life, or secure a religious identity while also being a citizen of a secular state? The question is as old as the establishment of the French Republic. But it is also strikingly new. A Marxist would argue that religion is a 'private matter'but identity ...

Social Science & Medicine, 2009

This study examines alcohol use, transactional sex (TS), and sexually transmitted infection (STI)... more This study examines alcohol use, transactional sex (TS), and sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk among sugar plantation residents near Moshi, Tanzania, from 2002 to 2004. We compare popular discourse gathered through ethnographic methods with cross-sectional questionnaire and STI prevalence data to illuminate the close correspondence of alcohol use and TS with STI transmission. People attributed to alcohol varied consequences: some socially desirable (relaxing, reducing worries) and others (drunkenness, removing shame) thought to put alcohol abusers at risk for STIs. TS-exchanging money, food, gifts, alcohol or work for sex-was not stigmatized, but people believed that seeking sexual partners for money (or providing money to sexual partners) led to riskier sexual relationships. We explore popular discourse about how alcohol use and TS independently and in combination led to increased STI exposure. Popular discourse blamed structural circumstances-limited economic opportunities, few social activities, separated families-for risky sex and STIs. To understand individual behavior and risk, we surveyed 556 people. We measured associations between their self-reported behaviors and infection with herpes simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2), syphilis, and HIV in 462 participants who were tested. Alcohol abuse was associated with prevalent STI and HIV infection. Exchanging sex for alcohol and work were both associated with prevalent STI. Participants who both abused alcohol and participated in TS had greatest risk for STI. Findings from the two analytic methods-interrogation of popular discourse, and association between self-reported behavior and STIs-were largely in agreement. We posit explanations for discrepancies we found through the concepts of sensationalization, self-exceptionalization, and the influence of an authoritative moral discourse.

Social Dynamics, 2013

ABSTRACT Departing from a consideration of Jacob Dlamini's book, Native Nostalgia, this e... more ABSTRACT Departing from a consideration of Jacob Dlamini's book, Native Nostalgia, this essay critically reviews the conceptual terrain implied by nostalgia, re-situating it in relation to memory, especially where it intersects with debates over the status of truth in relation to history. We explore nostalgia through three dualities that underpin a burgeoning literature: remembering and forgetting, witnessing and testimony, and mourning and melancholia. Against conceptual oppositions that pit remembering against forgetting, or alternatively, that seek to remedy the fallibility of memory by seeking access to the truth of history, we suggest that nostalgia is probably more usefully understood as a practice of coincident temporalities. Nostalgia, in this sense, denotes a specific way of enfolding the past into the present, and indeed the future. We discuss two projects of post-apartheid testimony that work from, and on, the presumed antagonism that nostalgia sets up between truth and its possible distortions in memory: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996-1998, and the Apartheid Archive Project initiated in 2009. We conclude by suggesting that South Africans may need to pursue what Ackbar Abbas has called an affective politics of disappointment if the past is to be brought more creatively to bear on South Africa's future.

Journal of Southern African Studies, 1994

... 2 See G. Carter Bentley, 'Ethnicity and Practice&amp... more ... 2 See G. Carter Bentley, 'Ethnicity and Practice', Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, 1 (1987), pp. ... Africans Kalanga Group Kalanga tribes/clans Karanga Group Karanga tribes/clans Shona Korekore Group Korekore tribe/clans Zezuru Group (incl.Shangwe) Manyika ...

Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2009

India and South Africa have long been mutually implicated in a common ethical field. The principa... more India and South Africa have long been mutually implicated in a common ethical field. The principal motivation for both scholars and inhabitants of these two large social formations to take an interest in one another — to make comparisons as much as to actively recall or forge connections — derives from a shared preoccupation with civic virtue and private ethics.