Labour Studies Podcasts

About Labour Studies Podcasts

Hosted by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) and the Departments of Sociology and Industrial Sociology, and Economics and Economic History at Rhodes University. The Labour Studies Podcasts are from our popular Labour Studies Seminar Series, launched in 2015. We cover "labour studies" in the broadest sense: labour and left history, policy and political economy, unions and popular struggles.

Publisher

Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit(NALSU)

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

8 Jul 2020

Latest episode

14 May 2026

Latest episodes

33 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   14 May 2026

   NALSU Labour Studies Podcast | Anele Dloto | University of Fort Hare | Informal Construction Labour and the Meanings of Skill: Roadside Hiring in Buffalo City, South Africa

   SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Anele Dloto: Informal Construction Labour and the Meanings of Skill: Roadside Hiring in Buffalo City, South Africa In this talk, Anele Dloto examines how skill becomes meaningful and consequential in Buffalo City's informal construction labour market. Focusing on roadside hiring encounters, his talk analyses these intensified moments of judgement: decisions must be made quickly, with limited information, and without formal screening mechanisms. Drawing on ethnographic research, his study shows that skill is neither absent, nor formally stabilised in this labour market, but actively produced as a negotiated and relational judgement. Workers actively assert skill through fleeting roadside encounters, reputations, repeated hiring, and demonstrations of reliability over time. Employers recognise competence, which they need to manage risk and complete work, but resist credentialed forms of recognition that would strengthen workers' bargaining power. Thus, Anele Dloto shows, skill is recognised, contested, and negotiated in informal labour markets, and worker agency is crucial to how workers navigate exclusion, assert their skills, and resist the precarious conditions they face. By reframing skill as a situated social judgement shaped by uncertainty, interests, and unequal power, the paper shows that informality does not flatten skill but relocates its production into everyday interactions. This analysis challenges human capital approaches that treat skill as an individual attribute awaiting credentialed recognition, and informality perspectives that argue that labour surpluses render workers interchangeable. By offering a clearer explanation of how skill and inequality are reproduced in informal labour markets, his study helps explain why policy efforts centred on training and credentialing often fail. DETAILS: Recording of livestreamed event in Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU)'s Labour Studies Seminar Series, 22nd April 2026, 4pm, Sociology A, Rhodes University. SPEAKER : Mr Anele Dloto is a PhD Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand and Sociology Lecturer at the University of Fort Hare. His research examines the social construction of skill within informal labour markets, with a particular focus on roadside hiring sites in Buffalo City's informal construction economy. HOSTS : Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture. MORE : https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

2. 

   9 Apr 2026

   NALSU Labour Studies Podcast | Lincoln Addison | Chiefs of the Plantation: Authority and Contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe Border

   SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Lincoln Addison: Chiefs of the Plantation: Authority and Contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe Border Commercial farming has undergone enormous changes in South Africa since the 1990s, including the growing use of contract, immigrant, and off-site labour. In this talk, Lincoln  Addison discusses how labour relations have changed in South African agriculture since the end of apartheid. Drawing on ethnographic research on a plantation located along the South Africa-Zimbabwe border, he argues that labour control hinges upon a delegation of authority from white landowners to black Zimbabwean managers. These labour relations facilitate intensive fruit production, but also enable lower-ranking migrant workers to access natural resources, steal plantation property, and contest piece rates. DETAILS: Recording of a blended event in the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) Labour Studies Seminar Series, held on Monday 22 May 2024, at 4 pm, in Sociology A, Rhodes University. SPEAKER: Lincoln Addison is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University, in Canada. He is an economic and environmental anthropologist whose research focuses on labour, gender and agrarian change in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Widely published, his recent papers have appeared in the African Studies Review , the Journal of Agrarian Change , and the Journal of Peasant Studies. HOSTS: The series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University. ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research, and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned, and pluralist practice, and active relations with other advocacy, labour, and research organisations. We are named in honour of Neil Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail. MORE: https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

3. 

   12 Mar 2026

   NALSU Labour Studies Podcast | Book launch: Henry Dee |"Militant Migrants: Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the Mass Movement of Black Workers in Southern Africa, 1896-1951"

   SPEAKER AND TOPIC: Book launch: Henry Dee | Militant Migrants: Clements Kadalie, the ICU and the Mass Movement of Black Workers in Southern Africa, 1896-1951 Henry Dee discusses the remarkable life of Clements Kadalie, who exploded on the global stage as head of the Industrial & Commercial Workers' Union of Africa (ICU). A massive popular movement founded in 1919, it exploded across South Africa, also into Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In the 1920s, it completely overshadowed nationalist and communist parties, organising perhaps 250,000 workers and labour tenants. Kadalie was a famed orator, journalist and organiser, electrifying rallies with calls for economic freedom & all-in mass organisation. Praised as the most important black worker leader in the world, Malawian-born Kadalie was championed by W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Tom Mann, and George Padmore. His story illuminates the period his star rose: the Malawian diaspora and immigrant politics, class struggles and transnational organising, and battles over gender, citizenship, nation and respectabilityDee's deeply researched Militant Migrants is the first full biography of Kadalie. It examines his evolving ideas, African impact, and global importance, & influences, like black nationalism, Christianity and syndicalism; it looks at his unprecedented successes, inescapable failures, and complicated personal life. While the ICU won gains and alarmed colonial governments, it imploded into autocratic leadership, corruption, factionalism and bitterness; the ICU story is a tale of a man's fall from hero into alcoholism, a broken family, and ruined reputation. DETAILS: Recording of livestreamed event in Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU)'s Labour Studies Seminar Series, 19 February 2026, 4pm, Eden Grove 3, Rhodes University. SPEAKER: Henry Dee is a research fellow at Northumbria University, UK, and historian of empire, labour and migration in the early 20th century. He co-edited (w. David Johnson) I See You: The Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union of Africa, 1919-1930, a collection of primary sources (HiPSA: South Africa). His biography of Kadalie, "Militant Migrants", was published by Liverpool University Press. Henry's latest research compares unions in southern Africa, Sri Lanka and Myanmare. HOSTS: Series run by NALSU in partnership with Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University. ABOUT NALSU: Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research, and workers' education, has a democratic, non-sectarian, non-aligned, and pluralist practice, and active relations with other advocacy, labour, and research organisations. We are named in honour of Neil Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail. MORE: http://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

2,444

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Podcast Authority Score: 44 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

48

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

32

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