Jason Hickel


Jason Hickel Entered 2005 jasonhickel@virginia.edu
Sociocultural Anthropology Regional focus: KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Southern Africa. Topical interests: Labor, migrancy, and political subjectivity. I slipped into the study of labor migrancy quite by accident; in much the same way that I stumbled upon anthropology itself. My undergraduate work at Wheaton College took me to Nagaland in Northeast India, where I worked with a community development organization and studied ethnic identity and patterns of economic dispossession among migrant farmworkers from Bangladesh. Shortly thereafter I returned home to Swaziland to work with an international NGO researching the causal dynamics of the AIDS epidemic there through an analysis of trade policy and labor migration. My sojourns in the discipline since joining the University of Virginia have taken me to KwaZulu-Natal on South Africa's eastern seaboard. There I have begun my dissertation research on the labor unions that organize workers in the sugar industry. My aim in this project is twofold. First, I intend to interrogate the standard nationalist historiography that claims to represent the motives of the rural migrant Zulus who form a substantial proportion of the labor movement. For this task I take my cue from the subaltern studies group and its insistence on resuscitating the agency of the peasant in social movements. Second, I seek to explain the reasons for the ongoing conflict between nationalist and independent unions in the sugar industry and in South Africa more broadly. While most analysts attribute this conflict to "tribalism" or ethnic nationalism, I propose that it may reflect more than just identity politics. My preliminary research indicates that inter-union dissension is driven by disjunctures between workers' understandings of their rights and interests as citizens in the postcolonial nation. Toward this end I examine Zulu migrants' political subjectivity as rooted in their experience of the labor system itself, deriving from everyday interaction with the ritualized rural-urban axis that underpins their social world. MA Paper: The Making of Malcontent: Labor, Unions, and Political Subjectivity on Sugar Plantations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. April 2007. Presentations and Publications: 2007. "The Sorcerer and the Citizen: Political Subjectivity in Postcolonial South Africa." Paper presented to the American Anthropological Association, 2007. 2007. "Perspectives on Zimbabwe's Current Crisis." Presentation at event by Engaging International Issues through Media (EIIM), University of Virginia. 2006. "Neoliberal Policy and HIV Transmission in Africa." Presentation to the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Anchorage, Alaska. 2006. "Narratives of Development: Colonizing the Histories of the Poor." HNGR Online. HNGR: Wheaton. [http://www.wheaton.edu/HNGR/resources/jason_hickel.html] 2005. "Deadly Inequalities: The Political Economy of AIDS in Swaziland." WVS Circular. World Vision Swaziland: Manzini. 2003. "Beyond Dispossession: Power, Place, and Poverty in Nagaland, India." AIDA Circular. Agency for Integral Development Action: Dimapur.

Entered 2005
jasonhickel@virginia.edu

Sociocultural Anthropology

Regional focus: KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Southern Africa.

Topical interests: Labor, migrancy, and political subjectivity.

I slipped into the study of labor migrancy quite by accident; in much the same way that I stumbled upon anthropology itself. My undergraduate work at Wheaton College took me to Nagaland in Northeast India, where I worked with a community development organization and studied ethnic identity and patterns of economic dispossession among migrant farmworkers from Bangladesh. Shortly thereafter I returned home to Swaziland to work with an international NGO researching the causal dynamics of the AIDS epidemic there through an analysis of trade policy and labor migration.

My sojourns in the discipline since joining the University of Virginia have taken me to KwaZulu-Natal on South Africa's eastern seaboard. There I have begun my dissertation research on the labor unions that organize workers in the sugar industry. My aim in this project is twofold. First, I intend to interrogate the standard nationalist historiography that claims to represent the motives of the rural migrant Zulus who form a substantial proportion of the labor movement. For this task I take my cue from the subaltern studies group and its insistence on resuscitating the agency of the peasant in social movements. Second, I seek to explain the reasons for the ongoing conflict between nationalist and independent unions in the sugar industry and in South Africa more broadly. While most analysts attribute this conflict to "tribalism" or ethnic nationalism, I propose that it may reflect more than just identity politics. My preliminary research indicates that inter-union dissension is driven by disjunctures between workers' understandings of their rights and interests as citizens in the postcolonial nation. Toward this end I examine Zulu migrants' political subjectivity as rooted in their experience of the labor system itself, deriving from everyday interaction with the ritualized rural-urban axis that underpins their social world.

MA Paper: The Making of Malcontent: Labor, Unions, and Political Subjectivity on Sugar Plantations in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. April 2007.

Presentations and Publications:

2007. "The Sorcerer and the Citizen: Political Subjectivity in Postcolonial South Africa." Paper presented to the American Anthropological Association, 2007.
2007. "Perspectives on Zimbabwe's Current Crisis." Presentation at event by Engaging International Issues through Media (EIIM), University of Virginia.
2006. "Neoliberal Policy and HIV Transmission in Africa." Presentation to the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Anchorage, Alaska.
2006. "Narratives of Development: Colonizing the Histories of the Poor." HNGR Online. HNGR: Wheaton. [http://www.wheaton.edu/HNGR/resources/jason_hickel.html]
2005. "Deadly Inequalities: The Political Economy of AIDS in Swaziland." WVS Circular. World Vision Swaziland: Manzini.
2003. "Beyond Dispossession: Power, Place, and Poverty in Nagaland, India." AIDA Circular. Agency for Integral Development Action: Dimapur.