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Over the past few decades, as restless capital has moved about the world looking for cheaper production sites, labor campaigns have looked across borders for support. In a world where threats of capital mobility and outsourcing strategies are used to push wages and working conditions ever lower, local activists have called on international allies to insist that multinationals improve the treatment of workers—especially in the developing world, where local governments often seem unwilling or unable to protect their citizens at work and where workers on their own have little leverage.

ABSTRACTMany discussions of how to improve working conditions around the world — especially in poor and developing regions — suggest that transnational activists could 'name and shame' employers, using independent monitors and the threat of consumer boycotts to push international brands to monitor conditions in their suppliers around the world. Drawing on a comparative study of independent monitoring in South Africa, India and Guatemala, this article suggests that 'voluntary' monitoring systems may have limited impact, as non‐governmental groups involved in monitoring discover they are dependent on employers for access to worksites and for funding. Further, in focusing on issues that will attract international consumer attention, independent monitoring schemes may weaken local workers' ability to bargain on their own behalf.

In this essay in the special section Mobilization Forum: Awkward Movements, the dilemma of awkward strategies, such as violence, is explored in terms of the conflicted motivations to protect a movement from repression, as well as their image. Striking the balance within that tension is exemplified in two versions of a personal narrative of fieldwork experiences with the congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in South Africa at the height of the State of Emergency. Analysis of the experience highlights four points usually glossed over that reveal the protective & strategic motivations behind the silences. Although the author does not feel the four silenced details change the conclusions drawn from the experience, questions of researcher relationship to the portrayal of the movements awkward moments indicates the need to determine how to tell when protection slides over in dishonesty, & leads to active misrepresentation of the character of social movements. J. Harwell

Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization and civil rights struggle rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators and clandestine links between open popular groups and guerrilla networks. This article explores some of the reasons why researchers might avoid discussing armed struggle, including some discomfort around its morality. Then it considers how more systematic investigation of armed struggle might change our understanding of the anti-apartheid movement, including its legacies for post-apartheid politics. Finally, it suggests that these questions may be relevant for social movement theories.

Echoing a general silence in social movement theory, discussions of South Africa's antiapartheid movement tend to ignore the impact of armed struggle on mobilization. The antiapartheid movement is usually described in terms of mass mobilization & civil rights struggles rather than as an anticolonial movement involving military attacks by guerrilla infiltrators & clandestine links between open popular groups & guerrilla networks. This article explores some of the reasons why researchers might avoid discussing armed struggle, including some discomfort around its morality. It then considers how more systematic investigation of armed struggle might change our understanding of the antiapartheid movement, including its legacies for postapartheid politics. Finally, it suggests that these questions may be relevant for social movement theories. 41 References. Adapted from the source document.

▪ Abstract  For most of the past 50 years, South Africa served as the outlier in sociological discussions of racial inequality: From the late 1940s, when most of the world was moving away from strict racial classification and segregation, apartheid provided social scientists with their most extreme example of the dynamics of racial segregation and exclusion.Yet while apartheid South Africa was unique, social scientists have also used it in comparative studies to explore the underlying dynamics of racial capitalism: Insights from South Africa have offered sociologists new ways to think about migrant labor; the construction of ethnicity; racial exclusion and colonial relationships; relationships between business, white workers and capitalist states; and oppositional social movements. With the end of legal apartheid, South Africa is poised to move into a new position in the annals of social science. From being an outlier, it is increasingly used an an exemplar, in discussions of democratic transitions, development strategies and globalization, and post-colonial transformations. Still to come, perhaps, are comparative studies that draw on insights from other parts of the world to re-examine aspects of South African society that have been left relatively unexplored—ironically including issues around racial identities and changing patterns of race relations as South Africa constructs a new non-racial democracy.

It has become a common place in the late twentieth century to remark on the persistence of difference and inequality among workers; as we all know, racial capitalism has been more likely to perpetuate visible distinctions between workers than to erase them. This recreation of difference among workers is true along lines of age and gender, but it is perhaps most evident in terms of race: The daily experiences of most workers have not been colorblind at any time in capitalism's history. As many analysts have pointed out, instead of the homogenized proletariat united by a common economic interest predicted by most early-twentieth century social theories, racial capitalism has been composed of institutions and relationships which are built on, and which recreate, racial differences within the working class—differences that continue to shape and be reflected in workers' understanding of themselves and others.