Neoliberalisation and Regulatory Restructuring in South Africa’s Commercial Agriculture

Gilton Klerck ()
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Gilton Klerck: Rhodes University

A chapter in Capital Penetration and the Peasantry in Southern and Eastern Africa, 2022, pp 25-53 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The notion of ‘neoliberalism’ has been widely deployed to describe the resurgence of market-orientated institutional shifts and policy realignments across the world economy since the 1980s. Following the initial analysis of these trends, much attention has been devoted to their conceptualisation. While the meaning and tractability of ‘neoliberalism’ continue to be topics of intense debate, recent theoretical work in the field has produced several important insights that have significant implications for empirical research on regulatory restructuring at all spatial scales. Against the monolithic conceptualisations that prevail in popular and academic accounts, the notion of ‘variegated neoliberalisation’ emphasises the uneven, hybrid, and unstable character of neoliberalising forms of regulatory transformation. By substituting an end-state view of neoliberalism with emergent and tendential processes of neoliberalisation, the dramatic changes in South Africa’s agricultural policy and practice that have unfolded since the 1980s may be cast in a new light. In particular, we explore the apparent paradox between extensively liberalised product markets and highly regulated labour markets in post-apartheid commercial agriculture.

Keywords: Neoliberalisation; Regulatory restructuring; Agri-food value chains; South African commercial agriculture; Agrarian minimum wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-030-89824-3_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-89824-3_2

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