Poverty and Inequality: Diagnosis, Prognosis and Responses(State of the Nation)

About the Book

Can the interconnected problems of poverty and inequality in South Africa be explained in ways that are distinctive from those that apply in other contexts and countries? How can efforts to solve these problems fruitfully move forward? Is taxation on wealth the answer? Addressing these and related questions, the authors provide a textured understanding of the multiple issues involved.

Table of Contents:
1 Poverty and inequality in South Africa: The state of the discussion in 2018

Part 1: South Africa And The World

2 South African inequalities in a global perspective

3 Poverty and inequality: South Africa in a continental context

4 South Africa and the struggle for international equality

Part 2: Politics, Ethics And The State

5 Post-apartheid inequality and the long shadow of history

6 Poverty and rights: Philosophical, historical and jurisprudential perspectives

7 Realising socioeconomic rights: A reconceptualised constitutional dialogue

8 ‘Accounting’ for the capabilities and social value of migrants: The distance to openness

Part 3: Economy

9 Wealth taxation as an instrument to reduce wealth inequality in South Africa

10 Tradition meets modernity: Bafokeng approaches to overcoming poverty and inequality

11 Indebtedness and aspiration in South Africa

Part 4 Society (The Social Economy)

12 The National Development Plan as a response to poverty and inequality in South Africa

13 Upgrading informal trading: Impacts on livelihoods and cohesion in Khayelitsha

14 Abstract human right or material practice? Academic freedom in an unequal society

15 Beyond the campus gate: Higher education and place-based development in South Africa

About the Author :
Prof Crain Soudien is the Chief Executive Officer of the Human Sciences Research Council and formerly a Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cape Town where he remains an emeritus professor in Education and African Studies. His publications in the areas of social difference, culture, education policy, comparative education, educational change, public history and popular culture include three books, three edited collections and over 190 articles, reviews, reports and book chapters. He was educated at the University of Cape Town and Unisa and holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Prof Ingrid Woolard is the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences and Professor of Economics at Stellenbosch University. Ingrid’s areas of research interest include the measurement of poverty and inequality, unemployment, social protection and fiscal policy. She is a Research Affiliate at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town, a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labour, a Senior Research Associate at UNU-WIDER in Helsinki and a Research Associate of the Commitment to Equity Institute. She is strongly committed to providing research-led policy advice - from 2008 to 2014 she served on the Employment Conditions Commission and from 2013-2018 she served on the Davis Tax Committee.

Vasu Reddy is a Professor of Sociology, and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. His research interests include human development and identity marker issues (notably genders, sexualities, HIV and AIDS, inequalities and social justice). He has published in these fields in both local and international journals, as well as in co-edited volumes and co-authored monographs. He previously worked as an executive director at the Human Sciences Research Council, and at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Some publications are Care in Context: Transnational Gender Perspectives (with Stephan Meyer, Tammy Shefer & Thenjiwe Meyiwa, 2014; HSRC Press), Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship and Activism (with Zethu Matebeni & Surya Monro, 2018; Routledge) and Queer Kinship: South African perspectives on the sexual politics of family-making and belonging (with Tracy Morison and Ingrid Lynch, 2018, UNISA Press & Routledge).