The Forge | Activists Say: Ruth Wilson Gilmore @TheForgeJHB | Uploaded July 2021 | Updated October 2024, 7 hours ago.
“Thinking about organised abandonment should bring us to consider how capital (large and small) and the state (municipal or greater) work together to raise barriers to some kinds of people and lower them to others. Organised abandonment produces the experience of having been forgotten or left out”.
Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Organised abandonment, as defined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, helps us unpack the extent of structured inequalities during all periods in South Africa – colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, as well as the extent of abandonment experienced by the impoverished and working-class people. The stark levels of income and racial inequalities in South Africa contribute to this organised abandonment, leading to unequal access to rights, freedoms and life possibilities for the many. Organised abandonment inhibits equalities and intensifies capitalism.
To unpack all of this, The Forge spoke to Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore on the following issues:
Racial capitalism
Unfreedom and labour
Her caution against always reciting vulnerability as a way to persuade people in to action
Organised abandonment
“Thinking about organised abandonment should bring us to consider how capital (large and small) and the state (municipal or greater) work together to raise barriers to some kinds of people and lower them to others. Organised abandonment produces the experience of having been forgotten or left out”.
Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Organised abandonment, as defined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, helps us unpack the extent of structured inequalities during all periods in South Africa – colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, as well as the extent of abandonment experienced by the impoverished and working-class people. The stark levels of income and racial inequalities in South Africa contribute to this organised abandonment, leading to unequal access to rights, freedoms and life possibilities for the many. Organised abandonment inhibits equalities and intensifies capitalism.
To unpack all of this, The Forge spoke to Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore on the following issues:
Racial capitalism
Unfreedom and labour
Her caution against always reciting vulnerability as a way to persuade people in to action
Organised abandonment
