Banca de DEFESA: Daniel Mendonça Lage da Cruz
Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.STUDENT : Daniel Mendonça Lage da Cruz
DATE: 15/05/2024
TIME: 09:00
LOCAL: ZOOM
TITLE:
Give a Girl a Job
Reflections on Ethnography, Money, and Suffering among South African Women
KEY WORDS:
This Dissertation examines the largest cash transfer program in South Africa, the
child support grant (CSG), focusing mainly on the perspective of seven beneficiaries - all
pregnant at an early age - and three of their children. A quarter century after its inception,
the CSG’s health, educational, social and economic outcomes have been demonstrated by
abundant research. To a lesser extent, so has its insufficiency. This notwithstanding,
influential scholars have proposed a new era of cash transfers as a substitute for labour-
based patterns of livelihood and citizenship. Drawing on three periods of presential
fieldwork and eight months of remote research, I argue that historical struggles for liberty
and labour interwove, laid profound roots within Black commoners, and continue to
inform their desiderata and standards of legitimacy. Like fertility, presence and sharing,
liberty and labour remain paramount values in South Africa, part and parcel of its moral
infrastructure. The ultimate grip these values have over concrete lives, including the
pleasure and suffering they inspire, can only be grasped by a social anthropology attentive
to what Marcel Mauss once called disciplines nourricières (law, morals, and political
economy). In a more prospective vein, I also argue that psychoanalysis can help
ethnographers deal with interlocutors affected by poverty and other forms of social
violence - gender-based, above all.
PAGES: 379
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Antropologia
SUMMARY:
This Dissertation examines the largest cash transfer program in South Africa, the
child support grant (CSG), focusing mainly on the perspective of seven beneficiaries - all
pregnant at an early age - and three of their children. A quarter century after its inception,
the CSG’s health, educational, social and economic outcomes have been demonstrated by
abundant research. To a lesser extent, so has its insufficiency. This notwithstanding,
influential scholars have proposed a new era of cash transfers as a substitute for labour-
based patterns of livelihood and citizenship. Drawing on three periods of presential
fieldwork and eight months of remote research, I argue that historical struggles for liberty
and labour interwove, laid profound roots within Black commoners, and continue to
inform their desiderata and standards of legitimacy. Like fertility, presence and sharing,
liberty and labour remain paramount values in South Africa, part and parcel of its moral
infrastructure. The ultimate grip these values have over concrete lives, including the
pleasure and suffering they inspire, can only be grasped by a social anthropology attentive
to what Marcel Mauss once called disciplines nourricières (law, morals, and political
economy). In a more prospective vein, I also argue that psychoanalysis can help
ethnographers deal with interlocutors affected by poverty and other forms of social
violence - gender-based, above all.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externo à Instituição - JOHN SYDNEY SHARP - PRETORIA
Externa à Instituição - Elizabete Ribeiro Albernaz - WITS
Interna - 1479511 - JULIANA BRAZ DIAS
Presidente - 6404659 - LUIS ROBERTO CARDOSO DE OLIVEIRA
Interno - 2436465 - LUIZ EDUARDO DE LACERDA ABREU