Hosted by the Department of Political Studies and Philosophy, The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil takes a close look at making sense of transformative social policy and is part of the Black Political Thought Speaker Series.
Join Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Madalitso Zililo Phiri, as he explores South Africa's and Brazil's social policy architectures which attempt to address the residues of institutional poverty, unemployment, and inequality. Dr. Madalitso Zililo Phiri examines the extent to which the social policy of South Africa and Brazil are leading towards a realization of a new social contract. This presentation departs from studying welfare regimes from Eurocentric lenses and advocates for a transformative social policy. Drawing on interviews with social assistance beneficiaries and policy makers, as well as quantitative public datasets, this presentation argues that the commodification of social provisioning threatens the imagination of a new social compact.
About the Speaker
Dr. Madalitso Zililo Phiri is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, University of Johannesburg (UJ), South Africa, is a critical Black Studies scholar of political economy of development, social policy, historical sociology, and Black Radical Thought. Phiri pursues a research program of three complementary lines of inquiry: comparative social policy in South Africa and Brazil, race and the political economy of development in Africa, and Black Radical Thought. He is a Pan-Africanist: Malawian citizen by birth, a South African permanent resident, with a transnational upbringing having lived in Mozambique for over ten years.
