Lecture Monday looks at changes in child poverty in South Africa

Medical anthropologist Susan Levine of the University of Cape Town will give a talk on Monday looking at how the socio-economic changes in South Africa since the end of apartheid have affected the lives of poor children in that country.

Right: Susan Levine

Levine will discuss her paper, “The Race of Nimble Fingers: Changing Patterns of Child Labour in South Africa”, on Nov. 8 from 2:30 to 4:30pm in Founders College Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College, Keele campus. This is a free event and everyone is welcome to attend.

The paper will highlight the ways in which new child labour legislation has had the unintended consequence of deepening chronic hunger and childhood poverty on food-rich farms where children formerly participated as seasonal or part-time workers. Drawing on more than 10 years of ethnographic research from 1996 to 2008 in the Western Cape, Levine will demonstrate, through a focus on childhood poverty, the failings of democracy in the post-apartheid era.

A senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, Levine has for more than a decade researched extensively on child labour in South Africa. She is also a visual anthropologist and film theorist who is actively engaged in film work at the university and the larger Cape Town community.

The event is sponsored by York’s Department of Anthropology, the Faculty of Education and Founders College.

For more information, contact York Professor Daniel Yon at ext. 8806 or dyon@edu.yorku.ca.