| Theoretical tension exists in the literature dealing with histories of agrarian change over the role of agency within increasingly integrated global/regional markets and systems of regulation. This study enters the global/local debate through an examination of small grower production in the South African sugar industry. Here, restructuring has been an ongoing concern since 1983, but it is only in the last ten years that changes in the national and international economy have propelled the industry toward a process of radical transformation. For over 50,000 registered small-scale black cane growers, restructuring will have a negative impact, leading to further impoverishment and disillusionment with the new democratic dispensation. At the local level these dynamics have produced two distinct periods of labour activity: the first, from 1970 to 1990, involved struggles for greater inclusion and representation in industry associations, and the second, from 1990 to the present, involves attempts to re-assert producer autonomy and distinctiveness. How these labour politics are articulated with larger structural forces is made clear through the employment of Michael Burawoy's Gramscian inspired notion of production regimes. |
