South Africa’s cash transfer program has been hailed as a success. But as our book of the week details, this form of financial inclusion turned grants into collateral, feeding lenders while the state preserved scarcity. By @erintorkelson.bsky.social on @dukepress.bsky.social buff.ly/5gvCo0g

that’s a helluva way to put $1T in perspective!

I’ve been feeling this so much lately, but it’s still shocking to see in print. Also… the 1970s cohort?!? As if we needed more proof the end of the social welfare state is killing us.

Save 40% on #NewBook "Predatory Welfare" by @erintorkelson.bsky.social, which draws on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork to explore how South Africa’s direct cash transfer program has become a means of continued upward wealth redistribution despite promises otherwise. buff.ly/wpOrvdc

I started working on this project with the Black Sash in 2016. I can’t believe that a decade later, the book is a real, material object in the world. I’m so very proud of it and I’d love to speak to your classes and departments! And, @dukepress.bsky.social is having a sale!

I’ve got a book coming out! Check out the introduction online now!

Our new Spring 2026 catalog features a terrific lineup of #NewBooks by @proteinthebook.bsky.social, @erintorkelson.bsky.social, @scottsvisor, @crysbaik.bsky.social, and many more! Check it out now: buff.ly/ToBoRB7

I should start a column called: why is Trump mad at South Africa today? Because we won't let him bring Kenyans on volunteer visas to work (not volunteer!) at a processing site for Afrikaner 'refugees.' The US created a precarious immigrant workforce in SA to vet immigrants who are not precarious.

As Trump bans US officials from attending the G20 in South Africa due to ‘Afrikaner genocide,’ he can only find 3 Afrikaner ‘refugees’ willing to move to the US! www.news24.com/citypress/ne...

Trump invited a billionaire and two golfers into the Oval Office to scold the sitting South African president, after showing a reality tv-style montage about a genocide that doesn’t exist. I guess this is US diplomacy now.

This meeting is about genocide, but not the mythological “white genocide” it’s pretending to be about. It’s about the US punishing South Africa for taking Israel to the ICJ.

Send me your recommendations!! I have an honors student writing about young South Africans who try but fail to make competitive football leagues & how they figure out what to do next in a context of high unemployment. There must be great books about this, but it’s a little out of my area! Thanks!

I wanted to love Raoul Peck’s film on Ernest Cole, but found it disorienting that he did not hire a South African to consult on LaKeith Stanfield’s voice over. Mispronouncing names of people and places - Mamelodi, Soweto, Basotho - sometimes to the point of unrecognizability, is careless.

“When the powerful punish the principled, we glimpse the unmasked face of empire. Donald Trump’s vindictive executive order denying aid to South Africa — punishment for its support of Palestine and pursuit of land reform — offers precisely such a moment of clarity.”

What got Ambassador Rasool expelled from the US? Nuance & patience. He said: -how SA responds to the US "demands perspective" -Biden wanted SA to be removed from AGOA due to our "geopolitical stances" (i.e. Palestine) -we need to watch how Americans push back against Trump's EOs before acting

Facts about the “white genocide myth” in SA: - Farm murder stats include black people killed on farms, not just white people - Most farm murders are robberies and have no genocidal intent - White people make up 9% of pop, but only 1.8% of murders www.splcenter.org/resources/ha...

Burawoy taught the best graduate seminar ever, where theory-making was deeply collaborative. He paired up students who worked in different places, on different things, with different theoretical commitments and made us think our work in relation to one another. No one could stretch theory like him.

So proud to work at UWC!

Great idea! Our students at the University of the Western Cape (in South Africa) did this two weeks ago! It would be cool to see it travel!

Meanwhile… the UA President still has his job after a $240 mil shortfall, including a $54 mil loan to the athletics department, the purchase of a shady for-profit online college, and a $1.7 mil upgrade to his basketball suit. azluminaria.org/2023/11/16/u...

One more reason to love Cape Town!

"We join the world in expressing horror at the war crimes being committed in Palestine through targeting civilians, civilian infrastructure, UN premises & other vulnerable targets. These experiences remind us of our experiences as black South Africans living under apartheid.” Minister Naledi Pandor

Calling all geographers!!

Just joined the great bird migration. I'm here now.