Inclusive Dualism Labour-intensive Development, Decent Work, and Surplus Labour in Southern Africa

W. Arthur Lewis, the founding father of development economics, proposed a dualist model of economic development in which 'surplus' (predominantly under-employed) labour shifted from lower to higher productivity work. In practice, historically, this meant that labour was initially drawn out of subsistence agriculture into low-wage, labour-intensive manufacturing, including in clothing production, before shifting into higher-wage work. This development strategy has become unfashionable. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) worries that low-wage, labour-intensive industry promises little more than an impoverishing 'race to the bottom'. Inclusive Dualism: Labour-intensive Development, Decent Work, and Surplus Labour in Southern Africa argues that decent work fundamentalism, that is the promotion of higher wages and labour productivity at the cost of lower-wage job destruction, is a utopian vision with potentially dystopic consequences for countries with high open unemployment, many of which are in Southern Africa.

Using the South African clothing industry as a case study Inclusive Dualism argues that decent work fundamentalism ignores the inherently differentiated character of industry resulting in the unnecessary destruction of labour-intensive jobs and the bifurcation of society into highly-paid, high-productivity insiders and low-paid or unemployed outsiders. It demonstrates the broader relevance of the South Africa case, examining the growth in surplus labour across Africa. It shows that low- and high-productivity firms can co-exist, and challenges the notion that a race to the bottom is inevitable. Inclusive Dualism instead favours multi-pronged development strategies that prioritise labour-intensive job creation as well as facilitating productivity growth elsewhere without destroying jobs.

Nicoli Nattrass, Professor of Economics, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa,Jeremy Seekings, Professor of Political Studies and Sociology, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Nicoli Nattrass is Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town. She writes extensively on welfare, development, and public policy in South and Southern Africa, and has published numerous articles and books focusing on the political economy of inequality and health in South Africa, and on the interface between science and society. She is a regular Visiting Professor at Yale University, and is Co-Director of the Institute for Communities and Wildlife in Africa at the University of Cape Town, where her research focuses on the socio-economic determinants of human-wildlife conflict and on the role of science in policy making. She is the author of The Political Economy of South Africa (OUP, 1990) The Moral Economy of AIDs in South Africa (CUP, 2004), and Policy, Politics, and Poverty in South Africa (with Jeremy Seeking, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Jeremy Seekings is Professor of Political Studies and Sociology at the University of Cape Town. He writes extensively on welfare, development, and public policy in South and Southern Africa, and is a regular Visiting Professor at Yale University. He is the author of Policy, Politics, and Poverty in South Africa (with Nicoli Nattrass Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Macroeconomics Simplified: An Introduction to Keynesian and Neo-Classical Macroeconomic Systems (Sage, 2014), and (with Nicoli Nattrass) Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa (Yale University Press, 2005).