September 19, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—South African economist Francis Wilson will give a talk titled “Halfway There: The Long Walk to Freedom and Economic Justice in South Africa” at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 16, in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. Sponsored by the President’s Office at Amherst, Wilson’s talk will be free and open to the public.
Wilson has taught for more than 30 years in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town, where he founded and for many years directed the Southern African Labour & Development Research Unit (Saldru). Since 2001 he has been the director of Data First Resource Unit (for Information Research and Scientific Training) in the Centre for Social Science Research. A former visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Wilson in 2001 became chair of the International Social Science Council’s Scientific Committee of the International Comparative Research Program on Poverty.
The author of a number of books, including Labour in the South African Gold Mines (1972) and Uprooting Poverty: The South African Challenge (with Mamphela Ramphele, 1989), Wilson is co-editor of Poverty Reduction: What Role for the State in Today’s Globalised Economy? (with Nazneen Kanji and Einar Braathen, 2001). Recent essays include “Globalization: A View from the South,” in Beyond Racism: Race and Inequality in Brazil, South Africa and the United States (2001), “Brazil & South Africa; Minerals & Migrants: How the Mining Industry has Shaped South Africa” in Daedalus (Winter, 2001), “Employment, Education and the Economy” in South Africa Survey 2001/2002 (2001), “Understanding the Past to Reshape the Future: Problems of South Africa’s Transition” in The Economic Future in Historical Perspective (2003) and “Anglican Reflections from a South African Economist” in Philosophical and Spiritual Perspectives on Decent Work (2004).
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