Privilege and Precarity: Public Scripts and Self-Censorship in Shaping South African Social Science

Abstract

South African social science's close relationship with politics and policy have long provided a source of vitality and intellectual direction. Although one of the field's greatest strengths, intimacy with socio-political and economic transformations engenders solipsism and stagnation. Ironically, it also compromises scholars' political autonomy and intellectual ethics by blinding analysts to the emerging socio-political formations which will shape the country's future. As demands for decolonisation and academic transformation continue, the pressures for political alignment will only grow. Drawing on over a decade of inquiry into the formal and informal governance of human mobility into and within South Africa, this article reveals the contours of such isolation and conceptual complacency. From this we can find direction for satisfying the "dual imperative:" contributing to progressive policy while maintaining scholarly autonomy. While not disengaging from politics, we must work to...