Edward Webster & Lynford Dor 
Recasting Workers’ Power 
Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age

Much of the debate on the future of work has focused on responses to technological trends in the Global North, with little evidence on how these trends are impacting work and workers in the Global South. Drawing on a rich selection of ethnographic studies of precarious work in Africa, this innovative book discusses how globalisation and digitalisation are drivers for structural change and examines their implications for labour. Bringing together global labour studies and inequality studies, it explores the role of digital technology in new business models, and ways in which digitalisation can be harnessed for counter mobilisation by the new worker.

About the author

Edward Webster (1942-2024) was Distinguished Research Professor at the Southern Centre of Inequality Studies and the founder and past director of the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Professor Webster was the recipient of the first South African Sociological Association (SASA) lifetime award for his contribution to the academic study of the sociology of work and labour in South Africa. Lynford Dor is a Doctoral Researcher at KU Leuven’s Centre for Sociological Research (CESO) and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg’s SARCHI Chair in Social Change (CSC).