The Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity (ccrri), the School of Development Studies (SDS), and the History and African Studies seminar are launching and jointly hosting an Occasional Critical Studies seminar.

The objective of the seminar is, inter alia, to build inter-disciplinary collaboration across the University, and to stimulate the intellectual environment on the campus.

We are pleased to launch this initiative with a seminar by eminent economic anthropologist Professor Keith Hart. The details of the first seminar are:

Seminar Presenter: Prof Keith Hart
Topic: Africa's Urban Revolution in the 20th Century
Date: Monday, 8 March 2010
Time: 12h30 - 14h00
Venue: Shepstone 12, Howard College Campus, UKZN

Keith Hart lives in Durban and in Paris, where he has recently entered a number of collaborations with French intellectuals. He is Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London and Honorary Professor in both the School of Development Studies, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria. He started out studying classical languages and literature and went on to explore Atlantic society from the point of view of Africans in West Africa, North America, the Caribbean, Britain, France and South Africa. Now he contemplates the Indian Ocean from a beach flat in Durban.

Prof Hart has taught in ten universities on both sides of the Atlantic, for the longest time in Cambridge, where he was Director of the African Studies Centre. He has worked as a consultant, journalist, publisher and gambler. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology, especially about money. His life is now defined by the poles of solitary writing and world travel. In this he is sustained by his family and by the virtual social network in his laptop.

The attached paper forms the basis of the seminar, although, in the seminar itself, Prof Hart will focus his comments more on South Africa's role in Africa and less on the informal economy. The seminar and discussion will proceed on the basis that seminar participants have read the paper.