Virtual Book Discussion by Hannah Dawson

Abstract

Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins (Wits Press, 2025) explores the dynamic everyday life-making strategies of young men in Zandspruit, a sprawling informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg. In many ways Zandspruit typifies the precariousness of life within South Africa, where two-thirds of young people lack waged employment. However, rather than seeing Zandspruit as dumping ground, Hannah J. Dawson calls for an integrated understanding of the complex linkages between people’s lives and livelihoods, and the multifaceted sociopolitical landscape of urban settlements. Read more

Bionote

Prof. Hannah Dawson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Anthropology and Development Studies department at the University of Johannesburg. She has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, and an MPhil in International Development from the same institution. Her research grapples with the social, economic, and political shifts stemming from mass unemployment, and the ways in which the future of work and welfare is being imagined – and transformed – in South(ern) Africa. She has approached this through a range of projects, including a study on how young people are making lives and livelihoods outside of wage employment, digital technologies and the changing nature of work, and popular demands and policy-making around more expansive cash transfers.