Neoliberal accumulation and class: a tribute to Gavin Williams

Abstract

The articles in this collection emerged as presentations made at a conference in July 2010 which marked the retirement from Oxford of Gavin Williams, one of the founding editors of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and today a member of its International Advisory Board. Conference papers celebrated his several contributions, covering themes that resonated with his best known work, and in several cases that had been inspired by him – as some of the published articles here make explicit. The countries they focus on are South Africa and Nigeria, which are recognised as the geographical centres of gravity of his work, but extend, characteristically, to broader issues of political economy, such as privatisation (Pitcher) and overall development trajectories in Africa as compared with East Asia (Meagher). To set the scene for these five articles and to provide an overview of the conference as a whole and to the broad sweep of Gavin's lifetime contribution, not least to this journal, the following paragraphs are based on remarks I made to launch the conference.