Ari Sitas

Ari Sitas (born 1952 in Limassol, Cyprus) is a South African sociologist, writer, dramatist and civic activist.

Background Sitas studied sociology and political philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and was one of the founder members of the celebrated Junction Avenue Theatre Company. Based at the Industrial Organizational and Labour Studies (IOLS) department, he became a pivotal intellectual in the anti-apartheid struggle and worked actively with trade unions and community organisations. He was key to the explosion of cultural movements and organisations in the late Apartheid period and was one of the most important leaders in negotiations leading to a transitional cultural dispensation. He has been recognised as both one of the most defining poets of his own generation and a creative, though quite unorthodox, sociologist.

Early work His PhD work and a number of defining essays show a sense for qualitative research and pointed exposition. Most of his early essays are all about the emergence of an anti-apartheid labour movement and its creativity. His experimental text, “Theoretical Parables” (2004), is both a critique of post-modernism and a celebration of language and narrative. His main argument is that to construct a sociology of "civic virtue" one has to theorise "with", rather than "about", people and, therefore, the use of parables that are embedded in popular cultures is presented as a way into co-theorizing. It has its devoted supporters and detractors. What has received attention is his notion that there is always an asymmetry between institutions and their subjects and an ever-present recoiling and refracting agency in people: a source of creativity, dissonance and resistance. The study focused on the experiences, historical and contemporary, of two generations – fifty-year-olds who were in the prime of their youth in the early 1970s and their “children” who were born after 1974. The study he conducted, as well as his interventions, marked a paradigm shift on Cypriot sociological thinking, as well as peace thinking in general: whilst recognising that “ethnicity matters”, it contextualises it but most importantly it relativises this particular “hard variable” as one in six. This allows for a shift forward the debate on the institutional, structural and process-related factors across and beyond an essentialised and reductionist notion of ethnic community. Based on observations the only 'hard variables' that were found to be significant were class/stratification; ethnicity; gender; age; religion; and refugee status. In terms of the 'softer' and 'experiential variables' – what seemed very significant were consumption of cultural, media-linked and symbolic goods; educational experiences; civic involvement; contact with and exposure to cultural 'others'; and traumatic experiences of war and violence. The study argues that the distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' variables is important in sociological work. he 'hard' variables denote those situations that people can do very little about, i.e. they are born in or are defined by them. The 'soft' variables are experiential and involve degrees of choice, personality, and social character. The full potential of this sort of thinking is yet to be realised: we can begin to deconstruct ‘essentialised’ and ‘ethnicised’ categories on social thinking about the division of Cyprus that offers a better understanding on the potential for both resolution of the problem and societal reconciliation. Sitas went on to produce a groundbreaking theoretical piece on the ethics of reconciliation that was recently published in South Africa.

Select bibliography Voices that reason, by Ari Sitas Black Mamba Rising: South African Worker Poets in Struggle, by Alfred Temba Qabula, Mi S'dumo Hlatshwayo, Nise Malange, Ari Sitas William Zungu: A Xmas Story, by Ari Sitas Slave Trades, by Ari Sitas Towards a Postcolonial Sociology? A Conversation with Prof. Ari Sitas, The JMC Review, Vol.1, July 2016