Southern Futures: Thinking through Emerging Markets Ravinder Kaur in Conversation with Keith Hart and John Comaroff

At the turn of the second millennium, the sign of the South underwent a dramatic reconfiguration. It no longer stands for just debt, deprivation, and dystopia in the eyes of the world. It is also seen as an emerging market—a place of hope, optimism, and possibilities, even the future of capitalism. Shaped in manifold contradictions, the South inheres both tantalizing visions of limitless economic growth and vast reserves of yet “untapped” natural resources and, at the same time, environmental damage, eroding infrastructures, violent inequalities, and the increasing disposability of human life. The South represents a moment of uncertainty in the history of capitalism that brings the human condition itself into question. This conversation addresses the contradictions and indeterminacy, difficulties and possibilities, and the uncertain futures that might await both the South and the North alike.