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Rupert Taylor (born 1958) is a professor of Political Studies, formerly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 1987-2013. He was educated at the progressive independent Dartington Hall School in Devon and completed a BA degree in Politics and Government at the University of Kent in 1980, followed by an MSc at the London School of Economics in 1981 and a PhD in Sociology at Kent, completed in 1986. He was formerly a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the New School for Social Research in New York, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Politics, Queen's University Belfast.
Taylor's research interests include political violence, transitions to democracy and non-governmental organisations. Taylor has written widely in the areas of South African politics and the Northern Ireland conflict. He has been critical of consociationalism as a strategy of conflict management. His publications include articles in African Affairs, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Peace and Change, The Political Quarterly, Race and Class, The Round Table, and TELOS. He has been editor of 'Politikon' and Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations.
As a Masters student at the London School of Economics, Taylor achieved, in 1981, the highest overall distinction grade for the degree. Taylor’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Kent highlighted the problems confronting Queen’s University Belfast in trying to maintain a liberal position in a deeply-divided society; and helped initiate the reform of sectarian employment practices in higher education in Northern Ireland. In 1984 his research findings were reported in the British and Irish media, and helped lead to a government enquiry through the Fair Employment Agency that resulted in new employment equity guidelines. Taylor’s doctoral research was acknowledged in John Whyte’s now classic study Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 1990).
Taylor’s scholarly career has centered around engagement with consociational theory. Taylor’s third-year undergraduate dissertation on the topic with John Burton (one of the leading International Relations scholars of his generation) was awarded first class. Later, through contact with Arend Lijphart in Johannesburg in the late 1980s, he engaged in a scholarly debate over the prospects for consociational democracy in South Africa – in particular through interrogating the meaning of ethnicity in consociational theory and through comparison with Northern Ireland.
Whilst a visiting research scholar at the New School for Research in New York (1993–94), Taylor developed – through participating in debates with Charles Tilly, Arthur Vidich, Ira Katznelson, Anthony Marx, amongst others – a deeper critique of the way in which political science has dealt with race and ethnicity (as expounded in the Ethnic and Racial Studies award winning paper). This led Taylor to develop further intellectual engagement with consociational scholars and to propose a social transformation theory as a more compelling way to bring about democratic peace in societies marked by racial and ethnic division - as expounded in his “Northern Ireland: Consociation or Social Transformation” chapter in John McGarry’s Northern Ireland and the Divided World (Oxford University Press, 2001). Today, Taylor’s position on consociationalism is widely-acknowledged in the political science literature on the Northern Ireland conflict and the South African transition from apartheid to democracy. A position consolidated with the recent publication of the edited volume on Consociational Theory (Routledge, 2009).
Taylor, along with Mark Shaw, was selected in 1996 to participate in a two-year international study of peace and conflict organizations in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and South Africa. This research programme was funded by the Apsen Institute and was conducted in collaboration with the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR). This research involved academics from Princeton University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, University of Ulster, Bethlehem University and was collectively presented at the ISTR bi-annual conference at the University of Geneva in 1998, resulting in the publication of Benjamin Gidron, Stanley N. Katz, and Yeheskel Hasenfeld (eds), Mobilizing for Peace (Oxford University Press, 2002). Taylor authored the chapter on South Africa. This book was the winner of the Virginia Hodgkinson, Independent Sector research prize (2003).
Taylor’s peer-reviewed papers on the causes of political violence in South Africa have been referred to in many international publications. Notably, his paper looking at the structural nature of political violence in KwaZulu-Natal in the post-apartheid years, published in African Affairs (2002) and the earlier Race and Class paper (1991) on township political violence. Richard Wilson in his book on The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2001) acknowledged that “Rupert Taylor came up with sophisticated theories of apartheid violence.” Taylor has also made a contribution to South African electoral studies, particularly through questioning the veracity of the dominant “racial census” approach to understanding voting behaviour in the 1994 and 1999 elections. Taylor has also written a number of papers on non-racialism in South Africa, and along with Mark Orkin (former executive director of the Human Sciences Research Council) wrote a substantial chapter on the racialization of social scientific research on South Africa that attracted a scholarly response in the South African Sociological Review. Taylor has also published two well-cited papers with Adam Habib (later appointed Vice-Chancellor of Wits University) on opposition politics and the state of the South African nonprofit sector.
In 2000 Taylor was appointed editor of the ISTR journal Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. As editor Taylor was responsible for taking this journal to a new major international publisher – Springer. As a result of Taylor’s editorial direction – as through holding international symposia and through commissioning high-profile special issues – the global academic visibility of Voluntas dramatically increased. It is now an ISA-rated journal and the leading journal that focuses on the scholarly study of the third sector, internationally. Taylor served as editor until 2009, and initiated and compiled an edited volume on Third Sector Research (Springer, 2010).
Taylor was placed on special leave by Wits University in 2013 following allegations of sexual harassment, which he disputed stating he was taking legal advice. He was subsequently dismissed from his position.
Selected publications
- “South Africa: Consociation or Democracy? ”. Telos 85 (Fall 1990). New York: Telos Press.
- "South Africa: Anti-Apartheid NGOs in Transition" with Adam Habib, Voluntas, 1999, Vol. 10, No. 1 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1021495821397
References
- Taylor, Rupert (2006). "The Belfast Agreement and the politics of consociationalism: A critique" (abstract). The Political Quarterly. 77 (2): 217–226. doi:10.1111/j.1467-923X.2006.00764.x.
- "Wits professor accused of sexual harassment put on leave". sabc.com. SABC News. 23 April 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- "Wits prof accused of sexual harassment placed on special leave". citypress.co.za. City Press (South Africa). 22 April 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- ^ Chauke, Amukelani (22 April 2013). "Professor frog-marched off Wits campus". BizCommunity Daily Industry News. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
- Louw, Poppy (6 September 2013). "Wits fires third 'sex pest'". The Times (South Africa). Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- Mtshali, Nontobeki (6 September 2013). "Wits fires third sex pest". Independent Online (South Africa). Retrieved 2 November 2013.