Luke Sinwell

Luke Sinwell is professor of sociology at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He has published widely on popular protest and radical theories and practices of participatory governance in South Africa. Luke’s work highlights the role of ordinary people in social change and he believes that separating a theory from practice undermines the potential for knowledge to contribute to transformation. He is a former general secretary of the South African Sociological Association (SASA). In 2023, he produced Our Resistance, Our History (directed by Harzard Tsepo Makoro), which vividly captures twenty years of struggle in one of the most defiant informal settlements in Johannesburg, South Africa – Thembelihle, highlighting the promises and pitfalls of grassroots democracy. The documentary is based on Luke’s latest book: The Participation Paradox: Between Bottom-up and Top-down Development in South Africa (McGill-Queens University Press and UJ Press: 2023).