ABSTRACT

Sociological enquiries start from questions or puzzles. My puzzles began in a discussion with the late Johann Hamman at a conference in Wageningen in 1989 (Williams 1991). How did agricultural labour markets work in the wine industry in the absence of pass laws to control and canalise labour to meet the needs of farmers and mining companies? This led to further questions. How did a producers’ cooperative rather than a state marketing board regulate the industry? What were the relations between the regulation of markets for wine and the forms of labour?