Despite the promise and optimism surrounding the post-apartheid transition, South African society continues to be highly racialised in its discourses, identities and practices, even within the very strategies that aim to change power relations and heal racialised divisions. Renowned for its brutal past practices, the wine industry in South Africa has long been associated with white power and black exploitation, and remains dogged by continuing allegations of poor working conditions and labour abuses. Through in-depth, longitudinal fieldwork, this book considers how different ethics interact and draws attention to the positive changes and continuing development challenges faced in South Africa. Situating practice at its heart, it brings a novel, everyday and micro-scale dimension to understandings of empowerment in the post-apartheid South African wine industry. It develops a critical analysis of the interplay between practice, as scaled and inherently spatial, and discourse to conceptualise how 'big' concepts such as empowerment are articulated, materialised and experienced at the ground level. Through this, it gives voices to the marginalised who experience 'empowerment', setting these within the context of their relations with the other stakeholders who shape this engagement. This book contributes to broader critical social science debates around ethical development and questions of power and empowerment in development interventions. This is critical to reducing the disconnection between policy aims and realities within development and empowerment initiatives, as well as enabling (ethical) commodities to be strategic in retaining their appeal throughout their networks.

This book examines the social dimension of sustainability in the wine industry. Social sustainability focuses on people and communities. Contributors explore topics such as philanthropy, poverty, natural disasters, communication, and wine tourism from a global perspective using research and case studies in developed and developing countries. This edited book provides researchers, academics, practitioners and students with varied perspectives of social sustainability in the global wine industry.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: A / 1.0, Emerson College (Integrated Marketing Communications), course: Marketing Management, language: English, abstract: The size of the global wine industry ranged from $130-$180 billion in the beginning of the twenty-first century with an average growth rate of 1-2% per year since 1994. In general this market is very fragmented, because no company has reached more than one per cent of global retail sales in 2001. In order to describe this industry it is necessary to separate between two different wine-markets, the ‘New World’ and the ‘Old World’. The international wine industry has been undergoing a significant restructuring. The ‘Old World’ producers such as Italy, France, Spain and Germany no longer dominate the global wine industry as they once did. No longer are the ‘New World’ producers such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and USA regarded with disrespect and underestimate. However, there are still great differences between the two worlds regarding consumption, production and innovation. France, Italy and Spain share alone 75 percent of the worldwide wine production and consumption. A significant increase of the ‘New World’ production could be noticed during the last two decades. According to the World Wine Statistics the wine production has increased considerable especially in the ‘New World’ countries, from the average of 1997-2000 and 2001, for example, Australia by 34.77%, China by 57.03% and South Africa by 15.78% (for details please see Appendix, Table 1). Furthermore, we can see an expansion of the vineyard acreage in the ‘New World’ countries. Australia, for instance, has increased its acreage from 1991 to 1999 by 89.23% and the United States by 13.39% (please see Appendix, Table 3). Another significant increase of the wine consumption can be noticed in China with 52.88% in 2001 vs. 1997-2000 (please see Appendix, Table 2). From 2002 to 2003 the Global Wine market has shown a total increase of only 0.2% and has presented 2.45 billion cases. These facts show the enormous growing competition in the wine industry. Especially the ‘New World’ producers were able to establish strong brands as well as to demonstrate a great wine quality through new technologies and intensive marketing. They are now taking market shares away from the ‘Old World’, which leads to the decline of the European wine market. In addition, it becomes harder to differentiate and emphasize this product. It is interesting to see how the table wine market is segmented.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, course: Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, language: English, abstract: Although South Africa was not very famous for its beverages, esp. its wines, for long times and has gained fame in recent years only, the heritage of its vine-growing culture goes back to the mid of the 17th century. European settlers, predominantly from The Netherlands, started to plant first seedlings in the Cape region. It was Jan van Riebeeck, founder of the Cape colony, who brought the seedlings along from Europe in 1655. Some four years later, the first South African wine was ready to be drunk. However, as the Dutch were not too experienced with viticulture, real development took place only when French Huguenots settled in that region in the end of the 17th century. In the mid of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, these wines (e.g. the very sweet Constantia wines) were very popular all around Europe, particularly in the royal houses. But afterwards, the demand shrank to nearly zero. In 1973, viticulture was resumed in the African country. However, the wines were boycotted by the rest of the world due to the Apartheid problems within the country. Only from 1990 onwards, South African wine industry is recovering and nowadays belongs to the so-called “New World wines”, which also include products from Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (California).