Faking it or making it: the politics of consumption and the precariousness of social mobility in South Africa

Abstract

This article critically explores the complex and contradictory meanings attached to conspicuous consumption in an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg. It examines why un(der)employed young people, especially young Black men, view the trappings of wealth in their midst and dismiss them as ‘fake’. The article shows how the widespread concern with ‘faking it’ indexes the unstable links between consumption, status, and class differentiation in a time of generalized economic insecurity. Accordingly, it maintains that the accusation of ‘fakery’ is not only about jealousy and the dangers of being seen to accumulate money without redistributing it, but also a product of the precariousness that characterizes young people's lives. Ultimately, the article shows how consumption affords a unique window into the values, aspirations, and anxieties of young un(der)employed Black men in a context where ‘proper’ pathways to social mobility are, for most, completely out of reach.

Ironies of accomplishment: negative aspiration, economic resentment and the myth of the middle class on Nairobi’s new urban outskirts

“…Ferguson 1999: 82–6). Hannah Dawson’s (2023) research in urban South Africa has shown how discourses about ‘fake’ wealth reflect the image of success made possible by conspicuous consumption – having a Mercedes-Benz car, for instance – and the way in which aspiration itself is thought of in terms of a material culture of display (cf. Newell 2012).…”