Rethinking Bundy: Land and the black middle class – accumulation beyond the peasantry

Mabandla, Nkululeko

doi:10.1080/0376835x.2014.974801

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Professionals traverse the boundaries between specialist and bureaucratic domains, using state-sanctioned systems of education and accreditation to preserve occupational boundaries, while also demanding autonomy from the state (Hull 2017; Marks 1994). They also frequently traverse economic domains, combining their income with farming or other lucrative activities (Berry 1985; James 2015; Kitching 1980; Konings and Ravell 1986; Mabandla 2015). A key challenge for understanding middle-class experience is to trace the ways in which professional identities navigate these social tensions and competing ideologies in the workplace.…”

Section: Ambivalence Among the Middle Classes In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to overcome the barriers to professional advancement or to consolidate class status, professionals have often combined salaries with other income-creating activities, especially in agriculture. In the early twentieth century, as Nkululeko Mabandla (2015) shows, access to land was a crucial factor in fostering the reproduction of a black middle class in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. Members of this class reinvested salaries earned in white-collar occupations, generating additional income through farming.…”

Section: Going Up or Getting Outmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Going up or getting out? Professional insecurity and austerity in the South African health sector

Hull¹

2020

Africa

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As a precondition of belonging, professionalism is often a taken-for-granted feature of being middle-class. Yet ethnographic attention to experiences of work reveals that professional identity can be fragile. Drawing on ethnographic research among nurses in KwaZulu-Natal, this article traces the feelings of precarity about work and the ambivalence that pervades ideas of professionalism. This ambiguity arises partly out of a peculiarly South African story in which histories of professionalism are entwined with the repressive apartheid project of separate development. Many of the professionals working as teachers, nurses, lawyers and administrators today were trained in the former ‘homelands’. Practices of professionalism are entangled with those of clientelism inherited from this earlier period of homeland politics. These local histories combine with wider processes of neoliberalism, as conditions of austerity produce structural shifts towards casualization. The article traces these dynamics in the stories of two nurses and considers what may be at stake politically as middle-class trajectories are threatened. Moving away from a view of the middle classes as either democratic or anti-democratic, feelings of ambivalence about work make questions of political allegiance an ambiguous and fraught matter.

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Section: Ambivalence Among the Middle Classes In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Going Up or Getting Outmentioning

confidence: 99%

Going up or getting out? Professional insecurity and austerity in the South African health sector

Hull¹

2020

Africa

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“…Here we must qualify claims hinted at earlier about the rapid growth of the ‘new’ black middle class post-1994. Although the rise of this class, post-democracy, was formidable, the ‘old’ black middle class had its roots in earlier processes; it was ‘the result of intra-generational transmission dating back to the mid-nineteenth century’ (Mabandla 2015: 76; see also James 2015: 42, 139–40, 201). This puts into perspective Ngcobo's key definer of his middle-classness – ‘access to power and resources’ 6 .…”

Section: How Ngcobo and Khumalo Self-categorizementioning

confidence: 99%

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Ndlovu¹

2020

Africa

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A generation of South Africa's new black middle class shuttles between the suburbs and the townships. This has become the focus of some South African humorous essayists, among them Ndumiso Ngcobo and Fred Khumalo, on whose works this article is based. The article argues that studying the new black middle class should extend to these literary sources and approaches. The humorous essays by these two authors consistently reference metaphors of mobility and the vexed intersection of black middle-classness, consumption, racialized residential zoning and compromised status. Through the mode of humour, the essays evince the psychological burdens borne by those with township roots but who live in the suburbs, as they negotiate status inconsistency in a post-apartheid search for human dignity. Constant visits to the township and the retreat to the suburbs constitute negotiations of spatial, financial and psychic concerns imbricated in the legacies of apartheid's racialized politics of distinction.

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“…Darbon (2018) proposes that long-term asset accumulation processes are at the core of understanding dynamics of upwards social mobility. Mabandla's (2015) historical study from South Africa highlights the significance of rural property ownership for black urban-based middle classes. While the significance of property in rural home regions for urban households is well documented, there is limited research on urban property investments.…”

Section: The Spatial Practices Of Africa's New Middle Classesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban property as security: examining the intersections between Africa’s growing middle classes and urban transformations

Andreasen

Agergaard

2020

Urban Geography

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African middle classes are growing in numbers and purchasing power. They form a significant share of urban populations and command a majority of urban resources. This paper examines the spatial practices of Africa's new urban-based middle classes and the implications for urban transformations. The focus is on households in the lower end of the spectrum, which form the majority of and account for most of the remarkable growth of Africa's middle classes. The paper draws attention to the middle classes as significant actors in the local housing systems, informal land markets and incremental construction practices commonly associated with the urban poor. Property investments are crucial for understanding how moderately resourceful households strive to achieve the kind of long-term security and upwards social mobility commonly associated with the middle classes. Through their investments, the middle classes shape informal urban expansion processes, cofinance settlement upgrading and produce socially diverse neighborhoods.

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Rethinking Bundy: Land and the black middle class – accumulation beyond the peasantry

Cited by 15 publications

References 12 publications

Going up or getting out? Professional insecurity and austerity in the South African health sector

Going up or getting out? Professional insecurity and austerity in the South African health sector

Shuttling between the suburbs and the township: the new black middle class(es) negotiating class and post-apartheid blackness in South Africa

Urban property as security: examining the intersections between Africa’s growing middle classes and urban transformations

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