The conditional legitimacy of claims made by mothers and other kin in South Africa

Abstract

Because redistribution concerns ‘who gets what and from whom’, redistributive conflicts revolve around ‘who should get what and from whom’. Individuals as well as states distinguish between deserving and undeserving claimants. People may favour people they know over strangers, kin over non-kin, or some kin over other kin. This paper uses data from survey experiments to show that young South Africans distinguish between deserving and undeserving claimants on both the state and kin. The hierarchy of desert with respect to public welfare is clear and intuitive, with people who cannot look after themselves being considered more deserving than those who can. Deservingness with respect to different categories of kin – i.e. the ‘radius’ of responsibility for kin – varies less markedly, but with some variation between racial or cultural groups. Deservingness with respect to both public and private support is affected dramatically by the attitude and reciprocity of the claimant, with the important exceptions of mothers who should be supported unconditionally. Public and private support appear to be complements not substitutes for each other, in that people who believe that the state should support people in need are also more likely to believe that kin should do so also.

Disability, cash transfers and family practices in South Africa

“…Eventually, Samuel did begin sending Mary R20 to R30 a month to help her buy electricity. While this gesture does indicate that he felt some sense of obligation to reciprocate the support she had provided to him for several years, his move to another household does illustrate the limitations of reciprocity in relationships, which has been shown in other studies to be conditional (Seekings, 2018).…”

‘He who relies on relatives and friends die poor’: class closure and stratagems of civility in peri‐urban Kenya

“…Victor Turner noted in his fieldwork on the Ndembu in the 1950s that ‘labor migration to the urban industrial areas is positively emancipating the individual from his obligations of the kinship group’ (1957: 43). Meanwhile, Jeremy Seekings’ research on kinship in South Africa has shown that obligations are increasingly limited to the inner circle of the elementary family, whilst those to wider kinship networks are ‘shrugged off’ (2019: 601).…”

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“…pressure to convert 'private' wealth into 'social' wealth. [124][125][126][127][128] They can be a response to the pressures of consumerist advertising, including the promotion of consumer credit, 129 or to neo-Pentecostal religious convictions. 130 They can reflect an aspiration to recognition or status, framed by consumption.…”