Abstract
Class in Soweto is the product of a major study by Peter Alexander, Claire Ceruti, Keke Motseke, Mosa Phadi, and Kim Wale, originally called “Classifying Soweto,” which examined the structure of economic differences in Soweto, a major residential area in Johannesburg, South Africa. The motivation behind the study was to clarify the class basis of different forms of collective action, namely the trade union movement and urban unrest among the poor and jobless in South Africa. The authors collected data to better understand the class structure of those who live in Soweto, as well as the respondents’ own understanding of their place in the class system. The primary research involved a major survey in 2006, extensive qualitative research involving semi-structured interviews before and after the survey, and a documentary film project. The authors supplemented this with analysis of census and labor force survey data to document how Sowetans compared to the rest of South Africa.
After a theoretical chapter, the book starts with a historical introduction to Soweto, covering how the township was developed over the course of the apartheid era and how it has changed since 1994. Two chapters discuss the categorization of respondents into employment categories, and how these relate to different measures of well-being. Another main chapter presents findings related to issues of unemployment and underemployment. Subsequent chapters discuss individual mobility across employment categories, how such categories are discussed in two major African languages in Soweto, isiZulu and Sesotho, and the role of religious affiliation in implicitly solidifying class differences. The final chapter sums up the findings and relates them to the motivating question.
The result is a book that clearly communicates the diversity and complexity of contemporary economic life in South Africa. Soweto is a particularly interesting place to examine. On the whole it is not a wealthy place, yet there are parts where families are doing quite well. Measures of well-being are on average far below those for whites in South Africa, yet better than the average for blacks in the province and country as a whole. This is because even though official unemployment is quite high, it is still located in the largest population center of the country and so many people are able to find some sort of work. Above all there is a great deal of variation. One of the crucial issues in studies of South African inequality in the past 20 years has been growing inequality among the black population, and the data reflect this quite clearly. The authors are thus able to present a good snapshot of what people do and how they think of the economic order in which they find themselves. This is important not only for better understanding the lives of Sowetans, but also those of many other urban residents across the globe, insofar as South Africa can serve as representative of urbanized developing and middle-income countries.
The book also contains some interesting and innovative approaches to the subject of class location. It considers how class, normally studied as an attribute of individuals, relates to survival strategies of households. The authors also explore the idea that respondents might espouse membership in more than one class and discuss the contrast between unemployment and underemployment. In Soweto, it actually takes money to be truly unemployed, while those in the poorest households must constantly scramble for income to support themselves. Perhaps the most unique contribution is the discussion of how people conceive of stratification differences in terms of “affordability.” This concept reflects how respondents thought of class as relational, based on the ability to maintain a certain lifestyle that they displayed through consumption.
While the empirical findings were illuminating, there is a disjuncture between much of the theory and these findings. The first chapter on class theory draws on work by Marx and Erik Olin Wright, among many others, to argue for a class scheme based on an understanding of exploitation and surplus value. The empirical analysis, in contrast, focuses on employment categories that include various segments of the employed, unemployed, and underemployed. The analysis shows that most Sowetans have only very tenuous ties to surplus value generation or extraction. Among those who are employed, most are found in service-oriented jobs. There are some small business owners, managers, and “capitalists” in the sample, but not very many. Many theorists of class would leave a large number of the respondents out of their schema altogether since they are not regularly employed. The authors show that it is necessary to include such workers to fully understand contemporary stratification in South Africa; however, distinguishing between them and the regularly employed has more to do with employment conditions and lifestyle than economic exploitation.
Chapter Six, on how people identify themselves, displays this clearly. The authors write that “Sowetans displayed a rich imagery and language of stratification” and showed “a keen eye for material differentiation” (pp. 142–143). In this case the data—respondents’ perceptions of the economic structure of the township—are far more nuanced than the theory the authors would prefer to use to understand them. I would agree with the authors that utilizing a simple cultural theory of class and position is likewise inadequate. Rather, as is discussed at times in the book, the data show that there are complex relationships between class, employment category, social display, and material well-being. Understanding the connections between these has been at the heart of the writings of many different theorists, from Weber and Veblen through a great deal of social research today. What the book does well is examine these connections using good data collected in a rapidly changing and complex society. The data force the authors to problematize the relationship between these different dimensions of social classification in ways that at times the theory does not appear to allow for. The original label of “Classifying Soweto,” while undoubtedly problematic given the history of classification in South Africa, nevertheless adds a sense of uncertainty that would have benefitted the orienting theoretical framework of the book.