Abstract
This article explores how marriage, or its absence, features in relation to the aspirations and obligations of members of South Africa’s new black middle class. In a context where the state and credit have played key roles in the newly financialised arrangements of neoliberalism, it considers how ties that are both conflictual and intimate — bonds that simultaneously distance people from, while creating increasingly intimate connections to, both kinsmen and (prospective) affines — operate within this novel space. “Middle classers” are set apart from their less fortunate relatives, even as they continue to have to support and remain intimate with them; divided from partners who expect them to conform to conservative female roles, while they continue to hold positive views about marital exchanges (and payments) more generally.
Highlights
Reuse of this item is permitted through licensing under the Creative Commons: This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68269/
This paper explores how marriage — or its absence — features in relation to the aspirations and obligations of members of South Africa’s new middle class
Should we view the entanglements of obligation, reciprocity and entrustment — and those of marriage — as elements of tradition from which the newly upwardly mobile are keen to free themselves? According to one newspaper report, people in this situation embody a paradoxical combination of modern consumerist aspirations with a connection to “traditional roots,” including an inordinate sense of obligation towards family and parents
Summary
Original citation: James, Deborah (2017) Not marrying in South Africa: consumption, aspiration and the new middle class. Reuse of this item is permitted through licensing under the Creative Commons:. LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website
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