Sociology and inequalities in post-apartheid South Africa: A critical review

Abstract

Sociology has been a subject of extensive debate in South Africa, especially over the last two decades. Central to the debate on sociology as a discipline and practice were efforts to document its history and paradigmatic shifts that characterized it, as well as topical themes that defined its research. One key observation in its evolution pointed to a historical shift from being a service discipline to the previous racially segregatory political regimes, especially between the early 1900s and 1960s, to a multi-paradigm discipline that challenged the racial order and inequalities in the 1970s onwards. This period marked the height of public sociology. Recent observations, however, especially in the post-apartheid period, projected a scenario of the discipline in a state of decline. Counter-evidence was nevertheless also presented suggesting not only the renewal of sociology in South Africa but also its active interest and involvement in the struggle against inequalities as part of the voices of the poor. This article calls these observations as the decline thesis and the renewal thesis, and contrasts them. The latter, I argue, is more compelling than the former. Notwithstanding this, the article argues however that the extent to which sociology in involved in struggles against inequalities is under question since public sociology, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, is underdeveloped.