Transformations of Race and Class in South Africa: Discussion Article of Book on Urban Inequality: Theory, Evidence and Method in Johannesburg by Owen Crankshaw

Abstract

ABSTRACT This Discussion Article examines the exciting, innovative new book (2022) by Owen Crankshaw. It focuses on a summary including some comments on Crankshaw‘s key findings for the Greater Johannesburg Area for 1970–2011. It focuses primarily on his book’s Part 1 on issues of “Occupational Class Structure transformations”, but with some consideration also of Part 2 on geographical housing “Spatial Order transformations” by race and class (the author’s concepts). These core findings on socioeconomic transformations over this 40-year period have very important implications for political debate about the future of South Africa. These debates are vital not only for academics, but equally for public intellectuals and social activists in our country, and also for a wider readership in other countries particularly of the South where such urban inequality questions of class, poverty and social marginalization are fundamental. With this broad audience in mind, empirical findings are summarized and its methodology assessed, in general in very favorable light. Nonetheless, critical questions are raised about the book’s reliance on comparative case studies of cities of the North with little reflection on political implications for “Southern” cities. It is also critiqued for insufficient theoretical consideration of the impact of a global post-1970s, knowledge-based Capitalist Industrial Revolution on the class structure of Johannesburg. Notwithstanding, this is a sociological book of very high scholarship whose findings about post-Apartheid South African transformation are a must-read and must-debate.