Power, identity and agency at work in the popular economies of Soweto and Black Johannesburg.
Date
2011-06-21
Authors
Krige, Paul Friedrich Detlev
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Abstract
This thesis investigates a number of economic and financial practices, processes,
relationships, actors and institutions prevalent in the residential areas that form part of
Johannesburg that is known as Soweto, all of which have in common the exchange, hoarding,
spending and risking of cash money. It describes actual flows of monies between actors and
through popular economic institutions which are embedded in social relations of friendship and
kinship, neighbourhood life and socially constructed identities. Building on the anthropological
literature that seeks to show how money flows carry meaning as well as having function, it
inquires into the meanings such flows of money - between popular institutions and social groups
and across social classes - have for a range of differently situated participants in the popular
economies. It explores the ways in which institutions and practices within the popular economies
are deployed by actors and groups so as to direct flows of monies into certain social networks
and relationships while redirecting it away from others, highlighting the agency of actors and
groups in relation to their position in the local and larger political economy. Employing elements
of practice theory, as well as perspectives from both political economy and cultural economy
approaches to everyday life, the thesis offers arguments about power, identity, agency and state
sovereignty in the context of the history of Black Johannesburg under apartheid and makes a
contribution to our understanding of the material and symbolic structures of everyday life in
contemporary Soweto and Johannesburg.
Description
DPhil, School of Social Sciences, Dept of Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011
Keywords
popular economies, finance, saving, money lending, gambling, consumption, everyday life, Soweto, Black Johannesburg, South Africa, power, identity, agency, urban anthropology