A CONTRADICTORY CLASS LOCATION? AN EXPLORATION OF THE POSITION AND ROLES OF THE AFRICAN CORPORATE MIDDLE CLASS IN SOUTH AFRICAN WORKPLACES AND COMMUNITIES
Date
2007-02-21T13:11:34Z
Authors
Modisha, Geoffrey
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Abstract
The corporate middle class, or managers, occupies a contradictory class location
in capitalist relations of production. While they do not own the means of
production, this class stratum is not exploited like the working class. This class
position, however, is bound to be different for a black manager whose
advancement in the workplace may be due to government attempts to
economically empower black people to redress the injustices imposed by the
racially dominated social structure of the past. Through a Weberian
understanding of social stratification as based on class, social status and power,
this research aims to unearth how members of the African corporate middle class
understand their position and roles in South African workplaces and communities.
It also goes deeper to scrutinise the impact of this structural position on their
agency. It is shown that their contradictory class location is exacerbated by their
race.
African managers constantly negotiate their positions and roles in their
workplaces and communities. Indeed, while their managerial position affords
them spaces that they could not have occupied during the apartheid era, their
racial character lessens their ability to manoeuvre within these spaces. This can be
identified both in workplaces and communities. It is shown that their middle-class
status cannot be consolidated because of their perceived lower social status and
less power to influence decision making in their organisations. Furthermore, it is
shown that, although not all of the interviewees moved to middle-class areas,
there is an indication of alienation in previously white-only residential areas. This
is further exacerbated by expectations from their former communities and
members of their extended families. As a result of high levels of unemployment in
African communities, members of this group are actively contributing to uplift
members of their extended families.
Description
Student Number: 0104318V -
MA research report -
School of Social Sciences -
Faculty of Humanities
Keywords
contradictory class location, class, workplace, regime, black middle class, African managers, BEE, Employment Equity Act, Skills Development Act, apartheid, communities, post-apartheid South Africa