Power, identity and agency at work in the popular economies of Soweto and Black Johannesburg.

Krige, Paul Friedrich Detlev

Power, identity and agency at work in the popular economies of Soweto and Black Johannesburg.

dc.contributor.author	Krige, Paul Friedrich Detlev
dc.date.accessioned	2011-06-21T11:09:52Z
dc.date.available	2011-06-21T11:09:52Z
dc.date.issued	2011-06-21
dc.description	DPhil, School of Social Sciences, Dept of Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011	en_US
dc.description.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.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10539/10143
dc.language.iso	en	en_US
dc.subject	popular economies	en_US
dc.subject	finance	en_US
dc.subject	saving	en_US
dc.subject	money lending	en_US
dc.subject	gambling	en_US
dc.subject	consumption	en_US
dc.subject	everyday life	en_US
dc.subject	Soweto	en_US
dc.subject	Black Johannesburg	en_US
dc.subject	South Africa	en_US
dc.subject	power	en_US
dc.subject	identity	en_US
dc.subject	agency	en_US
dc.subject	urban anthropology	en_US
dc.title	Power, identity and agency at work in the popular economies of Soweto and Black Johannesburg.	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US