Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa

Middle Class Moralities

Ibrahim Abraham

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000426809
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Social Sciences
• Categoria: Social Classes & Economic Disparity

This book explores the relationship between race and class among middle-class Christians in South Africa.

The book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich study of middle-class Christians in contemporary South Africa, as they seek to live good lives and build a good society. Focused on the city of Cape Town, drawing upon ethnographic research in conservative and progressive multiracial Protestant churches, furnished with critical analysis of South African literature and popular culture, this timely study explores expressions of ambition and anxiety that are both spiritual and material. Building upon debates over middle-class identity and morality from sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies, this book analyses congregational attempts at social unity through worship music and creative youth ministry, discussions on white privilege and shame, and the impact of middle-class black activism in South African churches and society.

This book will be of interest to researchers of South African culture and society, religion, anthropology, and sociology.

1Christianity and the middle class in South Africa

Introduction

Ideologically at least, the 21st century is shaping-up to be the global era of the middle class (Therbörn 2012; Melber 2016). In contrast to working-class utopian movements of the 20^th century—led, albeit, by lawyers and intellectuals—aspirations to middle-class comfort appear to define contemporary political struggles in countries like South Africa. This chapter introduces and contextualizes sociological approaches to (the middle) class, drawing upon but not lingering upon Marx and Weber's influential approaches; the former focused on exploitation, the latter on status and differentiation. My concern in this chapter and book is not with the complexities of class theory, however, Milner (1999) offers an excellent general overview, and Southall (2016: 1–22) and Neubert (2019: 85–123) cover the topic thoroughly for (South) Africa. Weberian and Marxian approaches will be applied to critically analyze contemporary definitions and classifications of the South African middle class—or perhaps middle classes as the past and present realities of the country's white and black bourgeoisies are quite different.

In his sociology of South Africa's black middle class, Southall (2016: 59) insists there is “no single ‘correct’ way of thinking about class,” but class is highly contested in the social sciences, not least because of the influence of Marxism, treating class conflict as the engine of history, while lacking an unambiguous statement on class from the big man himself. As we will see, while some foundational Marxian and Weberian ideas seem strangely prescient today, other ideas and terminology seem out-of-date, and especially out-of-place in the Global South. Moretti (2013: 1), for example, wonders whether anyone today could declare straight-facedly, “I feel myself to be a bourgeois,” as Weber (1994a: 23) told the Habsburg officer corps a century ago. “Bourgeois” is more likely used by contemporary academics “as a term of self-contempt,” argues McCloskey (2006: 69), pointing out that the reader of her—and this—book is, “in sociological fact,” probably a member of the bourgeoisie. Relying on purely emic terminology is not an option, however, as self-identified middle-class South Africans share very little in common (Alexander, et al. 2013: 150–58).

Recognizing the immense changes introduced by the African National Congress (ANC) since coming to power in 1994, notably the expansion of the black middle class, this chapter also offers an overview of the development of middle classes in South Africa since the colonial period. Christianity has been highly influential in this regard, providing education for many black South Africans, but also providing justification for Afrikaner economic development in the 20th century, at the deliberate expense of black South Africans. In addition to illustrating the influences of Christianity upon race and class in South Africa, therefore, this chapter will roughly delineate the social groups the book focuses upon.

Weber and the South African middle class

For Weber (1946: 181–3), class in capitalist society is a matter of unequal “life chances” which depend on one's position in the economy; a class exists where people share a “specific causal component” of their life chance, such as offering the same services to the labor market. Unlike the Marxian model, below, this Weberian model can multiply and fragment classes, and Weberian approaches do not make normative assumptions about class cooperation or conflict (Southall 2016: 52). Related to class, but not reducible to class, is the concept of status, defined as the inequality of “social estimation of honor” (Weber 1946: 187). Status can cut across class, such as in the case of race and ethnicity in South Africa, producing groups with very different status-based “styles of life” (ibid.: 191). As an account of class and status under apartheid observed, “status is determined at birth and for life by colour rather than class, by genealogy rather than function; a person can move up or down the social scale within his primary colour group … but members of one race cannot combine freely with co-functionaries of another race” (Simons and Simons 1983: 618).

Weber's description of “negatively privileged status groups,” believing in their “providential ‘mission’” and “‘chosen people’s' dignity” (1946: 189–90), mirrors Terreblanche's (2002: 301) description of the dominant 20^th century Afrikaner self-understanding as “divinely chosen people with the task—prescribed by providence—of promoting Christian civilization and instilling higher moral values into the members of all other population groups (including the English).” What he calls the “Afrikaner ideological onslaught” was “typical of a petty bourgeoisie trying to attain political and economic power for the first time” (ibid.). The attainment of political power allowed for the creation of such a “petty bourgeoisie,” discussed below, ultimately undermining Afrikaner unity.¹ Weber (1994b: 293) argued status differences are exacerbated in such modern bureaucratic economies with increased “professional specialization,” recognizing the status difference between professional specialists (later known as “white-collar workers” or the “new” middle class), and those they often managed, as “the worker naturally hates the foreman, who is perpetually breathing down his neck, far more than the factory owner” (ibid.).

The Weberian approach to class as unequal market power, life chances, and lifestyles, influences contemporary approaches to stratification, including purely quantitative stratification. A basic quantitative assumption is that every unequal society logically has a middle, and the middle 60 percent of income earners, or those earning between 75 percent and 125 percent of the median income, commonly constitute the middle class (Kharas 2010: 11). These relative studies reveal inequality in lifestyles and chances, although the middle classes they define are often internationally incomparable. In contrast, absolute approaches set specific income levels; members of the middle class must earn between certain amounts, with various financial adjustments, to achieve a middle-class lifestyle (ibid.). Statistical studies often require both measures; awareness of where income-earners sit relative to their society, and awareness of the lifestyle their absolute level of income allows, relative to middle classes elsewhere. Illustratively, Visagie (2015) differentiates South Africa's relatively affluent middle class from its much poorer median income-earners.

The common threshold in quantitative studies of the “global middle class,” a development concept that assumes similar life chances and lifestyles around the world, is 10 USD per day, adjusted for purchasing power, up to either 50 or 100 USD per day, similarly adjusted (Kharas 2017: 3). According to the narrower (10-50 USD) measure, about 17 percent of South Africans (about 12 million people) are part of this global middle class (ibid.: 80). Lower measures are also used, notably the African Development Bank's (AfDB) (2011) “Middle of the Pyramid” report that set African middle-class incomes between 2 and 20 USD per day, on this basis claiming an African middle class of approximately 327 million, similar to the middle classes of China or India. The study is nevertheless nuanced, distinguishing between the near-impoverished “floating class” earning 2 to 4 USD per day, the lower middle class earning 4 to 10 USD per day, and Africa's upper middle class earning 10 to 20 USD per day. Admitting that most of Africa's middle class fall into the floating class, the report includes a stricter definition of 4 to 20 USD per day which shrinks Africa's middle class from 34 percent (327 million) to just 13 percent (128 million); in South Africa it falls from 43 percent to 20 percent (ibid.: pp. 3–5).

The AfDB's report is controversial. For Melber (2016: 2–3), what these quants are doing is simply not “proper class analysis,” which necessitates explicit engagement with class theories. Neubert (2019: 8) notes that while social scientists strongly criticize the AfDB's report, they utilize it nevertheless. The report helped establish “a new agenda” toward Africa as continent of growth like Asia, even if the aggregate incomes of sub-Saharan Africa's middle class are 25 times less than Asia's (Darbon 2018: 41, 46), and some of the uses the report has been put to are excessively Afro-optimistic. I have encountered—invoking the Chatham House rule at this point—African diplomatic missions allude to the report in gesturing toward half a billion middle-class Africans, to represent Africa as a continent worthy of economic investment rather than merely economic assistance.

Stratifying South Africa

As in the global and continental studies, above, South Africa can also be stratified using quantitative measures of income or expenditure, but also according to occupation, a more strictly sociological and Weberian approach. Southall (2016: 42–59) differentiates between quantitative “consumptionist” models, useful for understanding consumer habits, and “productionist” models, focused on occupations. Because work is “foundational to society,” Southall favors the latter approach (ibid.: 44), but work has not always been recognized as foundational to social identity in Africa, as analyzed in Chapter 2. A purely income-based approach sits in the middle of these approaches, such as Capitec bank's simple schema that classifies as “lower class” those earning less than 10,000 rand per month, as “middle class” those earning 10,000 to 30,000 rand per month, and as “high income” those earning over 30,000 (Brown 2017). In their illustratively consumptionist approach to class in South Africa, Unilever's local marketing division coined the term “black diamond” to describe affluent black consumers concerned with the conspicuous display of their new status (Southall 2016: 163).

Terreblanche (2002)—a dissident Afrikaner economist with a penchant for Marxian and Christian language—and Schotte, et al. (2017, 2018) produced two similarly stratified models. Both assign half the population to poverty, the “lumpenproletariat” for Terreblanche (2002: 36), and the “chronic poor” for Schotte, et al. (2017, 2018) with an average monthly expenditure of 390 rand. Stratifying the upper half is more complicated. Immediately above the chronic poor, Schotte, et al. (2018: 96–102) classify 13 percent of the population as the “transient poor” with an average monthly expenditure of 617 rand. Above them, 14 percent of South Africans are classified “vulnerable,” with an average monthly expenditure of 2045 rand. The “middle class” then constitutes 20 percent of the South African population, with an average monthly expenditure of 3987 rand; although they fall into the highest quartile, Schotte, et al. emphasize the middling nature of the middle class, and this is simply the estimated expenditure necessary to stay clear of poverty, but below the affluent “elite.” These elite constitute just four percent of the population, with an average monthly expenditure of 19,251 rand. Again, this is not radically different from...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A note on currency
• A note on racial terminology
• Introduction: Day Zero in Cape Town
• 1 Christianity and the middle class in South Africa
• 2 Middle-class morality and Christianity in South Africa
• 3 Spiritual and class insecurity in South Africa
• 4 Middle-class moral insecurity in South Africa
• 5 Race, class, and habitus in South African churches
• 6 Anomie and vocation in South African Christian ministry
• 7 Musicking, unity, and sincerity in South African churches
• Conclusion: Covid-19 in Cape Town
• Index