For a multidimensional class analysis in Africa

SUMMARY

How can we analyse the dynamics of social structure in Africa today? This Debate piece argues that a Bourdieu-inspired, multidimensional class analysis opens promising perspectives for understanding class dynamics in Africa. This implies notably bridging objectivist and subjectivist approaches to class analysis, and working with a multidimensional idea of the social space.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Corentin Chanet, Hannah Hoechner, Claire Mercer and Benjamin Rubbers, as well as an anonymous ROAPE reviewer, for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this text, as well as Kate Fayers-Kerr for her patient edits and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Joël Noret is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He has been engaged in long-term fieldwork in southern Benin since 2000, where his current research interests revolve around class analysis, education and social inequality. His publications include Deuil et funérailles dans le Bénin méridional: enterrer à tout prix (2010) and Funerals in Africa: explorations of a social phenomenon (coedited with Michael Jindra, 2011).

Notes

1. In the field of sociology, this approach – when not referred to as a ‘cultural turn’ in class analysis – has also been identified as a key component of the CAR (capitals, assets, resources) approaches to class analysis (Savage, Warde, and Devine 2005) or ‘multidimensional’ class analysis (for instance Weininger 2005; Savage et al. 2015).

2. As much of the economist literature works on the basis of levels of per capita expense, a more sustained attention to the evolution of dependency ratios in assessment of the possible trajectories of the income groups under scrutiny could be another promising avenue for (quantitative) research. As Spronk notes for instance in the case of Nairobi’s young professionals, they were typically raised in families with a limited number of siblings (2014, 101).

3. It should be made clear here that ‘space’ in a notion like that of ‘social space’ is used as a metaphor, spatial metaphors being one of the most regular metaphors used by social scientists, from social mobility to social distance, social dynamics and social movements, to evoke just a few of the most common ones. This of course can (and actually needs to) combine with the analysis of how social distance can be correlated (or not) with geographical/physical distance, and of how social inequalities are spatialised in various ways.

4. The famous graph of Distinction mapping socio-professional categories according to the respective volumes of cultural and economic capital of their members also features for instance indications of the social origins of the latter as well as estimates of the demographic evolution of the groups (Bourdieu 1979, 139–144).

5. In the case of Benin, see for instance the work of Tama (2014) on the heterogeneity of economic conditions among school teachers. But many other cases of declining conditions of employment among African teachers could be cited, with a continental landscape largely marked by the contradictory trends of increased needs in education on the one hand and budgetary restrictions on the other.