Are concepts such as ‘margins’ and ‘marginalisation’ useful for analysing rural life in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa?

Abstract

This paper draws on empirical material gathered in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, an area that includes what used to be known as the Transkei, to consider the nature and usefulness of the concept ‘marginalisation’. It shows that structural factors alone cannot account for the marginalisation of individuals or groups within a community, and that to understand why some may be marginalised, and others not, the nature of the community's social and moral relationships and how these are linked to economic production must be considered. The morality that governs economic relations is evident in beer-drinking rituals and inter-homestead cooperation (work parties). The findings are theorised in terms of Bourdieu's analysis of various forms of capital and the exchanges between them, and this is linked to notions of ‘moral economy’ and the moral import of ritual as argued by Rappaport. The paper concludes by discussing some implications for rural development policy.

The author would like to thank an anonymous reviewer who made a number of useful suggestions that have been incorporated into this paper.

Notes

¹Apartheid legislation compelled migrant workers to return to their rural homes between labour contracts, and thus to ‘oscillate’ between country home and urban–industrial workplace.