Women and empowerment through the ‘economy of affection’ in KwaZulu‐Natal: Its significance for sustainable development

This article is an attempt to demonstrate how, in the absence of infrastructural requirements for development in the rural areas, the interpersonal relationships of women articulated through their households, kinship networks and community structures serve as indispensable mechanisms for their survival. These mechanisms are seen as part of an indigenous socio‐economic framework that is referred to here as the ‘economy of affection’. This framework is presented, through ethnographic data, as a means of facilitating moral, social and economic support among the indigent rural people in KwaZulu‐Natal. Taking cognisance of local organisational forms and resources is the best possible way to reconstruct South Africa's vast hinterland against the background of a history of development patterns, where rhetoric has played a more important role than actual substantive contributions to development of the rural poor, and where capital investments, technology and expertise of a post‐industrial nature are unlikely to spread.

Notes

Senior Lecturer, University of Durban‐Westville, Durban.

Fieldwork for this article was carried out sporadically in 1996 and 1997 with Honours students, as part of a capacity‐building exercise. A version of this paper was first presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Anthropology in Southern Africa at the University of Stellenbosch in January 1998. I wish to express appreciation to the University of Durban‐Westville for their support of this project and for funds to travel to the conference, as well as Mr A Naidoo, from the university's Department of English, for reviewing this article.