Given the significance of the black middle class for the consolidation of South Africa's democracy, studies on class have focused on the black middle-class experience. However, as with many other social phenomena, conceptualisations from these studies have differed considerably. The challenge is the tendency of many of these conceptualisations to reduce black middle-class experiences to the ahistorical, homogeneous experiences of a group of conspicuous consumers. This is based on the limiting notion that black experience is traditional and uncomplicated, and this approach is then extrapolated to the experiences of the black middle class.
This issue brings together eight dynamic articles on the black middle class in South Africa. The articles present research from diverse disciplines and tackles issues related to being black and middle class from both quantitative and qualitative stands. The quantitative articles provide a critical reading of conceptualisations of black middle-classness. For example, the article entitled ‘Growth of the middle class: Two perspectives that matter for policy’ by Visagie compares income changes of the relatively affluent ‘middle class' with those of households in the literal middle of the income spectrum. This article shows that in the affluent middle there has been significant racial transformation and growth of the black middle class. However, households in the actual middle of the income spectrum have experienced the lowest income growth of all groups since 1993. He also argues that both perspectives are crucial in the pursuit of a more equitable path of development and have important implications for policy. On a more critical note, the article ‘The middle class in contemporary South Africa: Comparing rival approaches' by Burger et al. cautions against overoptimistic predictions based on the growth of the black middle class, suggesting that while the surge in the black middle class is expected to help dismantle the association between race and class in South Africa, critical analysis suggests that notions of identity may adjust more slowly to these new realities and, consequently, racial integration and social cohesion may emerge with a substantial lag. Another article by Burger et al., ‘Understanding the consumption patterns of the established and emerging South African black middle class', foregrounds the importance of critical analysis in class studies by moving away from analysis of black middle-classness that leans either on the theory of conspicuous consumption or culture-specific utility functions. This article interestingly argues that households new to the middle class or uncertain of continued class membership are viewed as vulnerable. On the same note, in the article entitled ‘Life chances and class: Estimating inequality of opportunity for children and adolescents in South Africa’, Zoch provides a multivariate analysis that highlights the importance of class membership for schooling outcomes and labour market prospects of a child.
The qualitative articles, on the other hand, begin to illustrate the dynamics that identity and other social markers play in how black middle-classness is experienced. In a critique of notions that suggests black middle-classness is a post-1994 phenomenon, Mabandla foregrounds the idea of an earlier existence of a black middle class through the article ‘Rethinking Bundy: Land and the black middle class – accumulation beyond the peasantry’. Through assessment of historical data on the black middle class in Mthatha, this article illustrates that South Africa's black middle class has considerable time depth that can be traced through the reading of Bundy's ‘peasantry’. Khunou's article ‘What middle class? The shifting and dynamic nature of class position’ takes Mabandla's argument further by looking at how middle-classness for blacks during apartheid was marred with constant shifts related to the socio-economic and political impermanence of class position, and concludes that black middle-classness is complex and heterogeneous and thus cannot be understood without historical analysis. Krige's article entitled ‘“Growing up” and “moving up”: Metaphors that legitimise upward social mobility in Soweto’ moves on to provide a thought-provoking analysis of accusations of materialism and conspicuous consumption levelled against the urban black middle class and argues for what is referred to as a renewal of cultural practices in which private wealth can legitimately be converted into social wealth. In the article ‘Food, malls and the politics of consumption: South Africa's new middle class', Chevalier examines middle-class interaction in shared social spaces that were previous segregated and argues that South Africans are willing to experiment beyond the boundaries of their native communities and there is an emergent national middle-class culture, but there are marked regional differences and nothing yet that would amount to ‘creolisation’.