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ARTICLES

Global Capitalism, Social Dislocation and Cultural Discourse in South African History

Pages 277-289 | Published online: 14 Jan 2009

  • Bozzoli , B. 1992 . ‘The Discourses of Myth and the Myth of Discourse’ . South African Historical Journal , 26 : 191 – 97 . (J. Crush, ‘The Discomforts of Distance: Post-Colonialism and South African Geography’, South African Geographical Journal, 75, 2 (1993), 60–8;M. Vaughan, ‘Colonial Discourse Theory and African History, or Has Postmodernism Passed Us By?’, Social Dynamics, 20, 2 (1994), 1–23;J. Robinson, ‘(Dis)locating Historical Narrative: Writing, Space and Gender in South African Social History’, South African Historical Journal, 30 (1994), 144–57;A. Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse (London, 1996);J.L. Comaroff, ‘Reflections on the Colonial State in South Africa and Elsewhere: Factions, Fragments, Facts and Fictions’, Social Identities, 4, 3 (1998), 321–61;D. Howarth and A.J. Norval, ‘Introduction: Changing Paradigms and the Politics of Transition in South Africa’, in D. Howarth and A.J. Norval, eds, South Africa in Transition: New Theoretical Perspectives (Basingstoke, 1998), 1–12
  • 1989 . per se. Most South African historians, whatever their particular sources of theoretical inspiration, now accept that ‘reality’ is socially constructed, and thus adopt at least a post-positivist position. Even if they prioritise material relations, some of the most influential of recent texts go further. They demonstrate that the social boundaries of class, race, ethnicity and gender are dynamic, flexible and contingent creations, generated through specific power struggles, rather than the outcomes of any particular logic determined by capitalism See, for example, L. Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, C. Walker, ed., Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town and London, 1990);P. Bonner, P. Delius and D. Posel, eds, Apartheid's Genesis, 1935–1962 (Johannesburg, 1993);E. Unterhalter, ‘Constructing Race, Class, Gender and Ethnicity: State and Opposition Strategies in South Africa’, in D. Stasiulis and N. Yuval-Davis, eds, Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London, 1995), 207–40;T. Keegan, Colonial South Africa and the Origins of the Racial Order (London, 1996). Recent work on Cape slavery and on nineteenth and twentieth-century highveld sharecropping has shown how social relations were constructed and regulated through discourses of patriarchy and paternalism: N. Worden and C. Crais, eds, Breaking the Chains: Slavery and its Legacy in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony (Johannesburg, 1994);T. Keegan, Rural Transformations in Industrialising South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914 (Johannesburg, 1986);C. van Onselen, The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894–1985 (Oxford, 1996);C. van Onselen, ‘Paternalism and Violence on the Maize Farms of the Southwestern Transvaal, 1900–1950’, in A.H. Jeeves and J. Crush, eds, White Farms, BlackLabour: The State and Agrarian Change in Southern Africa, 1910–1950 (Portsmouth, NH, Pietermaritz-burg and Oxford, 1997), 192–213. Although some historians writing of race prefer to use the more traditional terms ‘racial ideology’ or ‘racial attitudes’, they nevertheless similarly write of their subject as a socially constructed, enframing discourse, rather than merely as a screen of'bias' or ‘prejudice’ which obscures some objective ‘truth’ about difference or sameness: A. Bank, ‘Liberals and Their Enemies: Racial Ideology at the Cape of Good Hope, 1820–1850’ (PhD thesis, Cambridge University, 1995);S. Dubow, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (Cambridge, 1995);Keegan, Colonial South Africa.
  • Laclau , E. 1990 . New Reflections on the Revolution in Our Time 56 London The term comes from
  • Crais , C. 1992 . White Supremacy and Black Resistance in Pre-Industrial South Africa Cambridge (N. Mostert, Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (London, 1992);M. Legassick, ‘The State, Racism and the Rise of Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century Cape Colony’, South African Historical Journal, 28 (1993), 329–68;Worden and Crais, Breaking the Chains;Keegan, Colonial South Africa.
  • Marks , S. 1985 . 359 – 492 . ‘Southern Africa, 1867–1886’, and ‘Southern and Central Africa, 1886–1910’, in R. Oliver and G.N. Sanderson, eds, The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 6 (Cambridge, S. Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa (London, 1989);I. Evans, Bureaucracy and Race: Native Administration in South Africa (Berkeley, 1997)
  • Friedman , S. 1993 . The Long Journey: South Africa's Quest for a Negotiated Settlement Johannesburg (H. Marais, South Africa Limits to Change: The Political Economy of Transition (London and Cape Town, 1998);Howarth and Norval, South Africa in Transition; P. Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neo-Liberalism in South Africa (London, 2000). The connections between the current transition and previous episodes of social and political reformulation in South Africa will be explored in greater depth in A. Lester, E. Nel and T. Binns, South Africa Past, Present and Future (London, 2000)
  • Trapido , S. 1971 . South Africa in a Comparative Study of Industrialisation . Journal of Development Studies , 7 ( 3 ) : 309 – 20 . (A. Atmore and S. Marks, ‘The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century: Towards a Reassessment’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 3 (Oct. 1974), 105–39
  • Marks , S. 1987 . 385 – 97 . ‘White Supremacy: A Review Article’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29, 2 (S. Marks, ‘History, the Nation and Empire: Sniping From the Periphery’, History Workshop Journal, 29 (1990), 111–19;S. Trapido, ‘From Paternalism to Liberalism: The Cape Colony, 1800–1834’, The International History Review, 12, 1 (1990), 76–104;A. Bank, ‘Liberals and Their Enemies'Dubow, Scientific Racism;Keegan, Colonial South Africa.
  • Robinson , J. 1992 . The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa Edited by: Smith , M. 292 – 302 . London and New York ‘Power, Space and the City: Historical Reflections on Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Urban Orders’, in D., ed., (J. Robinson, The Power of Apartheid: State, Power and Space in South African Cities (Oxford, 1996);S. Parnell and A. Mabin, ‘Rethinking Urban South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21, 1 (1995), 39–61;S. Parnell, ‘Changes in the British Colonial Office's Policy Towards Urban Africa, 1939–1945' (Paper presented to the conference on Africa's Urban Past, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1996);K. Manzo, Domination, Resistance, and Social Change in South Africa: The Local Effects of Global Power (Westport, Conn., 1992)
  • Colley , L. 1992 . ‘Britishness and Otherness: An Argument’ . Journal of British Studies , 31 Oct. : 309 – 39 . See (A.L. Staler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, 1995);A.L. Staler and F. Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in F. Cooper and A.L. Staler, eds, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1997), 1–58;A. Lester, ‘Historical Geographies of Imperialism’, in B. Graham and C. Nash, eds, Modern Historical Geographies (London and New York, 2000), 100–120
  • Laclau . New Reflections. See also D. Howarth, ‘Paradigms Gained? A Critique of Theories and Explanations of Democratic Transition in South Africa’, in Howarth and Norval, South Africa in Transition, 182–214
  • Elphick , R. , Shell , R. , Elphick , R. and Giliomee , H. 1988 . The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 184 – 239 . Middletown eds, (L. Guelke, ‘The Origin of White Supremacy in South Africa: An Interpretation’, Social Dynamics, 15, 2 (1989), 40–5;R. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838 (Johannesburg, 1994)
  • Shell . Children of Bondage; W. Dooling, “The Good Opinion of Others”: Law, Slavery and Community in the Cape Colony, c. 1760–1830’, J. Mason, ‘Paternalism Under Siege: Slavery in Theory and Practice During the Era of Reform, c. 1825 Through Emancipation’, and A. Bank, ‘The Erosion of Urban Slavery at the Cape’, all in Worden and Crais, Breaking the Chains, 25–44;45–78;79–98
  • Legassick . ‘The State, Racism and the Rise of Capitalism'Keegan, Colonial South Africa.
  • Comaroff , J. and Comaroff , J. 1991 . Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa Chicago
  • Comaroff , J. ‘Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa’, in Cooper and Staler, Tensions of Empire, 163–97;A. Lester, ‘“Otherness” and the Frontiers of Empire: The Eastern Cape Colony, 1806–c. 1850’, Journal of Historical Geography, 24, 1 (1998), 2–19;A. Lester, Imperial Networks: The Eastern Cape and Britain in the Nineteenth Century (London, forthcoming)
  • Foucault , M. 1977 . Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison London (L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London, 1992)
  • Keegan . Colonial South Africa.
  • Holt , T. 1992 . The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 Baltimore and London (Staler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony'J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilisation of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 1787–1807 (London and Portland, Or., 1998)
  • Ross , A. 1986 . John Philip (1775–1851): Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa Aberdeen (Comaroff, ‘Images of Empire’
  • Crais , Worden and . 1997 . Breaking the Chains; Scully, Liberating the Family: Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853 (Portsmouth, NH, Oxford and Cape Town
  • Foucault . 1993 . Discipline and Punishment; F. Driver, Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System 1834–1884 (Cambridge
  • Worden , N. ‘Between Slavery and Freedom: The Apprenticeship Period, 1834–8’, in Worden and Crais, Breaking the Chains, 117–44
  • Ross , R. ‘“Rather Mental Than Physical”: Emancipations and the Cape Economy’, in Worden and Crais, Breaking the Chains, 145–68
  • Crais , Worden and . Breaking the Chains.
  • Thompson , F. M.L. 1988 . The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of Victorian Britain 1830–1900 London (M. Savage and A. Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class 1840–1940 (London, 1994);N. Harte and R. Quinalt, eds, Land and Society in Britain 1700–1914 (Manchester, 1996);Staler and Cooper, ‘Between Metropole and Colony’
  • Staler . Race and the Education of Desire.
  • Bank . ‘Liberals and Their Enemies’
  • Crais . White Supremacy A. Bank, ‘Of “Native Skulls” and “Noble Caucasians”: Phrenology in Colonial South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 22, 3 (1996), 387–404;Keegan, Colonial South Africa; A. Lester, ‘Reformulating Identities: British Settlers in Nineteenth Century South Africa’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23, 4 (1998), 515–31
  • Mackenzie , J. M. 1984 . Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 Manchester (Holt, The Problem of Freedom; Staler, Race and the Education of Desire; Dubow, Scientific Racism;Lester, Imperial Networks.
  • Stepan , N. 1982 . The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (London, Dubow, Scientific Racism; L. Perry Curtis Jnr, Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Washington and London, 1997)
  • Hobsbawm , E. 1968 . Industry and Empire London (and E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (London, 1987)
  • Trapido , Marks and . ‘Lord Milner'Marks, ‘Southern Africa’ and ‘Southern and Central Africa'A. Ashforth, The Politics of Official Discourse in Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford, 1990)
  • Bundy , C. 1988 . The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry Cape Town, Johannesburg and London
  • Willan , B. 1984 . Sol Plaatje: A Biography Johannesburg (S. Marks, The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism and the State in Twentieth-Century Natal (Johannesburg, 1986);G. Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African ‘Coloured’ Politics (Cape Town and Johannesburg, 1987);Dubow, Racial Segregation; A. Cobley, Class and Consciousness: The Black Petty Bourgeoisie in South Africa, 1924–1950 (New York, 1990)
  • Marks . ‘White Supremacy’, 395
  • Dubow . Racial Segregation; Parnell and Mabin, ‘Rethinking Urban South Africa'Parnell, ‘Changes in the British Colonial Office's Policy’; Robinson, The Power of Apartheid; Evans, Bureaucracy and Race.
  • Dubow . 1996 . Racial Segregation; M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton
  • Moodie , D. T. 1975 . The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion Berkeley, Los Angeles and London As readers will be aware, a wealth of literature exists on the material experiences which Afrikaner nationalist leaders were able to fashion into an ethnic discourse. See, for example (H. Giliomee, ‘The Beginnings of Afrikaner Ethnic Consciousness, 1850–1915”, in Vail, The Creation of Tribalism, 21–54;D. O'Meara, Volkskapitalisme: Class, Capital and Ideology in the Development of Afrikaner Nationalism, 1934–1948 (Cambridge, 1983);C. Bloomberg (ed. S. Dubow), Christian-Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, 1918–48 (London, 1990);Norval, Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse.
  • Manzo . 1994 . Domination, Resistance, and Social Change; W. Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford and New York, P.J. Taylor, The Way the Modern World Works: World Hegemony to World Impasse (Chichester, 1996)
  • Cooper , F. 1996 . Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa Cambridge
  • Slater , D. 1993 . The Geopolitical Imagination and the Enframing of Development Theory . Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers , 18 ( 3 ) : 419 – 37 . (J. Crush, ed., Power of Development (London, 1995);A. Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, 1995)
  • Beinart . Twentieth Century South Africa.
  • Lipton , M. 1986 . Capitalism and Apartheid: South Africa, 1910–1986 London (S. Gelb, ed., South Africa's Economic Crisis (Cape Town and London, 1991)
  • Hyslop , J. 1998 . ‘Why Did Apartheid's Supporters Capitulate? Whiteness, Consumption and Class in Urban South Africa, 1985–1995' (Societies of Southern Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Seminar, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London
  • Price , R. 1991 . The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political Transformation in South Africa, 1975–1990 Oxford and New York (Marais, South Africa Limits to Change.
  • Marais . South Africa Limits to Change; Bond, Elite Transition.
  • Manzo . Domination, Resistance, and Social Change 253
  • Laclau . New Reflections 55–6
  • Beinart , W. 1982 . The Political Economy of Pondoland, 1860–1930 Cambridge (S. Marks and R. Rathbone, eds, Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa: African Class Formation, Culture and Consciousness, 1870–1930 (Harlow and New York, 1982);Dubow, Racial Segregation; Marks, ‘White Supremacy’

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