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This book documents the emergence and development of the theory of racial capitalism in apartheid South Africa. It interrogates the specificity of this theory in the South African context and draws lessons for its global applicability.
Racism and capitalism have a long history of entanglement. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa, where colonial and apartheid regimes used explicit systems of racial hierarchy to shore up profit. It is therefore no surprise that South Africa has represented a key site for thinking about the role that racism plays in shaping state policy, labor markets, patterns of capital accumulation, and working-class struggle. Illuminating these dynamics, this volume develops a distinctive South African tradition of thought about the relationship between racism and capitalism.
The South African Tradition of Racial Capitalism contributes to a burgeoning literature on the concept of "racial capitalism," the origins of which many commentators trace back to apartheid South Africa. It pays particular attention to the crucial role of anti-apartheid activists as theorists, whose important insights remain relevant for scholars and activists around the globe. This book was originally published as a special issue of
Ethnic and Racial Studies.
List of contents
Introduction: The South African tradition of racial capitalism 1. The context of struggle: racial capitalism and political praxis in South Africa 2. Merely liberals? Du Bois and Plaatje as radical critics of racial capitalism 3. Articulating difference: reading Biko-with-Hall 4. Bernard Magubane on the political economy of race and class in South Africa 5. Whiteness and racial capitalism: to whom do the 'wages of whiteness' accrue? 6. Reproducing 'racial capitalism' through retailing in South Africa: gender, labour, and consumption, 1950s-1970s 7. Geographies of racial capitalism: the July 2021 riots in South Africa 8. Racial capitalism: an unfinished history
About the author
Zachary Levenson is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida International University, USA, and Senior Research Associate in Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of
Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City (2022).
Marcel Paret is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah, USA, and Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of
Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa after Racial Inclusion (2022).
