Conspicuous consumption in Africa / edited by Deborah Posel and Ilana van Wyk.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Posel, Deborah, editor.

Van Wyk, Ilana, 1977- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumption (Economics)--Africa.

Consumption (Economics).

Consumption (Economics)--Africa--Social aspects.

Economic anthropology--Africa.

Economic anthropology.

Material culture--Africa.

Material culture.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Johannesburg : Wits University Press, 2019.

Summary:

From early department stores in Cape Town to gendered histories of sartorial success in urban Togo, contestations over expense accounts at an apartheid state enterprise, elite wealth and political corruption in Angola and Zambia, the role of popular religion in the political intransigence of Jacob Zuma, funerals of big men in Cameroon, youth cultures of consumption in Niger and South Africa, queer consumption in Cape Town, middle-class food consumption in Durban and the consumption of luxury handcrafted beads, this collection of essays explores the ways in which conspicuous consumption is foregrounded in various African contexts and historical moments. In 1899, Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase 'conspicuous consumption' to describe status-seeking in the obscenely unequal world of late-nineteenth century America. Many of the aspects he described in The Theory of the Leisure Class are still evident in our world today. While Veblen's crude denunciation of material extravagance finds echoes in media exposés about the lifestyles of the rich worldwide, it is particularly recognisable in reporting on Africa. Here, images of conspicuous consumption have long circulated in local and global media as indictments of political corruption and signs of moral depravity. The essays in Conspicuous Consumption in Africa put Veblen's concept under robust critical scrutiny, drawing on theorists like Mbembe, Guyer and Bayart by way of critique or addition. They delve into the pleasures, stresses and challenges of consuming in its religious, generational, gendered and racialised aspects, revealing conspicuous consumption as a layered set of practices, textures and relations. The authors resist the trap of easy moralisation, pointing to more complex ethical and political registers of analysis and judgement. This volume shows how central and revealing conspicuous consumption can be to fathoming the history of Africa's projects of modernity, and their global lineages and legacies. In its grounded, up-close case studies, it is likely to feed into current public debates on the nature and future of African societies - South African society in particular.

Contents:

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

1 Thinking with Veblen: Case Studies from Africa's Past and Present

Veblen on conspicuous consumption

Different readings of Veblen

The contributors

2 Changes in the Order of Things: Department Stores and the Making of Modern Cape Town

The emergence of department stores

Garlicks and Stuttafords in Cape Town

Conspicuous consumption and race

3 Conspicuously Public: Gendered Histories of Sartorial and Social Success in Urban Togo

Cloth and clothing

Consumerism and urban grammars of style in colonial Togo

Styling the nation: Embodying modernity

Conspicuous style: Performing a female aesthetics of excess

4 Etienne Rousseau, Broedertwis and the Politics of Consumption within Afrikanerdom

Making (ORDENTLIKE) modern Afrikaners

'To be seen as part of the town'

The managerial revolution

'Economically rich and soft'

'Business has bred a new aristocracy'

5 Recycling Consumption: Political Power and Elite Wealth in Angola

Consumption and power in Angola

The president's children

6 Chiluba's Trunks: Consumption, Excess and the Body Politic in Zambia

Background

The Money Matrix

The dressed body of the president

Chiluba's trunks

A threshold of the body politic

Dress and power

7 Jacob Zuma's Shamelessness: Conspicuous Consumption, Politics and Religion

A dishonourable man

Veblen on honour, shame and religion

Consuming for God

Zuma and the Neo-Pentecostals

Pentecostal politics

8 Precarious 'Bigness': A 'Big Man', His Women and His Funeral in Cameroon

Conspicuous registers of 'bigness': Women and funerals

Preparing to bury a 'big man'

A dramatic 'wake-keep'

Sexual 'consumption', material struggles.

9 Young Men of Leisure? Youth, Conspicuous Consumption and the Performativity of Dress in Niger

'Sitting at the fada': Idleness, sociality and the life course

Dress, consumption and 'pecuniary standing'

Conspicuous consumption in the past and present tenses

Generation, 'fun,' and the fashioning of youth

Obama's sandals

Waste as work

The limitations of Veblen's model

10 Booty on Fire: Looking at Izikhothane with Thorstein Veblen

Background to the subculture of ukukhothana

Conspicuous consumption

The critics

The Good Fellas

Honorific failure?

11 Conspicuous Queer Consumption: Emulation and Honour in the Pink Map

Queer consumption: Out of the closet through the Pink Map

Mobility, consumption and citizenship: A framework for analysis

Conspicuous queer consumption: Emergence and emulation

Conspicuous queer consumption: Seeking honour through retail therapy

Into the mainstream: The spectacle of consumption

12 The Politics and Moral Economy of Middle-Class Consumption in South Africa

The moral economy of lower-middle-class actor-consumers

Budgeting: Money is not an abstraction

Sharing and attachment to one's community of origin

Convergence, Novelty And Tradition In Food Habits

On consumption, conspicuous or otherwise, and nation-building

13 Marigold Beads: Who Needs Diamonds?!

Veblen: Ownership and display wealth, waste and women

I need, I want: Who does, who doesn't and why?

Offering solace, personal connections between women

Purposeful modes

African cosmopolitan: Beads, place and identity

Greed-need: Is there more to it?

Veblen and the hand-wrought object

Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 01 Nov 2019).

ISBN:

1-77614-365-5