Segregation and Singularity : Politics and Its Context among White, Middle-Class English-Speakers in Late-Apartheid Johannesburg / Peter Stewart.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stewart, Peter, author.

Series:

Imagined South Africa ; Volume 10.

Imagined South Africa Series ; Volume 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

White people--South Africa--Johannesburg--Politics and government.

White people.

White people--South Africa--Johannesburg--Attitudes.

Johannesburg (South Africa)--Politics and government.

Johannesburg (South Africa).

Johannesburg (South Africa)--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Pretoria, South Africa : Unisa Press University of South Africa, [2004]

Summary:

As a political sociology of whites in the last years of apartheid in South Africa, this book provides an analysis of the social origins and social context of political attitudes among a sample of middle-class, English-speaking whites in selected suburbs in the city of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province. It reveals that such attitudes emanated in the context of acute and continuing political polarisation, principally between black and white, in the twilight of apartheid and before the first democratic elections. The book adds another dimension to the interpretation of class dynamics in the study of apartheid South Africa. In contrast to other studies that have concentrated on the working class, and on very restricted political and economic elites - which gives an incomplete picture of class dynamics - this book considers the impact of the middle classes in shaping the history of apartheid South Africa.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright Page

CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES

PREFACE

ONE The Setting

I Background

II The aims of this study

Whites and political strategy

Exploratory empiricism

A theory and methodology of open context

III The context of 1992

IV Myself as another

TWO Theory and Political Preference Formation: Towards a Theory of Open Context

I The South African debate on the formation of political attitudes of English-speaking whites

Ethnic explanations

Psychological explanations

Explanations relating to class and economic privilege

State ideological control

Shaping by material context

II The move towards accounts of personal, institutional and systemic contextuality in political socialization

III Some sociological concepts used in the study

Habitus, practical knowledge, schemata

Horizons of knowledge, social horizon

Fields and capitals

Space and time

Agency

Research

THREE Patterns of Class, Politics and Culture Among English-speaking Whites in Johannesburg

I Note on geographical and other limits on scope

II Historical themes in Johannesburg

The rise of the South African state and its minerals-energy complex

The origins in mining and monopoly: Johannesburg's emergence as a national financial and commercial centre

Johannesburg as an apartheid city: Planning and separation

Relations of race and class in Johannesburg

Decentralisation, post-Fordism and crises after 1976

III Class among whites in Johannesburg in 1992

Indications of wealth

Employment and class

IV The political nature of English-speaking whites in Johannesburg: A preliminary investigation

A plurality of organisations

General remarks on Johannesburg's party-political history

Voting patterns and the social nature ofJohannesburg.

V Social differentiation among Johannesburg's suburbs

VI A consideration of culture and politics among English-speaking whites in Johannesburg

The location of culture: Raymond Williams and John B. Thompson

The complexity of Johannesburg as a site of culture

The variety of habituating institutions and traditions

Segregation

The capitalist city as a site of hierarchical consumer culture

Mass events as Johannesburg cultural phenomena

Print media consumption

Dominant, residual and emergent cultures

FOUR Politics and Individuals: A Socio-economic Profile of the Sample as a Whole

I General remarks on the sample

II Suburbs and political attitudes

III Ethnicity

IV Religion and cosmology

V Media consumption

VI Class and political attitudes: General patterns

VII Racial attitudes and knowledgeability

VIII Concluding remarks

FIVE Broad forces of Political Socialisation

I Convergence and diversity in the results

II Initial main results

Results of the correlation analysis

Non-statistical initial results

The National Party-Democratic Party consensus and shared matrices of determination and influence

III The political field and respondents' understanding of it: Their relation to political attitudes

IV Segregated upbringing

v Location in imperial history

VI The city

VII Capitals and positions in the political field

Economic capital and the class of respondents

Educational capital and radicalism/liberalism

Other cultural capitals

Social capital

Political capital: A contrast of the political sample with the random sample

VIII Racial stereotypes, empathy and political attitude

IX Women and politics

X Ethics and political preference

XI Conclusion

SIX Groupings and Parallels in Formative Events, Social Presentation and Discourse.

I The case for the particular

Clustering around particular patterns

II Groupings of crucial formative processes and events

Foreign discovery

Adolescent rebellion, awareness

Positive encounters with black people

Negative encounters with black people

Radical politicisation

Conservative politicisation

Upward mobility

War

Family

III Environmental parallels among respondents with similar politics

Suburbs as political subcultures

Left counterculture

Religious strategies

Business culture

Ambiguous suburban women after 2 February 1990

Centrist pragmatists of the petty bourgeoisie

Big women with thin reactionary husbands

Racist borderless couples

Out-group whites

Cultural strategies of distanciation or appropriation of the political

Habitus and strategies of expressive racism

Rightist gun culture

Sanitised racial contact and goodwill

SEVEN Conclusions: Context, Solidarity, Singularity

I Bringing the evidence together

Political attitudes and support for domination

The relation of respondents to practices of liberation

II Political strategy then and now

Constraints to strategy in 1992

Implications for current policy

III The South Mrican debate on white political attitude formation

IV The case for, and against, a theory of open context and informed empirical exploration

V Listening to the past in the present

APPENDIX A The Research Procedure and the Sample

NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS

BOOK LIST

INDEX.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Stewart, Peter Segregation and Singularity

ISBN:

9789004491342

OCLC:

1158649021

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004491342 DOI