Race and class, class and race…

Want a really good read about post-1994 complications in South Africa? Look no further! This book by Newman and De Lannoy (2014) is excellent. It uses broadly narrative and biographical methods to explore the reconfiguring dynamics of race and complex class fractures for seven people and their family/friends. It is badly titled, probably to appeal to the American market its publisher is part of, but nonetheless persevere because it is the best account available of how a range of people of varied ages, genders, ethnicities, skin colours, and from different areas, have experienced life since 1994. It’s a really good read, in part because it’s very well written, but mainly because focused in detail on what these seven people and others in their circle do, think, say, with the result that a good understanding of them and their circumstances is gained. It makes outstanding use of biographical methods in showing why they act as they do. Herein class inheres in the lived realities, not just in abstruse classificatory terms, and increasingly fractures the materialities of race/ethnicity/colour.

Last updated: 2 January 2020