Andrew D. Spiegel

Domestic Diversity and Fluidity Among Some African Households in Greater Cape Town

(1996). Domestic diversity and fluidity among some African households in Greater Cape Town. Social Dynamics: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 7-30.

The articulation of modes of production

The Articulation of Modes of Production — essays from Economy and Society edited by Harold Wolpe. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. (R16.05)

Women and Wages: Gender and the Control of Income in Farm and Bantustan Households

The argument of this article is based on a close comparison of two Bantustan areas in South Africa: the Matatiele district in the Transkei and Qwaqwa in the Orange Free State. Such comparisons are rarely, if ever, attempted, but we contend that they are potentially very useful in illuminating the complexities of social relationships in South Africas rural periphery. In this article we concentrate on gender relationships. All the Bantustans share certain characteristics that impinge on the nature of gender relationships. Most significant are the overwhelming dependence of households on income derived from remittances, and the fact that migrant‐contract employment opportunities are mainly restricted to men. But Bantustan areas also differ with regard to the availability of residual productive resources (such as arable and pasture land), their residents’ past involvement in wage‐labour and experiences of forced relocation, and in the forms of material differentiation amongst residents. This article explores...

Changing patterns of migrant labour and rural differentation in Lesotho

This paper considers the changing nature of rural differentiation in Lesotho as recruitment of labour migrants becomes increasingly selective and limited and as a new system of land tenure is implemented. The operation and effect of the present labour “stabilization” policies of the South African mines is discussed as are the provisions of the Lesotho Land Act 1979. Rural differentiation in Lesotho of the mid 1970s is then analyzed in terms of the relationship between access to migrants’ remittances and arable allotments on the one hand and the domestic developmental cycle on the other. This suggests some of the implications of wider socio‐economic changes at the local level. Differentiation will become increasingly permanent and a growing number of rural households will no longer be able to depend on remitted earnings. In all likelihood many of them will also be unable to gain access to arable allotments. This will result in the exacerbation of already existing poverty which, until recently, has been cus...

The fluidity of household composition in matatiele, Transkei: a methodological problem

Questions related to the study of household composition in South Africa are explored using data from a longitudinal study carried out in a Sotho-speaking village in Matatiele District of the Transkei. These questions primarily concern the fluidity of household composition and the methodological problems this poses.

Spinning off the developmental cycle: Comments on the utility of a concept in the light of data from Matatiele, Transkei

Recent interest in the effects of labour migration on life in rural labour exporting communities in southern Africa has focused attention on the cyclical sequences of household development as a prism through which to view the links between wages and rural resources. This paper shows that the idea has, at times, been applied inappropriately. The result has been reduced concern with a classical class analysis. One should not however lose sight of such an important perspective. A focus on the different forms of land tenure obtainingin the Matatiele district of the Transkei is linked with a consideration of a set of personal and household life‐historical sequences. These sequences are shown to be constrained by the material conditions of their existence at different phases of the cycle. A class analysis is thus seen as a necessary underpinning for any analysis using the developmental cycle perspective.

From exposé to care: Preliminary thoughts about shifting the ethical concerns of South African social anthropology

Social anthropologists working in South Africa during the late apartheid period expressed their abhorrence of the apartheid system in the preamble to the association that they formed. Many set as their goal the work of ‘exposé anthropology’, using anthropology to reveal the iniquitous consequences of apartheid. Apartheids formal collapse and the institution of a democratic constitutional regime has reduced the need for such exposé, but current political-economic circumstances preclude easy or rapid transformation of the extreme poverty and deprivation that continue to plague the countrys population. The article addresses the question of what an appropriate ethics for anthropology in such circumstances might be and proposes an ethic of care.

Towards an Understanding of Tradition Uses of Tradition(Al) in Apartheid South Africa

domination by a minority over the rest of the population and thereby to justify social control through a variety of political and directly coercive institutions. A classic example can be found in the use of the terms by the compilers of the Official Yearbooks of the Republic of South Africa for the 1980s. In what is a transparent justification for the policies of apartheid, social life among Africans is presented as being not only different from that of whites and of other so-called ’population groups’2, but that its traditional character makes Africans backward and anti-progressive. Thus the Official Yearbook for 1985 says that ’Traditional economics among the Black peoples of South Africa is based on a subsistence rather than profit philosophy’ and that this is manifest in such areas as’ traditional African conceptions of time [which] in contact situations involve... subsistence orien-

Categorical difference versus continuum: Rethinking Turner's liminal-liminoid distinction

Turners distinction between liminal and liminoid is not commonly drawn upon, liminality being seen and applied to all ‘betwixt and between’ social situations. Yet Turners distinction, once appropriately revised, offers a more nuanced means to understand such situations. The criteria Turner originally used to construct the distinction have, however, created a tendency towards its being used to perpetuate a crude and by now passé primitive-versus-civilised/modern distinction of societal types. Starting with brief reference to South Africas World Cup 2010 event and using various other illustrative examples, the article outlines Turners original conceptualisation of the liminal-liminoid distinction. It then proposes an alternative way of understanding that distinction—seeing liminal and liminoid as opposite ends of a continuum stretching between two ideal type social situations. It further argues that all real such social situations demonstrate aspects of both liminal and liminoid within them, the extent of each being what differentiates them.

‘Distraction from the real difficulties’: ethical deliberations in international health research

Increasingly, North based graduate students are seeking South based institutional homes whilst undertaking ethnographic research. Looking from a place in the global South, the article considers how requests to host such students influence, and are influenced by, both local and northern research ethics procedures. In particular the article focuses on the globalisation of the Institutional Review Board principle in defining much of the international landscape of ethical oversight, mainly because so much international health research funding is linked to northern institutions. We draw on a case study, the setting being an anthropological investigation by a northern researcher into health issues conducted in South Africa. The northern institution made a large investment in ethical oversight, but oriented it entirely towards limiting its legal liability. It was little concerned by ethical considerations posed by South African colleagues. This appears to have occurred because they were working from seemingly in...