Consumption, Media and Culture in South Africa
This book is the first of its kind to bring together a collection of critical scholarly work on consumer culture in South Africa, exploring the cultural, political, economic and social aspects of consumption in post-Apartheid society. From sushi and Japanese diplomacy to Queen Sophies writhing gown, from middle class Sowetan golfers to an indebted working class citizenry, from wedding websites to wedding nostalgia, from the liberation of consuming to the low wage labour of selling, the chapters in this book demonstrate a variety of themes, showing that to start with consumption, rather than ending with it, allows for new insights into long-standing areas of social research. By mapping, exploring and theorizing the diverse aspects of consumption and consumer culture, the volume collectively works towards a fresh set of empirically rooted conceptual commentaries on the politics, economics and social dynamics of modern South Africa. This effort, in turn, can serve as a foundation for thinking less parochially about neoliberal power and consumer culture.
On a global scale, studying consumption in South Africa matters because in some ways the country serves as a microcosm for global patterns of income inequality, race-based economic oppression and hopes for the material betterment of life. By exploring what consumption means on the local scale in South Africa, the possibility arises to trace new global links and dissonances. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts.
Mehita Iqani is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the author of Consumer Culture and the Media: Magazines in the Public Eye (2012), and Consumption and Media in the Global South: Empowerment Contested (2015). She serves on the editorial board of Consumption, Markets & Culture.
Bridget Kenny is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and has written extensively on retail work, precarious labour, gender, race and political publics. She is the President of the Labour Movements section of the International Sociological Association, has served as editor of the journals African Studies and South African Review of Sociology and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Global Labour Journal and African Studies.
Consumption, Media and Culture in South Africa
Perspectives on freedom and the public
Edited by
Mehita Iqani and Bridget Kenny
First published 2016
by Routledge
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2016 Critical Arts Projects
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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-96333-7
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The publisher accepts responsibility for any inconsistencies that may have arisen during the conversion of this book from journal articles to book chapters, namely the possible inclusion of journal terminology.
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Contents
Mehita Iqani and Bridget Kenny
Cobus van Staden
Mehita Iqani
Mary Corrigall
Tommaso M. Milani and Brandon Wolff
Danai Mupotsa
Bridget Kenny
Patrick Bond
Ulrike Kistner
The chapters in this bookwere originally published in Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:
Critical consumption studies in South Africa: roots and routes
Mehita Iqani and Bridget Kenny
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 95106
Chewing on Japan: consumption, diplomacy and Kenny Kunenes nyotaimori scandal
Cobus van Staden
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 107125
Agency and affordability: being black and middle class in South Africa in 1989
Mehita Iqani
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 126145
Sartorial excess in Mary Sibandes Sophie
Mary Corrigall
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 146164
Queer skin, straight masks: same-sex weddings and the discursive construction of identities and affects on a South African website
Tommaso M. Milani and Brandon Wolff
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 165182
The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa
Danai Mupotsa
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 183198
Retail, the service worker and the polity: attaching labour and consumption
Bridget Kenny
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 199217
Contradictions in consumer credit: innovations in South African super-exploitation
Patrick Bond
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 218239
Trading in freedom: rethinking conspicuous consumption in post-apartheid political economy
Ulrike Kistner
Critical Arts, volume 29, issue 2 (April 2015) pp. 240259
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Patrick Bond is the Director of the Centre for Civil Society, and is a Professor of Political Economy, at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Durban, South Africa. He has longstanding research interests in urban communities, and global justice movements, and has worked for NGOs in several countries in these areas. His current research involves economic justice, geopolitics, climate, energy and water. He is the author (with John Saul) of South Africa: The Present As History (2014).
Mary Corrigall is an art critic, journalist, and art historian based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is the Books Editor and Senior Feature writer at the Sunday Independent newspaper. She is also a Research Fellow at The Research Centre for Visual Identities in Art and Design at the University of Johannesburg, where she has been pursuing research into the use of dress in contemporary South African art and performance. She won a CNN African Journalism award in 2007, and was awarded the Thomas Pringle Award for Reviews in 2009 and 2011.
