Webb, Christopher (2021) Liberating the family: Debt, education and racial capitalism in South Africa. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39 (1). pp. 85-102. ISSN 0263-7758
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This article provides an analysis of South Africa’s #FeesMustFall protests focusing on young people’s concerns around debt, family obligations and social mobility. While the protests have popularly been understood as a generational revolt, there has been insufficient attention paid to the role of debt in young people’s lives and how this affects aspirations towards collective social mobility. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with students from a black working-class township, this article suggests that education reconfigures kinship bonds, generating expectations to support family members by paying a so-called ‘black tax’. Drawing on the concept of ‘debt ecologies’, I highlight how debt articulates with other forms of social inequality, racialized poverty in particular, and can also act as a source of politicization. Finally, I call for greater attention to the role of debt in young people’s lives and how it impacts their economic agency, their role in care and familial networks and ability to imagine the future.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Funding Information: I would like to thank the students and their families from Khayelitsha who took the time to speak to me. I would also like to thank Dr Mark Hunter, Dr Michelle Buckley, Dr Jennifer Jihye Chun, Dr Raj Narayanareddy and Dr Belinda Dodson for their feedback on this project. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2020. |
| Divisions: | Anthropology |
| Date Deposited: | 07 May 2024 14:24 |
| Last Modified: | 17 May 2024 00:27 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122971 |
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