Are Cars the New Cows? Changing Wealth Goods and Moral Economies in South Africa

Abstract

In much of sub-Saharan Africa, cattle have played a central role in maintaining social cohesion by binding people of various means into mutual obligations. Today, among South African Zulu communities, as in much of the world, the social obligations attached to wealth are fiercely contested. To trace conflicts in emerging moral economies, I compare in this article the social roles of cows versus those of another wealth good: cars. Unlike cattle, cars are not given to in-laws, are not shepherded in communal pasturelands, and do not multiply communal wealth through reproduction. Both cattle and cars measure status, but cars measure an individualized status that protectively hedges itself from others' demands. As a minimally fungible investment, a vehicle for independent movement, and a tool for financial independence that is increasingly accessed by both women and men, cars offer a vantage point onto the ways that people navigate between diverging old and new moral economies. [morality, inequality, Africa, cattle, wealth goods]

In defence of exploratory research: A reply to critics

“…pressure to convert 'private' wealth into 'social' wealth. [124][125][126][127][128] They can be a response to the pressures of consumerist advertising, including the promotion of consumer credit, 129 or to neo-Pentecostal religious convictions. 130 They can reflect an aspiration to recognition or status, framed by consumption.…”

The Ovicaprine Mystique: Livestock Commodification in Postindustrial Lesotho

“…This literature emphasizes that where recalcitrant commodities are pushed into commodification, contradictions arise that must be resolved. Studies of cattle ownership in Africa have served as key examples of the embeddedness of goods within a social fabric (Evans-Pritchard 1940;Herskovits 1926), depicted as a Maussian "total social fact" (Mauss [1925] 2016) and a site for exploring how African societies respond to urbanization and cash economies (Comaroff and Comaroff 1990;Ferguson 1994;Hutchinson 1996;Jeske 2016;Murray 1981;Turkon 2003;White 2017).…”

“…Yet, whether goods are resistant to alienation or not, commodification is a social practice (Appel 2012). Indeed, as the substantivist tradition in economic anthropology has shown (see Appadurai 1986), markets are always inflected by gender, kinship, and power-historically and culturally specific, shot through with dreams and nightmares as much as logics and strategies (see, for example , Browne 2009;Jeske 2016;Kaplan 2007;Taussig 1980;Tsing 2015). More than disabusing the distinction between precapitalist and capitalist economies, anthropologists must account for the varied sociality of different kinds of capitalist goods.…”

“…Since Melville Herskovits (1926) described the "cattle complex" in eastern and southern Africa, anthropologists have drawn attention to cattle's imbrication in a variety of social institutions, including religion, politics, economy, and more (e.g., Comaroff and Comaroff 1990;Evans-Pritchard 1940). This imbrication complicates their rendering as straightforward, capitalist commodities for market exchange (Ferguson 1994;Hutchinson 1996; also see Gudeman 1986;Murray 1981;Piot 1991), making cattle a key site for understanding social and symbolic systems, particularly as relationships to cattle are reworked by shifting political economies (Jeske 2016;Turkon 2003;White 2015White , 2017. It is not only anthropologists who have been captivated by the charisma of noncapitalist, cattle-mediated social relations in Africa, but also conservation and development experts.…”

The conditional legitimacy of claims made by mothers and other kin in South Africa

“…In practice, even in Africa, kinship was never as binding as Fortes’ idealized account suggested. Many urbanizing migrants did remain tied into strong kinship networks, but others saw urbanization as an opportunity to embrace the individualist consumerism associated with modernity and to shrug off responsibilities to kin (Ferguson, 1999; Jeske, 2016). In the 1990s and 2000s, claims on extended kin increased as a result of the AIDS pandemic, with sick adults and orphaned children becoming the dependents of grandmothers and other kin (Seeley et al, 1993; Foster, 2000).…”