Rethinking entrepreneurship through distribution: distributive relations and the reproduction of racialized inequality among South African entrepreneurs

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is commonly understood as the identification, evaluation, and execution of a market‐based opportunity to produce profits. But anthropological scholarship shows that capitalism, and market relations more broadly, cannot function without acts of distribution. Focusing on two different groups of entrepreneurs across the racialized socioeconomic divides of Cape Town, South Africa – White South African entrepreneurs in the city's central business district and Black South African entrepreneurs in the city's largest township of Khayelitsha – this article compares the distributive resources that entrepreneurs use to launch and maintain their businesses. I show that the productive capacity of all entrepreneurs depends upon the distributive resources that are available to them, gained primarily from access to intergenerational wealth or from lateral modes of reciprocity and social support. But more importantly, I demonstrate how these distributive resources and activities reproduce the structural economic inequalities of racial capitalism, which are rooted in South Africa's colonial and apartheid history. I conclude by discussing the implications that this has for the ways that anthropologists discuss the potential of distributive strategies among marginalized populations, as well as the way that scholars and policy‐makers understand the economic potential of entrepreneurial practice.

Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity: Shame, upset, anger, and conflict over water in twenty cross‐cultural sites

“…Reciprocal economies in hunter-gatherer and pastoralist societies, for example, allow members to draw heavily on group resources during certain life phases, such as childhood or early parenthood or during environmental crises like droughts (Bollig 1998;Hawkes, O'Connell, and Blurton-Jones 1997;Kaplan et al 1985). In contexts of extreme poverty or marginality, affective ties formed in long-standing reciprocal relationships minimize shame or status loss for receivers of help and favors (Beresford 2021;Lomnitz 1977;Sangaramoorthy 2018;Stack 1970). Here, too, people are expected to be heavy receivers during certain crises or life phases-and they are expected to give more at other times.…”

“…1985). In contexts of extreme poverty or marginality, affective ties formed in long‐standing reciprocal relationships minimize shame or status loss for receivers of help and favors (Beresford 2021; Lomnitz 1977; Sangaramoorthy 2018; Stack 1970). Here, too, people are expected to be heavy receivers during certain crises or life phases—and they are expected to give more at other times.…”

Fat Is All My Fault: Globalized Metathemes of Body Self‐blame

“…The approach presented here, developed alongside and informed by other comparative multi-sited ethnographic works (e.g., Benton et al 2017;Beresford 2021;Ember 2009;Garth and Hardin 2019;Jordan 1992;Mendenhall 2019;Pacheco-Vega 2020), enables us to identify overarching metathemes and inter-relationships between themes across our datasets. After we finished data collection, we met repeatedly to discuss the themes emerging from our data during analysis, paying particular attention to the identification of, and agreement around, metathemes (Wutich et al 2021).…”

Metatheme Analysis: A Qualitative Method for Cross-Cultural Research

“…It is, however different from these approaches, as shown in Table 1. Qualitative metatheme analysis has been formally introduced in the methods literature (e.g., Hagaman & Wutich, 2017), and is applied informally to a number of cross-cultural, multi-sited, and comparative ethnographic works (e.g., Benton et al, 2017; Beresford, 2021; Ember, 2009; Garth & Hardin, 2019; Jordan, 1992; Mendenhall, 2019; Pacheco-Vega, 2020). To date, however, it has not been procedurally explained or discussed in the methodological literature.…”

“…There has been a slow and steady revival of cross-cultural ethnography in recent decades (Candea, 2019;Falzon, 2016). This work explores how meanings are shared across cultural contexts, while also deeply describing and contextualizing meanings in ethnographically-situated ways (e.g., Benton et al, 2017;Beresford, 2021;Ember, 2009;Garth & Hardin, 2019;Jordan, 1992;Mendenhall, 2019;Pacheco-Vega, 2020). Despite this burgeoning renaissance, methodological research on cross-cultural ethnography has exploded only in the last 5 years.…”