Radical Practice and "Real Hustle": Neoliberalism from Below in a South African Township

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2016
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
More than twenty years after the end of apartheid, many of the promises of popular democracy and liberation remain unfulfilled for black South Africans. The continuing economic and social inequalities in the cities of South Africa demonstrate that, even after apartheid, many of the oppressive power structures from colonial rule have remained in place. These structures have been augmented by increasingly dominant governing technologies of neoliberalism, which mandate that members of society regulate themselves in order to maximize their economic output, while also holding “market growth” as the dominant principle for managing populations. Neoliberalism operates through particular discourses of self and society: according to neoliberal logics in South Africa, free markets hold the promise of freedom and equality, which individual citizens can realize through practicing an entrepreneurial work ethic. In this thesis, I explore the ways that young adults in Langa, a black township of Cape Town, related to the neoliberal discourses of contemporary South Africa. Through interviews with young people and through observations of a grassroots youth organization in Langa, I asked how their aspirations – their ideas of success, their visions of themselves in the future, and the practices they were currently engaging in to realize these visions – drew upon and reacted to dominant neoliberal discourse. I argue that the respondents brought their experiences of marginalization to bear in their performance of neoliberal narratives, reformulating a set of ideas that substantiates hegemonic power relations into transgressive visions of their own actualization. Black youth in Langa created new ways of understanding the economy, the city, and the workings of governance, which centered the collective support and creative abilities of marginalized people. Through a youth organization called “Real Phandaz”, they put these understandings into radical practice within a seemingly neoliberal setting. This study, I argue, works towards an understanding of “neoliberalism from below” by exploring how a group of young people in Langa practiced new understandings of liberation from their marginalized position.
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