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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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.