The rise and fall of the Weberian analysis of class in South Africa between 1949 and the early 1970s

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Periodical article

Title:	The rise and fall of the Weberian analysis of class in South Africa between 1949 and the early 1970s
Author:	Seekings, Jeremy
Year:	2009
Periodical:	Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:	35
Issue:	4
Pages:	865-881
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	social stratification social classes race relations social status
External link:	https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070903313228
Abstract:	The hegemony of Marxist approaches to the study of stratification in South Africa has obscured the prominence of Weberian contributions between the late 1940s and the early 1970s. Some of these Weberian studies focused on the nascent black middle class, paying particular attention to the importance of status. Others, influenced by the literature on the American South, used the concept of caste as an extreme form of status in analysing the relationship between race and class in South Africa. Whilst flawed, these studies did directly address aspects of South Africans' everyday lives - and especially interactions - that the subsequent structural Marxists side-stepped and with which neo-Marxist social historians struggled. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]