Abstract:
This article investigates some accounts of conspicuous consumption in South Africa,
tracing their variously linear, circular and disjunctive paths, identifying and explaining some
methodological impasses, and concluding with reflections on the interrelation between
distinct armatures of value and exchange. The first kind of trajectory that impinges in
looking at accounts of conspicuous consumption post-apartheid is a linear one, indicating
the direction ‘up from’ and ‘out of’ racially based discrimination and oppression structuring
sumptuary regulations. With regard to this trajectory, I will show that this is not as linear as
it may initially appear, proceeding from apartheid to its ‘post-’, but that it is indicated both in
the liberation movement’s programmatics and in the aspirationalism mobilised by advertising
and marketing strategies at an earlier stage. In considering the association of freedom with
de-regulated consumption, a circularity emerges, in relation to which I would like to posit, for
purposes of critical analysis, distinct forms of exchange implicit in the contexts described for
the emergence of a new ‘middle class’ at a specific conjuncture, to then spell out some of
their complex interrelations and dynamics.
