Money and sociality in South Africa's informal economy
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Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Abstract
This article examines the interplay of agency, culture and context in order to
consider the social embeddedness of money and trade at the margins of South
Africa’s economy. Focusing on small-scale, survivalist informal enterprise
operators, it draws on socio-cultural analysis to explore the social dynamics
involved in generating and managing wealth. After describing the informal sector
in South Africa, the article elucidates the relationship between money and
economic informality. First, diverse objectives, typically irreducible to the
maximization of profit, animate those in the informal sector and challenge
meta-narratives of a ‘great transformation’ towards socially disembedded and
depersonalized economic relationships. Second, regimes of economic governance,
both state-led and informal, shape the terrain on which informal economic
activity occurs in complex and constitutive ways. Third, local idioms and
practices of trading, managing money and negotiating social claims similarly
configure economic activities. Fourth, and finally, encroaching and often
inexorable processes of formalization differentially influence those in the informal
sector. The analysis draws on these findings to recapitulate both the ubiquity and
centrality of the sociality at the heart of economy, and to examine the particular
forms they take in South Africa’s informal economy.
Description
Keywords
South Africa, Economy, Money, Informal sector, Culture, Social relationships
Citation
Neves, D. & Du Toit, A. (2012). Money and sociality in South Africa's informal economy. Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 82(1): 131-149