Money and sociality in South Africa's informal economy

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dc.contributor.authorNeves, David
dc.contributor.authordu Toit, Andries
dc.date.accessioned2013-11-19T08:49:09Z
dc.date.available2013-11-19T08:49:09Z
dc.date.issued2012
dc.description.abstractThis 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.en_US
dc.description.accreditationWeb of Scienceen_US
dc.identifier.citationNeves, D. & Du Toit, A. (2012). Money and sociality in South Africa's informal economy. Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 82(1): 131-149en_US
dc.identifier.issn0001-9720
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/834
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterfalse
dc.publisherCambridge University Pressen_US
dc.rights© 2012 Cambridge University Press. This file may be freely used for educational purposes, as long as it is not altered in any way. Acknowledgement of the authors and the source is required.
dc.source.urihttp://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0001972011000763
dc.status.ispeerreviewedtrue
dc.subjectSouth Africaen_US
dc.subjectEconomyen_US
dc.subjectMoneyen_US
dc.subjectInformal sectoren_US
dc.subjectCultureen_US
dc.subjectSocial relationshipsen_US
dc.titleMoney and sociality in South Africa's informal economyen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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