Browsing by Author "Spiegel, Andrew David"
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- ItemOpen AccessChanging continuities : experiencing and interpreting history, population movement and material differentiation in Matatiele, Transkei(1990) Spiegel, Andrew David; West, MartinCultural continuities through time and space have long concerned anthropologists. Recent work has increasingly concentrated on understanding these as social structural responses to both broad and local political-economic structures and processes. The aim of this thesis is to build on that approach. I argue that while some persistences of social form are best explained in functionalist and instrumentalist terms, to explain others one needs to look to the momentum of common practices that do not change without good cause. I thus attempt to wed a materialist analysis of political-economic determinants with one focused on social practice. I do this first by the application of a political-economic analysis and then by examining social practices for their apparent continuities of form and analysing why these occur. The approach taken thus reveals the influence of a paradigm shift in contemporary anthropology. The thesis focuses on the Matatiele District in South Africa's Transkei bantustan. The evidence I present was obtained primarily from ethnographic field-research conducted between 1982 and 1985 and concentrated in two settlements there. This is augmented by material both from further fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the district, and from various documentary and archival sources. A primary concern is the nature of material and social differentation in the district and its relationship to both large- and small-scale population movement there since the mid-nineteenth century. By examining these through the prism of a political-economic approach, I indicate the extent to which they are functions of broad regional processes, including the development of capitalism in southern Africa. I thus show that local-level material differentiation is the product of population movements, themselves traceable to both capital's demand for labour and state interventions in rural land-use practices. In addition I show that local circumstance modifies the impact of these broader processes at the local level: there is great variety in the ways in which regional political-economic processes impact locally. Another primary concern is the appearance of cultural continuity in observed social behavioural forms, and people's claims that their present practices represent such continuities. A number of examples are identified. I examine these in order to establish the extent to which they are the functions of political-economic structures, the products of instrumental manipulation for local political purposes, or just the outcome of people pragmatically going on in ways with which they are familiar. While I acknowledge the merit of the first two types of explanation, I argue that there are many instances when the primary reason that people behave as they do is that they have no reason not to, and that their actions reflect a practical consciousness (or knowledgeability) that has its roots in experience. I conclude the thesis by discussing some of the methodological implications of a greater focus on practice and practical consciousness in southern African anthropology. I suggest that there is need for reinvestment in the method of intensive participant-observation, refined to accommodate concerns with the commonplace activities of everyday life in particular. This approach, I argue, is necessary in order to represent the diversity of cultural practice to be found in the region, but without recourse to structuralist analyses that have tended to reinforce notions of a mosaic of cultures in the region and given strength to pluralist perceptions of the region's population.
- ItemOpen AccessThe dynamics of cultural continuities : clanship in the Western Cape(1996) Mehlwana, Anthony M; Spiegel, Andrew DavidThis thesis came as a result of two years' research in ten households in Makhaza. Makhaza is a shantytown situated in the Khayelitsha complex. The focus of this research is clanship a particularly under researched field in contemporary anthropology in southern Africa. The early anthropological literature mentioned clanship notions only in the context of social group formation. This literature argued that clanship is meaningless in urban situations since there are various social groups in urban towns which are based on criteria other than clanship. The present study argues, however, that clanship continues to be a building block in the construction of many relationships that poor Africans in towns manipulate for many purposes. Clanship manipulation should be understood in the context of the history and the poor conditions under which urban Africans live. As a result of the often forced migration, many Africans in urban areas do not live with their immediate families. In order to adapt to these conditions, they commonly build contingent relationships that they use as resources for reciprocal exchanges. This thesis has looked at these contingent relationships on three levels: a) how they are formed; b) the roles that each social actor is supposed to perform; and c) reciprocal exchange between households which are linked by clanship. It argues that clanship is a powerful symbol which binds these relationships. Clanship relationships are perceived as 'blood' relationships which are culturally defined and that underpin many varied relationships of reciprocity and material assistance among Africans.
- ItemOpen AccessHouses without doors : diffusing domesticity in Die Bos(1993) Ross, Fiona C; Spiegel, Andrew DavidThis ethnography is the product of fourteen months of communication with residents of a squatter settlement near Somerset West in the Western Cape. The thesis explores the ways in which domestic relationships altered over the research period, locating these changing patterns in the contexts of informal settlement in the region. I show that in the context of the settlement the use of household as an analytic term was problematic because domestic relationships were fluid and ephemeral, making it difficult to establish patterns of 'belonging' over time. Network approaches are more effective than household in describing social relationships, but networks were also problematic in that they tend to assume patterns of reciprocity which were not always echoed in the behaviours of residents of Die Bos. The thesis concentrates on three main areas of social interaction. I explore labour relationships within and between households, showing that a focus solely on households obscures the processes of labour allocation within domestic units, and those which occur across their (permeable) boundaries. I examine changing patterns of commensality among some members of the population of Die Bos, showing how movement and labour were intimately linked with eating patterns. Here I show how the most effective way of describing these patterns is in terms of networks of informal interaction which are formalised briefly. I then discuss of how movements of certain sections of the population render the boundaries of domestic units extremely permeable. I conclude by showing that although the notion of household is useful in some contexts in describing interactions in Die Bos, it tends to assume too much homogeneity and constancy to describe accurately the fluidity of social relationships. Network approaches are possibly of greater use in such descriptions, but are shown to be problematic in that they assume constancy (although of a lesser degree than households do) in interaction.
- ItemOpen AccessMigrant labour remittances : the developmental cycle and rural differentiation in a Lesotho community(1979) Spiegel, Andrew DavidThis dissertation addresses the problem of the impact of a migratory wage-labour system on relations of production and of distribution in rural Lesotho. Some 200 000 of that country's 1,25 million people are oscillating labour migrants to South Africa, most of them men. Their earnings, remitted to their rural home communities, provide the primary means of subsistence for their families and others left behind. The study focusses on the diffusion of remittances and the rural differentiation to which this is related. It is argued that such differentiation is closely associated with the cyclical process of domestic development in rural Lesotho. Data is presented to demonstrate how differentials in wealth correspond, to a large extent, with phases in the domestic developmental cycle. The strategies of homestead building, a clear indicator of domestic development, are described in order to point to the correspondence between differentiation and the developmental cycle. The more general process of regional class formation is also recognized. The interconnectedness of the local elite and the national bureaucracy, which together form an incipient petty bourgeoisie, demonstrates the effect of class formation at the local level. Remittances are seen to form the basis for economic activity which occurs in rural Lesotho communities. Agriculture, for example, is found to have as much a distributive function as a productive one insofar as co-operation provides an avenue for the diffusion of wage-earnings derived from outside productive activity. The material means of reproduction thus come primarily from involvement in the southern African industrial economy. It is concluded, therefore, that the process of incorporation has reached a point at which the people of Lesotho form a stratum of the regional working class, and it is suggested that this may also be the case for the residents of other peripheral labour exporting areas in southern Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessThe transformation of land tenure in Lesotho(1983) Quinlan, Tim; Spiegel, Andrew DavidUsing Lesotho as a case study, this dissertation examines the changing forms of land tenure in a rural Southern African population. Land tenure in Lesotho is seen to have undergone many transformations over the last 200 years. These transformations are illustrated through an historical analysis of political and of social relationships in rural Lesotho. For example, the chieftainship in Lesotho is analysed to illustrate how changes in its structure have led to a strengthening of commoners' usufruct land rights. In turn, by examining how commoners' land rights have been expressed over time, this study demonstrates the contemporary significance of kinship ties in a rural Lesotho community. The significance of kinship is seen to lie in the flexibility which its principles allow, for members of the rural community, to accommodate the demographic, ecological and economic pressures of living in a peripheral part of Southern Africa. In effect, such flexibility is seen to have enabled the rural community to allocate, as optimally as possible, the scarce resources it has and can utilise. By examining how those resources have been utilised, this study demonstrates how relations of production in the rural community have become defined by communal control over rather than individual ownership of resources. As a result, this study illustrates how groups of agnatically related households have been formed into units of production in which the permanent rural residents, rather than the wage earning migrant workers, have control over resources, including the latter's' cash incomes. The development of such a unit of production is seen to be based on a sustained and vital interest by Basotho in land. That interest, which has been defined by principles of kinship, has prevented the alienation o Basotho from land. In effect, that interest has been a response by Basotho to the many and diffuse threats to their material existence brought about by their incorporation into a Capitalist politico-economic system. Consequently, this dissertation argues for a reconsideration of kinship in anthropological history, in view of the historical rather than synchronic anthropological perspective adopted in this study.
- ItemOpen AccessWage workers in a 'homeland township' : their experiences in finding, maintaining and losing employment(1987) Niehaus, Isak Arnold; Spiegel, Andrew DavidWorkers domiciled in Qwaqwa, South Africa's smallest 'homeland', experience high rates of unemployment and job instability. Yet most terminations of employment are employee-instigated. This dissertation examines the reasons for employment instability among wage workers resident in a housing section in Phuthaditjhaba, the 'homeland's' only urban area. The approach adopted in the dissertation is primarily ethnographic. It describes the everyday experiences of African workers and treats their own perspectives of their working lives as central. Quantitative and qualitative data, collected from two samples drawn from the population in the housing area selected for study, are presented. It is argued that employment instability must be understood as a consequence of a web of interrelated circumstances and cannot be explained in terms of any one single causal factor. The following employment and employment-related circumstances are examined: workers' views of, and reactions to, wages and working conditions; problems with transport between places of work and home, and with workplace accommodation; conflicts of interest arising from domestic pressures undermining workers' ability to remain in a job; and the experience of joblessness. These various factors are then drawn together to show that workers do not perceive these factors in isolation from one another, but that they experience the oppressive conditions of their domestic and working lives as a totality. Any attempts to find ways to increase workers' job stability will have to look both within and beyond the workplace.