Rethinking class and culture in Africa: between E. P. Thompson and Pierre Bourdieu

Pnina Werbner

Review of African Political Economy, 2018, vol. 45, issue 155, 7-24

Abstract: The article considers the historiography of labour and class studies in sub-Saharan Africa in relation to the contemporary ‘cultural turn’ in sociological studies of class. It identifies three phases: from the 1960s, a highly empiricist Marxist approach which drew on Fanon’s notion of an aristocracy of labour; from the 1980s, a shift to a stress on culture, agency and identity, following E. P. Thompson; the final move has focused on the African middle classes, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of consumption. Research on a public sector manual workers’ union in Botswana exemplifies, the author argues, the Thompsonian approach.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2017.1367655

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Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

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