Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T06:04:38.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of African Household Budget Studies in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2016

Robert Ross
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This paper traces the development of studies of African household budgets in South Africa, from the 1920s up to the 1970s, and indeed in summary form till the present. It argues that, although the genre seems to be politically neutral, and only concerned to establish “the facts,” in reality the outcome of the various researches, and certainly their presentation was dependent on the political and institutional position of the researcher, whether “liberal,” linked to commercial institutions, or as part of the apartheid state.

Résumé:

Cet article retrace l’évolution des recherches portant sur les budgets des ménages africains en Afrique du Sud. Ces études se sont effectuées à partir des années 1920 jusqu’aux années 1970 et se sont même prolongées sous une forme sommaire jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Bien que ce genre de recherche semble politiquement neutre avec un souci affiché d’établir “les faits,” il s’avère qu’en réalité les résultats des différentes études, et certainement leur présentation, dépendait de la position politique et institutionnelle du chercheur, que celui ou celle-ci soit “progressiste,” ait des liens avec des entreprises, ou avec le régime de l’apartheid.

Type
Blind Spots and Politics in Sources from South Africa
Information
History in Africa , Volume 43 , June 2016 , pp. 205 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bank, Leslie J., “Witchcraft and the Academy: Livingstone Mqotsi, Monica Wilson and the Middledrift Healers, 1945–1957,” in: Bank, Andrew and Bank, Leslie J. (eds.), Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and her Interpreters (London/Cambridge: International African Institute/Cambridge University Press, 2013), 224–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bank, Andrew, and Bank, Leslie J. (eds.), Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and her Interpreters (London/Cambridge: International African Institute/Cambridge University Press, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonner, Philip, and Nieftagodien, Noor, Alexandra: a History (Johannesburg; Wits University Press, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonner, Philip, and Nieftagodien, Noor, with Mathabatha, Sello, Ekurhuleni: the Making of an Urban Region (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, Asa, A Study of the Work of Seebohm Rowntree, 1871–1954 (London: Longmans, 1961).Google Scholar
Bureau of Market Research, Personal Income of the RSATBVC Countries by Population Group and Magisterial Districts, BMR Research Report 163 (Pretoria: Bureau for Market Research, University of South Africa, 1989).Google Scholar
Calderwood, D.M., “An Investigation into the Planning of Urban Native Housing in South Africa,” PhD dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, 1953).Google Scholar
Clowes, Lindsay, “Masculinity, Matrimony and Generation: Reconfiguring Patriarchy in ‘Drum’ 1951–1983,” Journal of Southern African Studies 34–1 (2008), 179–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Paul, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done about it (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Davie, Grace, “Strength in Numbers: the Durban Wages Commission, Dockworkers and the Poverty Datum Line,” Journal of Southern African Studies 33–2 (2007), 401–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davie, Grace, Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855–2005 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
De Gruchy, Joy, The Cost of Living for Urban Africans, Johannesburg, 1959 (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1960).Google Scholar
Desrosières, Alain, “The Part in Relation to the Whole: How to Generalise? The Prehistory of Representative Sampling,” in: Bulmer, Martin, Bales, Kevin and Sklar, Kathryn Kish (eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 217–245.Google Scholar
Dubow, Saul, and Jeeves, Alan (eds.), South Africa’s 1940s: Worlds of Possibilities (Cape Town: Double Storey, 2005).Google Scholar
Ferguson, James, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1999).Google Scholar
Final Report of the Socio-Economic Survey at Payneville Location, Springs, Undertaken to Collect Necessary Data for the Design of the New Native Township of Kwa-Thema (Pretoria: South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, 1953).Google Scholar
Gibson, Olive, The Cost of Living for Africans (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1954).Google Scholar
Gready, Paul, “The Sophiatown Writers of the Fifties: the Reality of Their World,” Journal of Southern African Studies 16–1 (1990), 139–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimmer-Solem, Erik, The Rise of Historical Economics and Social Reform in Germany, 1864–1894 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Jane I., “Household and Community in African Studies,” African Studies Review 24–2/3 (1981), 87–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Carolyn, “Backstory, Biography and the Life of the James Stuart Archive,” History in Africa 38 (2011), 319–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennock, E.P., “The Measurement of Urban Poverty: from the Metropolis to the Nation, 1880–1920,” Economic History Review (second series) 40 (1987), 208–227.Google Scholar
Hennock, E.P., “Concepts of Poverty in the British Social Surveys from Charles Booth to Arthur Bowley,” in: Bulmer, Martin, Bales, Kevin and Sklar, Kathryn Kish (eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 189–216.Google Scholar
Hirson, Baruch, Yours for the Union: Class and Community Struggles in South Africa (London: Zed Books, 1989).Google Scholar
Hughes, Heather, First President: A Life of John L. Dube, Founding President of the ANC (Auckland Park: Jacana, 2011).Google Scholar
Janisch, Miriam, A Study of African Income and Expenditure in 987 Families in Johannesburg, January–November 1940 (Johannesburg: Radford, Adlington for the Non-European Affairs Department, 1941).Google Scholar
Johannesburg Joint Council of Europeans and Natives, The Native in Industry, Memorandum no. 3 (Johannesburg: Joint Council, 1928).Google Scholar
Kark, Gertrude, “Alexandra Township: A Study of a Pocket of Ill Health,” typescript in University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers AD 843B, 74/5.Google Scholar
Le Play, Frédéric, Les ouvriers européens (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1855).Google Scholar
Marks, Shula (ed.), Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Durban/Pietermaritzburg: Killie Campbell/University of Natal Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Mathewson, J.E., The Establishment of an Urban Bantu Township (Pretoria: van Schaik, 1957).Google Scholar
Moore, Henrietta L., and Vaughan, Megan, Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890–1990 (Portsmouth NH/London/Lusaka: Heinemann/James Currey/University of Zambia Press, 1994).Google Scholar
“Native Budgets in Johannesburg: A Sample Investigation,” South African Journal of Economics 1 (1940), 129–135.Google Scholar
Nicol, Mike, A Good Looking Corpse (London: Seker and Warburg, 1991).Google Scholar
Phillips, Ray E., The Bantu in the City: A Study of Cultural Adjustment on the Witwatersrand (Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1938).Google Scholar
Rädel, Fritz E., Income and Expenditure Patterns of Urban Bantu Households, South-Western Townships (Pretoria: Bureau of Market Research, University of South Africa, 1963).Google Scholar
Rich, Paul, White Power and the Liberal Conscience: Racial Segregation and South African Liberalism, 1921–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
Ross, Robert, “The Politics of Household Budget Research in Colonial Central Africa,” Zambian Social Science Review (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Serra, Gerardo, “An Uneven Statistical Topography: The Political Economy of Household Budget Surveys in Late Colonial Ghana, 1951–1957,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 35–1 (2014), 9–27.Google Scholar
Schumaker, Lyn, Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Second Advertising Convention in South Africa (Durban: Society of Advertisers, 1959).Google Scholar
Seekings, Jeremy, and Nattrass, Nicola, Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Simkins, Charles, The Distribution of Personal Income among Income Recipients in South Africa, 1970 and 1976 (Durban: University of Natal, 1979).Google Scholar
Thomas, Lynn, “The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa,” Journal of African History 47–3 (2006), 461–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trentmann, Frank, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First (London: Allen Lane, 2016).Google Scholar
Union of South Africa, Report of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Operation of Bus Services for Non-Europeans on the Witwatersrand and in the Districts of Pretoria and Vereeniging (Pretoria: Government Printer, 1944).Google Scholar
Whitehead, live, Colonial Educators: the Indian and Colonial Education Service, 1858–1983 (London/New York: I.B. Taurus, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Francis, and Ramphela, Mamphele, Uprooting Poverty: the South African Challenge (Cape Town: David Philip, 1989).Google Scholar
Wix, Ethel, The Cost of Living: An Enquiry into the Cost of Essential Requirements for African Families Living in Johannesburg, Pretoria and the Reef Towns, August–December 1950 (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 1951).Google Scholar
Wylie, Diana, Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa (Charlottesville/London: University Press of Virginia, 2001).Google Scholar