| Abstract: |
In settings of increased inequality, where rising prosperity for some spells
penury for others, savings clubs enable new types of communality to be created
– especially by women - which mediate, or are mediated by, new inequalities
and dependencies. Changing gender dynamics and challenges to patriarchal
authority, arising from apartheid-induced relocation and later the expansion
of a somewhat gender-skewed state-grant system, now find expression in the
relative autonomy enjoyed by some female civil servants and informal traders.
More than simply ‘loose ends’ of apartheid’s homeland system, women’s savings
clubs are being woven together into new fabrics of intensified solidarity. But
not everyone can benefit equally from these sociable arrangements. Clubs
occupy a point of intersection between two trends. One comprises modern roles
and concerns associated with upward mobility in post-democratic South Africa.
The other is evident in pockets of apparent informality and customary
mutuality, where egalitarian sociability predominates. Setting out an arena
linked to but discrete from that of capitalism, the clubs help members
alternately accommodate and defy capitalism’s imperatives, while also fending
off demands made by poorer relatives, neighbours, and those with too few
resources to belong to clubs. |