Book contents
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Chapter Ten - Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2022
- Fronmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: Marx’s Field as Our Global Present
- Chapter Two Into the Field with Marx: Some Observations on Researching Class
- Chapter Three Marx’s Merchants’ Capital: Researching Agrarian Markets in Contemporary India
- Chapter Four The Ties That Divide: Marx’s Fractions of Capital and Class Analysis in/for the Global South
- Chapter Five Marx in the Sweatshop: Exploitation and Social Reproduction in a Garment Factory Called India
- Chapter Six Thinking about Capital and Class in the Gulf Arab States
- Chapter Seven Marx on the Bourse: Coffee and the Intersecting/Integrated Circuits of Capital
- Chapter Eight Learning Marx by Doing: Class Analysis in an Emerging Zone of Global Horticulture
- Chapter Nine Understanding Labour Relations and Struggles in India through Marx’s Method
- Chapter Ten Investigating Class Relations in Rural South Africa: Marx’s ‘Rich Totality of Many Determinations’
- Chapter Eleven From Marx’s ‘Double Freedom’ to ‘Degrees of Unfreedom’: Methodological Insights from the Study of Uzbekistan’s Agrarian Labour
- Chapter Twelve The Labour Process and Health through the Lens of Marx’s Historical Materialism
- Chapter Thirteen Marx and the Poor’s Nourishment: Diets in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa
- Chapter Fourteen Marx In Utero: A Workers’ Inquiry of the In/Visible Labours of Reproduction in the Surrogacy Industry
- Chapter Fifteen Marx, the Chief, the Prisoner and the Refugee
- Chapter Sixteen Postcolonial Marxism and the ‘Cyber-Field’ in COVID Times: On Labour Becoming ‘Working Class’
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Abstract
In a much-discussed passage in the introduction to the Grundrisse, Marx argues that ‘the concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not a point of departure’. This chapter discusses how this conception has informed fieldwork on class relations in rural South Africa, where households combine a multiplicity of income sources, including local and migrant wage labour, self-employment in petty commodity production (both agricultural and nonagricultural) and welfare payments by the state. In these contexts, class differentiation is constituted through complex relations and processes, involving many social forms, including income stratification, diversified livelihood strategies and social difference along lines of race, gender and generation. Households often combine a variety of class locations that also shift over time. Here, ‘class’ cannot simply be read off from indicators such as incomes, assets or employment status. A key focus is social relations, including relations between employers and employees, property owners and land users, migrants and households, men, women and youth, as well as between interest groups and the state. Data collection and analysis are mediated by key concepts and theories drawn from Marx, such as the production and appropriation of surplus value, accumulation and social reproduction. The chapter describes how this approach – in fact compatible with critical realism – informed research in four different fieldwork projects undertaken in South Africa and briefly reports their findings. It also discusses the challenges posed in attempting to move from simple abstractions to an adequate account of the concentrated complexities of class relations, which increasingly involve the ‘fragmentation’ of class identities.
Introduction
In this chapter we describe the application of Marxist concepts and methods to investigate complex class relations in contemporary rural South Africa. This includes drawing upon both classical Marxist analyses of the agrarian question and subsequent scholarship on processes of agrarian change to investigate ongoing capitalist transformations of the countryside.
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- Marx in the Field , pp. 129 - 146Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021