Paper short abstract:

After apartheid a vast range of consumer choice opened up which was the exclusive preserve of Whites before. Based on a Durban field study, I examine the consumer behaviour of different middle-class groups. Non-whites feel like novices in this situation and must go into debt in order to consume.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2008 I have carried out ethnographic research in Durban on the new middle classes (across a range of racial categories). If consumption is considered to be central to the formation of an African middle class, one peculiarity of the South African case is notable. During the late apartheid era, access to high-end consumption generally and to shopping malls on particular was largely restricted to Whites. Non-white members of the new middle class often feel themselves to be novice consumers; and are uncertain of the basis for making choices. Moreover, unlike the Whites, most of them have no capital, savings or inheritance to draw on and must go into debt if they wish to consume on any scale (housing, cars, luxury goods). Knowledge of international brands offers a kind of shopping guide for many of these insecure consumers.

The plethora of shopping malls today, when taken with the development of national chains of clothes and food shops, are becoming a powerful symbol of modernity and economic democracy, even if the majority are still excluded from effective participation to a significant extent. As in North America and Europe earlier, consumption expresses national identity, but now also being part of the world economy. But a focus on food shopping shows the persistence of regional and communal variations as well as the emergence of a hemispheric anglophone culture.