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

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.