Not marrying in South Africa: consumption, aspiration and the new middle class

This article explores how marriage, or its absence, features in relation to the aspirations and obligations of members – especially female members – of South Africa’s new black middle class. In a context where the state and credit have played key roles in the newly financialized arrangements of neoliberalism, it considers how ties that are both conflictual and intimate – bonds that simultaneously distance people from, while creating increasingly intimate connections to, both kinsmen and (prospective) affines - operate within this novel space. Women are set apart from their less fortunate relatives, even as they continue to have to support and remain intimate with them; and divided from partners who expect them to conform to conservative female roles, even as they continue to hold positive views about marital exchanges (and payments) more generally.