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Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa

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"Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa" shows how the "distributional regime" in South Africa has created one of the most unequal societies on earth. The book is is a good example of what's right and what's wrong with modern social science. On the one hand, it is meticulous, methodologically self-aware, jargon-free, and based on the latest literature (but not on fieldwork). However, the book is also dry, boring, and strangely repetitive, as if parts of it were published separately. I found myself skimming a few sections.

The main thesis is that inequality in South Africa is now driven by unemployment rather than racist laws. To remedy the situation, the authors would relax labor laws and improve education for rural blacks. (They would also step up welfare payments, but social grants have exploded since the book was written, rendering this discussion anachronistic.) These are valid points -- but they are the stuff of op-eds, not books from Yale University Press.

The social science "core" of the book is a belabored, deathly analysis of income data collected in the 1990s. The authors admit that huge gaps in the data make it hard to draw an accurate portrait of inequality -- but they try anyway. They also admit that class analysis is little more than pointless taxonomy if researchers can't explain how class differences influence behavior and politics, as is the case in South Africa -- but they analyze class anyway.

Does anyone need a 400-page book to know that racial inequality in South Africa is being replaced by class inequality, with poor black populations losing out either way? Not really. For university libraries only.