The socioeconomic dimensions of racial inequality in South Africa: a social space perspective

It is well evidenced that South Africa is characterised by extreme socioeconomic inequality, which is strongly racialised. We offer an original sociological perspective, which departs from established perspectives considering the dynamics of vulnerability and poverty to focus on the structuring of classed and racialised privilege. We map how stocks of economic, cultural, and social capital intersect to generate systematic and structural inequalities in the country and consider how far these are associated with fundamental racial divides. To achieve this, we utilise rich, nationally representative data from the National Income Dynamics Study and employ Multiple Correspondence Analysis to construct a model of South African ‘social space’. Our findings underscore how entrenched racial divisions remain within South Africa, with White people being overwhelmingly located in the most privileged positions. However, our cluster analysis also indicates that forms of middle-class privilege percolate beyond a core of the 8% of the population that is white. We emphasise how age divisions are associated with social capital accumulation. Our cluster analysis reveals that trust levels increase with economic and cultural capital levels within younger age groups and could therefore come to intensify social and racial divisions.