Folk the Park and the Neoliberal South Africa

(This is a slight introduction to the research I will be immersing myself into for the next few months, its still a bit disjointed, and incomplete, but I shall be building on it over the next year in preparation for my dissertation.)

Folk the Park, a guerrilla folk festival held at either Emmarentia Dam or Zoo Lake, is a seemingly political activity with no political agenda. It is now looking forward to its fifth event and is attended by over 200 people, a large majority of those in organisation, attendance and performance are punks.  I plan to study how the punks occupy the space of Folk the Park. In terms of their dress, performance, and interaction in order to better understand Levi Straus’s idea that “Images cannot be ideas but they can ... co-exist with ideas in signs and, if ideas are not yet present, they can keep their future place open for them and make its contours apparent negatively.” (Strauss 1962; 13)  I would like to explore what ideas could be extrapolated; Folk the Park being a sign, and because of its context with in Johannesburg, a post-apartheid city – in just existing it creates a space for meaningful ideas. I shall juxtapose this with a study of how previous events in South African music have been seen to have meaning, or ideas attached to them.  

Folk the Park is seemingly political in relation to law. The law in Johannesburg stating that to have more than 15 people in a public space constitutes a protest, a law which has its roots in the Riotous Assembly and Suppression of Communist Amendment Act, Act no 15 of 1954. But one could go further back to the first take-over of land in the 1600’s with the reclaiming of the commons, when land became property that could be owned. The disjuncture comes in when we look at the fact that all Folk the Park stands for is a free platform for bands to play their music and jam with other musicians, within a public space. 

Folk the Park is not a new concept, in the 1950’s The Kwela Jam Sessions were held at the Zoo Lake. They started coming under government attention when white kids from the suburbs became interested in them. This is an example of another instance in history which underlies a seemingly political activity with no agenda. But in having the situation meaning has occurred. There are multiple instances of this in South African music history. Another example would National Wake – a multi-racial punk band who existed between 1979 and 1982. While they believed themselves to have no agenda, their existing created meaning within the context of Apartheid.

In using Folk the Park I hope to attain an understanding of the meaning or ideas that this festival creates in today’s context in relation to a past of South African music which also embodied the ideal of seeming like protest but had no underlying agenda, and the meaning those instances created in a South African context.

In doing this I hope to explore the relationship of the nature of ideas to the study of anthropology and is theoretical framework. For if anthropology is but a study which transposes ideas (theories) upon subjects what is its role as a science? Or how does it question the nature of science, being a largely deductive discipline.

In order to understand the meaning that such an event as Folk the Park would have in the greater scheme of things is no simple task, for a history of South Africa, and Johannesburg is to some extent necessary. The cross pollination of Colonial frames into Africa is something that has to be detailed.

Let us start in the micro. A conversation turned rant had with a friend, a self-labelled punk, who regularly attends and performs at Folk the Park, Mike B. This conversation took place at The Bohemian, a live music venue in Richmond, Johannesburg. “What can an upper middle class kid in South Africa do? I know I have money behind me, and my parents expect me to be the same as them, get a job, make more money. I don’t want to fucking make money. What’s the point about singing about anarchy here. What difference does it make? We’re a minority. I’m just going to sing about beer and getting drunk. Fuck singing about politics.”

He stops, calms about and apologises. “Sorry. I’m frustrated.”

The frustration that Mike feels is a common sentiment amongst the group of Jozi punks with which I hang out regularly. Caught in a post-apartheid, neoliberal, capitalist system. Most of them do have money behind them, but they see the nature of inequality and hate the fact that they do. Money is the evil, gained off of the backs of exploitation during apartheid.

The story of South Africa from 1994 is not a new one. Nelson Mandela was elected as the countries president, and the nation’s ideology was meant to shift to one that embraced a non-racial South Africa. (Tomlinson, et al; 2003) But looking back to 1979 and footage from a National Wake show held on Rocky Street in Yoeville, the project of apartheid only seems to have thickened. The footage shows a muli-racial crowd dancing to the multi-racial band National Wake.  In an interview with Ivan Kadey, rhythm guitarist and only surviving member of the band, he explained that the streets in apartheid were never segregated. 

It seems that now, in the wake of Apartheid even though the laws the held class, and racial divisions in check have been removed. A culture of fear in the growing disparity between the high rates of poverty and unemployment, lack of housing has taken on the new face of segregation. The symbol of this fear being high walls, an influx of security companies – privately owned and the growing number of boomed off areas, that have become common in the upper-class suburbs to the north of the city. As Louw suggest the adding of these security measures “encodes class relation and residential segregation (rass/class/ethnicity) more permanently in the built environment.” (Louw; 387)

The dismantling of apartheid gave way not to a mutli-racial South Africa, but a neo-liberal South Africa. The essence of this era’s “economic fundamentals” are based in the necessity of attracting foreign capital, redistributing income, expanding the economy, balancing local government budgets, and counter-acting the AIDS epidemic. But the problems now faced but the country and its citizens that need to be solved in order to achieve a just system, do not seem to be aligned with the outcomes of neo-liberalism. (Tomlinson et al; 2003)

More-over it seems as if South Africa is still part of a colonial project, or a project of the “West”. While it may be argued that the West has become an integrated part of globalized culture, the disparities between the so called “first” and “third” worlds still remains evident. Johannesburg being a prime example in the micro of this macro picture; having both the traits of a first world economy– in its thriving business hub of Sandton, and the third world - present in the decaying city centre.

The hope portrayed for the beginning of the new South Africa by advertising agencies and consultants had been that foreign investment and tourists would flood to the city of Johannesburg. But the perception of the city as dangerous and the economy unstable stuck. And neither tourists nor investment came willingly. Even as South Africa made the transition to a neoliberal agenda of privatization, a down-sized government, open-markets and wage restraints as were the international “best practices” – the Johannesburg city centre still has not restructured itself to be attractive to the international capitalist market. The city was deserted by the affluent white working class communities who retreated to the suburbs and to form their new economic centre in Sandton, as the city became the home to an influx of Africans from around the continent. This created a new hub of street traders, prostitutes and drug trading (Tomlinson et al, 2003).

Following its independence from the British colony South Africa was given the chance to remold itself. But the nature inherent in the structures of built society dictates a specific system of order - one that was inherited from the colonies. And Johannesburg as a city has not been able to break free from the ever looming presence of the Western World. We are still driven by its ideals, even though the majority of the population is in poverty, and with the introduction of privatised water and electricity the constitution promised in 1994 has been breached. What with Suez installing pre-paid water meters in Soweto in 2003, which led to massive water disconnections. (Bond; 122)

Around the world various groups and organisations have been standing up against the injustices of neo-liberalism, in South Africa the Anti- Privitisation Forum is at the fore-front. Their aim: to liberate electricity and water from expensive and unreliable meters. As well as to win access to basic lifeline electricity and water. (Bond; 124)

And within all of this turmoil, there is a group of middle class white kids inhabiting a park and playing music. For seemingly no end other than to play music. But on the inside there is more going on. As Mike’s rant shows, there are feelings of angst, guilt, frustration building up, of hopelessness of being an elite minority, of wanting a better world, in light of the poverty faced every day. And it is these ideas which I will explore within the context which I have so briefly outlined.

The Anti-Punk Propaganda Machine

In Richard Sennett’s article “The New Capitalism” he states that “the new capitalism is impoverishing the value of work. Becoming more flexible and short-term, work is ceasing to serve as a point of reference for defining durable personal purposes and a sense of self-worth; sociologically, work serves ever less as a forum for stable, sociable relations.” He goes onto say that because people are losing a sense of belonging related to work  that they are increasingly committing themselves more to be related to geographic places such as cities, nations and localities. While this may be true, there is another option of belonging that I would like to explore. And it comes down to music, and subculture, in specific punk rock.

Since its conception in the 80’s punk rock and its cultural form have been berated in the public eyes, seen as hooligans of a dangerous nature, set out to destroy your public property and your nation. The  propaganda against punk rock worked to some extent, the movement was described as either meaningless, with no ideology behind its fashion, or contradictory to its ideology of anti-capitalism. The truth of the matter is that punk created a new ethic which had the power to displace corporate and commercial ideals. 

That ethic was the spirit of DIY, do it yourself. Instead of adhering to the popular culture portrayed on MTV by musical conglomerates such as Sony and BMG who would never sign or give exposure to bands who were not of a commercial nature, the punk culture of the 80’s created a new social order of belonging.  They created their own labels, sticking to low-fi recording techniques, they created their own infrustracture of advertising and public relations using fanzines, commonly known as ‘zines’. Which did not need large budgets for printing as they were mostly black and white print. They spoke out against the middle and working class life style of consumption, and maybe even more profoundly were one of the first social movements which had an understanding of the need for something to belong to and identify with that was not centred on work ethic, but on a lifestyle that was centred around this new ethic of DIY. It is something that resonates in the underlying ideal of entrepreneurship which is so valued in South African economic growth today, except it was based outside of capitalism - as the end goal was not profit, but cultural expansion, the growth of an ethic and identification system not based in work as it is interpreted today, as Marx describes it in all its exploitative glory.  

Today punk has transformed into a global network. At the beginning of 2012 65 Indonesian punk youths from Aceh were detained, their hair shaved off, were stripped of their body piercings, and sent for religious rehabilitation to put them back on the correct moral path – they were seen as a threat to the Islamic value system. This event did two things, firstly it showed the extremist attitude against punk rock, and secondly it highlighted the fact that the global network of punk has expanded since the 80’s and has it in their means to fight against such social injustices as a group, who identify with each other more strongly than they do with their nationality, religion or place of work.

Spatial Time

There is something deeper to be said about the notion of “instant gratification” and punctuated time when looking into the industry of sex work and pornography. And it is evident in all the players. The prostitutes, their clients and a young group of anthropology students who sought, in a short instance, to find out more about how prostitutes spend their time on Oxford Road in Rosebank, Johannesburg. 

Report

This report will outline the events of the evening of Saturday the 31^st of March 2012, when said anthropology students set out to become voyeurs of the ladies of the night. As an anthropologist I could not help but study my peers as we embarked on this mission together. It would skew my findings if I did not.

We met at R’s house at 8pm, N was already there, she had been dropped off by her father. He was unaware of the plans for the night, although he was aware that she was there to do a project. I had gotten a ride with L. We convened in the kitchen and drank (rum for those still suffering the ills of the previous night, and coca-a-cola for those who were not of the drinking ilk) as we waited for the last member of tonight’s scouting crew to join us, A. The conversation revolved around sex, play parties and feminism.

A full hour late A arrives. We set off – walking towards Oxford Road, which is a few blocks away. The mood is jovial, conversation between N, A and I is focused on our research proposals. L and R are a short way ahead. They have stopped on the next corner, interrupting two prostitutes at work.

Error one: The prostitutes become hostile as R explains they are waiting for us, and gestures down the road. One of the ladies tells them to get out of their office. This momentary action has caused us to come under suspicion. We learn that travelling in a group is not a wise decision. For two reasons: firstly, it is not inconspicuous. Secondly, it is distracting.

We walk across the road, and lurk in some shadows. Discussing whether to walk on, split up or stay where we are, the decision is made to stay in a group. While we sit, smoking in the shadows. At 9.30pm a cop car rolls by, the ladies send off a whistle down the road, we assume this is to warn fellow prostitutes down the road that a van is approaching (but this is mere speculation). At 9.40 a silver combi pulls up to the corner that the ladies are standing on. They both approach the vehicle. After a brief discussion, one of the girls gets into the combi. The other is left on the corner.

The conversation in the group turns to how long the transaction will take from here on. R wanders how men can just rock up in the mood so quickly, he speculates it will take a while. I counteract him, saying 10 minutes maximum. R does not believe this is possible. The rest of the group join in. A concern comes up of how the ladies clean themselves after each transaction. Although they each have large bags, their contents are not known to us.

The lady that was left on the corner now makes her way down the road towards Corlett Drive. We wander if this is for safety, not wanting to be on the corner alone, or whether our presence has gotten to her, and she is moving to another spot. If it has she does not show a sign of it.

The other lady, who had gone with the silver combi, returns. The transaction has not taken more than ten minutes. R mouths his disbelief.

The lady is alone on the corner. At 10.10pm a man in black walks towards her. They talk, and walk up the road away from Oxford together. L and A set off to follow them. Another cop car drives past shortly after. We did not take down licence plate details. It could have been the same car. At 10.20 the lady who had walked towards Corlett Drive comes back up the street. She walks across the road, stopping midway on the island. She lifts her skirt (already so short that the cheeks of her bottom are sticking out) and flashes passing cars. She then takes some money out of her bag and counts it. She finishes this takes a bottle out of her bag, from where we are sitting it looks like wine, and drinks. She then makes a call. It is a short one, maybe two minutes. With the call finished she proceeds to whistle or yell “hey baby” at passing vehicles.

In this time L and A return, they have lost their targets. By 10.20pm the lady who they had set out to follow returns. She has hitched down her skirt, to below knee length and put on takkis. She looks respectable as she makes her way down Oxford towards town.

The lady on the island makes a phone call while yelling at us that “you will get what you deserve.” We choose this point to leave. The ethics of the situation, which we had been ignoring, now staring us in the face. We head back to R, N is getting picked up soon. We get back to the house and wait for N’s father. R wishes for L and I to stay so that it does not look as if N is hanging around with just R and A (both male). N’s father arrives, and she leaves. We retreat back to the kitchen to discuss.

We talk about the notion of time and living in a culture of instant gratification. Where if one has money ones desires can be fulfilled instantly.

Assessment

The concept of fulfilment has a deeper meaning in relation to time. If we argue that we live in punctuated time, then in this context, of the brief transactions between a sex worker and a client, this assumption would be correct. But this is in relation to a goal; if the purpose is to fulfil ones’ duty as a sex worker, or to obtain sexual gratification, or to study sex workers in periods of time. Then punctuated time becomes a reality, because if you are not fulfilling your task, then time is meaningless – in this context.  

If we look at the above story all that can be perceived from it is moments in time that seem significant to our aim, which is to see how prostitutes spend their time in between and during interactions with clients. The rest of the time becomes irrelevant. But time is nothing without movement in space. Which can also be dissected as time is in our analysis. What is important to this report is that we are on the street, so we do not describe the trees, or the cars driving by that do not stop. It becomes meaningless detail, because we are only reading meaning in relation to a specific goal; although our goal is not mediated by money but by information, which is a form of commodity to some extent.

But in this description it can be seen that firstly it is not just time, but space that can become punctuated. And secondly this perception of punctuation is in relation to a goal, and that the time and space that is not related to the goal at hand is meaningless.

This cannot be true in relation to how we actually perceive things if we want to maintain the idea that people move within time from past to present. That because we share the same space (this planet) that we all exist in the same frame of time. Time, and its meaning, becomes arranged around a subjective goal. Thus each person’s perception of time becomes subjective, as their space is subjective as is their goal. As is their perspective of what meaningless and meaningful time would be.

It seems that our current description of time is objective, that everybody adheres to the same time. But this is impossible because time is nothing without movement in space. And nobody inhabits the same space with others continuously. So at most we can say that time can be objectively spent with others, as in the case of the anthropologists studying the prostitutes in that their goal is the same; but subjective in relation to their previous experience through time and space, and their ulterior goals. But one could not assume that time is linear and we all exist in the same time, for we do not inhabit the same space.

The problem is the notion of moving forward and backwards in time - which creates the illusion that everyone is moving in linear time, from a point in the past to a point in the future and that time is punctuated by events. But in actuality it would seem that we live from meaningful moment to meaningful moment, with meaningless time in between; time that is not spent in relation to a goal. Time need not be conceived as linear but spatial. As our perception of past and future only exist within that space in time, in relation to other spaces in time.

Time is thus only noticeable in relation to the achievement of a goal, but the perception of the fulfilment of a goal must take place within a space. Because our perceptions of space are not linear, our perspective of time cannot be linear, and are not because we perceive time not in relation from one moment to the next, but in a mixed acquisition of thoughts about the present, past and future all embodied in different fragmented spaces.

Commodity Driven Economy?

In this paper I have focused on the position of labour in relation to commodities, matter and use-value. And it is in this relationship that we will find what Marx perceives the value of labour to be. I will also highlight the difference between what Marx believes an aimless expenditure of labour would be, and in doing so discuss the disjuncture present in South Africa in a commodity driven economy.

So let us dissect the terms. Firstly: Commodities. Commodities for Marx are constituted as commodities if they have either a) value or b) use value. Use value being the objects propensity to be useful. The qualities that Marx attributes to the use value of commodities are as follows.

11)      They are independent from the labour which produced them

22)      The use value of a commodity is only realised in its consumption

33)      It constitutes the substance of all wealth. Wealth being a societal construct. (What I believe this to mean is that the more useful a commodity is within a given society the more it is worth. For example a can opener in a society with no cans has no value, where as a can opener on an island full of canned food and no rocks would be an object of extreme use-value)

44)      The use value of a commodity is the material depository of exchange value

Now, how does labour relate to commodities? According to Marx if the same amount of work or labour time goes into the making of a product, then those products are of equal value. But value must also be measured in relation to quantity. The value of a commodity decreases as the quantity increases.  But increases as the quality and the amount of labour time that go into the commodity increase.  So we can see that more labour per commodity equals more valuable commodities, and conversely less labour per commodity equals less valuable commodities, in relation to quality and quantity.

In order for labour to create a commodity it must be introduced into productive labour in which it works with earthly matter in order to transform that matter into a commodity.  But in a capitalist society the labourer does not own the means of production necessary to produce commodities and so he must sell his labour power to a capitalist who owns the necessary equipment. In doing this the labourer exchanges his labour for money. The labourer must do this because wealth in a capitalist society is constituted by use-value, which is embodied in commodities.  He cannot purely do the amount of labour necessary to survive because the capitalist must create surplus value off of the commodities which he the labourer creates, but does not own. In order to create this surplus value the capitalist takes the production of commodities and reduces them to the effort of a group of labourers as opposed to a single individual. So if you look at a production line on a film set, take Labyrinth for example in which a mid-evil village is created out of poly euro thane. The set starts with the poly euro thane being set in moulds of brick walls. The moulded slabs which emerged must then be scrubbed, after scrubbing they are coated with coprox, and taken outside to dry. Once dry the base layers of paint are applied, and once again taken out to dry. Once dry they slabs are all taken to the set where they are constructed by the fabricators. After fabrication is complete another round of painting is done in order to accomplish the finished product. Each of these processes requires individuals to do specific tasks in order to create the greater commodity. So instead of producing one actual commodity each the necessary labours are divided. Because of this division and removal of the individual labourer from the commodity, the film set, the capitalist can make surplus value off his commodity because the value of it is related to labour power expended. But this, the labour power, is calculated amongst a group and not an individual. Surplus value is then further increased through extended working hours, and worker productivity.

So we can now see the relation of the value of labour to commodity under a capitalist system. It is clearly an exploitative one, in which the value of the labourer is degraded in the process of making surplus capital. It is a situation in which the labourer has very little control of his work hours and pay rate. But is forced into labour for he has no common land on which to survive with just simple modes of production like sustainable farming.

With this brief introduction to Marx’s theory of labour I would like to draw your attention to the difference between labour and the expenditure of labour power. Labour according to Marx is productive activity with an aim, whereas expenditure of labour power is productive activity without an aim. This baffles me slightly. What sort of expenditure of labour power does not have an aim? My guess is that because we are talking about a capitalist system the aim of the process of labour would be the production of commodity. This, I believe, is a terrible aim, probably worse than the Socratic drive for truth via logic. For this aim shifts the whole structure of society into a commodity driven economy. While it is true that commodities are a necessary part of an economy, the aim of a society should not be to produce commodities, but to ensure that people have the necessary commodities in order to live. As we can see in our South African society we have a surplus of wasted commodities, and a large rate of poverty and unemployment. The question I will pose you is how can this disjuncture be eradicated? 

Powerage and the Global Apartheid

Powerage – Protest to survive 7”EP (Neg. FX, France, 1985) – Front Cover

Powerage – Protest to survive 7”EP (Neg. FX, France, 1985) – Inside 1

Powerage – Protest to survive 7”EP (Neg. FX, France, 1985) – Inside 2

Powerage – Protest to survive 7”EP (Neg. FX, France, 1985) – Back Cover

Powerage – Protest to survive 7”EP (Neg. FX, France, 1985) – Insert 1

Powerage – Protest to survive 7”EP (Neg. FX, France, 1985) – Insert 2

There is something to be said about a South African punk rock EP being published in France in 1985. Most of those things would start with questions. Why could an anti-apartheid album not be published in South Africa? Or was it better off being published in France? What links did the South African punk scene have with the European punk scene during this time? How were these relationships formed? The answers to these questions seem simple, but the more one looks between the lines a strange picture of unity within estrangement emerges. It is this picture that I will focus on, for the former questions cannot be answered accurately without interviews.

It all starts in the context of apartheid, a framework of forced segregation. By 1985 a significant divestment movement throughout the world had begun placing pressure on investors to disinvest from South Africa. The global community was in a strong reactionary phase to the apartheid regime. And in Durban South Africa a small pocket of white resistance was making itself heard within the global community of punk rock.

Positioning themselves as anarchists against the discrimination of fellow men, Powerage sang out against apartheid, but more so than that against discrimination. For it is the plight of the punk rocker to be discriminated unjustly against for their modes of dress, musical taste, and beliefs about “the system”. And it is in this judgement from “civil” society that a connection of unity can be made between an estranged group of white punks in Durban to those suffering from the oppressions of apartheid mandate. In a recent conversation with Ampie Omo trombonist of monkee punk band BOO! A similar notion came up 17 years after the end of Apartheid with small communities fighting for their identities - the right to keep their languages and customs alive. What he said was that (although I do believe he was references an earlier conversation had with Chris Chameleon) all these communities are fighting the same struggle, the struggle for their own identity, and while their identities, languages and customs may be different, they are fighting against the same concept. Afrikaans, Pedi, Tswana. And they must unite in order to conquer.

While the struggle during apartheid was seemingly different, it was a fight for citizenship and recognition, to be part of a larger whole. The irony, it seems, is that now that apartheid has ended small cultural groups are becoming estranged from their cultural heritage’s and are being forced to become part of the global community. To be educated in English, to believe with all their might in consumerism, and the goodness of monetary wealth. They are controlled by large scale border controls. They have passports instead of pass books. We all have passports. We are all stuck in a global apartheid. But the oppressor is faceless, it has become a system of laws and regulations – hedged by corporates with their own wealth in mind and the well-being of those enslaved during colonialism has become a situation of adapt or die. And the punks still sing out. The fools of modern society, except that nobody is listening or laughing. Their ears and eyes blind folded and deafened by media and songs about Jimmy Choos and lady lumps. If only Plato could see his golden lie in action today.

While the hatred bred in apartheid between whites and blacks in South Africa keeps them living in the past, blind to the larger injustices of the world. The new regime of neo-liberalism spreads its blind octopussy tentacles and segregates the world into first and third, richer and poorer. Better off and worse. And the words written in 1985 by a group of anarchist punks still speak true “We as a band stand against any discrimination of fellow man, we believe that everyone should live in a state of equality, no matter of race, religion, wealth, music and way of dress. We therefore stand against any law that denies a person equality, their human rights. We strongly oppose the laws regarding Apartheid in our country.” Except that now it is the global apartheid to which we can refer.  

The Market Universe of Doom

There is no doubt that there is wealth in South Africa, and conversely there is no doubt that there is poverty. And in between this wealth and poverty there is mass unemployment that is slowly decreasing according to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey in South Africa October to December 2011, even though it is still sitting at 23.9%, that is roughly 4244000 unemployed people out of a population of 32670000 people between the ages of 15 and 64. The most trouble lies in youth unemployment with the unemployment rate being 51% among 15 to 25 year olds (Jones: 2011). The question then is where is the money going? Why is it not being invested into business – which would create employment? Why are there no jobs for the youth of South Africa?

The truth of the matter is the world has changed - not only in the technological shift where unskilled labour is becoming less of a commodity because of the mechanical take-over - if Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma are correct, another change occurred in 1973 – the year which marked the end of the Bretton Woods agreement and of the gold standard. The old model has been undermined and a new model has taken its place while the rest of the world seems unable to keep up with the change. The economy no longer drives the market, it is now the market which drives the economy. (Benjamin and LiPuma 2002: 203-205)

Model one: Marx. In a very simplistic explanation of Marx’s model productive labour was the basis of an expanding economy. Labour itself was a commodity, and a necessary part of the production of commodities. The key was to drive the cost of labour down in order to create surplus capital off of the selling of commodities. (Benjamin and LiPuma 2002: 203)

Model two:  Derivatives. And here things get murky for I am delving into the realms of the market. A place I have no authority on. Derivatives are defined as “financial instruments that derive their monetary value from other assets, such as stocks, bonds, commodities, or currencies.” (Benjamin and LiPuma 2002:204) What a derivative does is it gives individuals the opportunity to sell certain assets at a specified date. I shall use the example that Lee and LiPuma use: “One might purchase a call option for $500 to buy one hundred shares of IBM at some future date for $100 a share  - the strike price. If at that future date IBM shares were valued at $120, the buyer would realise a profit ..” (Benjamin and LiPuma 2002:204) The process is far more complicated than this, but as you can see it seems as if profit or capital is being made from nothing. An abstract instrument which “circulates in its own universe”. (Benjamin and LiPuma 2002:204)

So now we can see the shift, capital is no longer solely created by productive labour, as the capital that was initially made off of the old model is now circulating in the market which has its own means of capital expansion (although Marx did predict this shift). There is no longer a need for those with monies to invest in productive labour, and when they do it is invested in bigger developing economies. The exploitation of labour now seems to be the in which newbie entrepreneurs can use in order to gain access into the new model. 

Where does that leave the masses of the unemployed youth? In yet another mode of estrangement, for without money they cannot enter into the new model of money for mahala in the market. And those in the market seem to be living in a different universe with minimal plans for the upliftment of the impoverished. Perhaps the time is coming where these two worlds will have to sever ties in order for the former to survive on their own terms without the influence of a greed driven economy on their minds. It is already happening in some parts of the world – as some are calling it “The Fourth World War.” And perhaps this is where a new imagining of the future could occur, outside of the system in developing a sustainable area – in terms of shelter and food supply - outside of governmental rule. Is it a better option than waiting around for the government to do something, or for the world to change?

The second option would be to look at Brazil’s rapidly increasing economy in 2010 due to their focus on agriculture and resources - with a current growth rate of 8.4% in their agricultural sphere. (Fick 2012) Although The Economist doubted the likelihood of the continuation of this boom which has now slowed down because of Brazil’s tendencies to save too much, invest too little, and spend dubiously to keep growth up, as well as their need for more skilled labour. (The Economist 2010) There is still room for learning from this example in the case of South Africa and other African nations when it comes to looking at how to re-involve the youth within the working sphere.

References

·         Fick, Jeff. March 2012. 2nd Update: Brazils’s Weak Industry Slows Once Booming Economy. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120306-708430.html

·         Jones, Michelle. 2011. Half of SA’s Youth are Unemployed. http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/half-of-sa-s-youth-are-unemployed-1.1019783

·         Lee, Benjamin and Edward LiPuma. 2002. “Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity.” Public Culture 14(1):191-213

·         Quarterly Labour Force Survey, Quarter 4 2011, www.statssa.gov.za

·         The Economist. May 2010. Brazil’s Booming Economy: Flying Too High For Safety. http://www.economist.com/node/16167612

The Body of Christ in a Mass Merchandised Burger

While reading Jean Comaroff’s paper on the Politics of Convinction I couldn’t shake the ghost of a passage in Robert M Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance. The passage goes as follows:

“You go through a heavy industrial area of a large city and there it all is, the technology. In front of it are high barbed wire fences, locked gates, signs saying NO TRESPASSING, and beyond, through sooty air, you see ugly strange shapes of metal and brick whose purpose is unknown, and whose masters you will never see. What it’s for you do not know, and why it’s there, there is no one to tell, and so all you can feel is alienated, estranged, as though you didn’t belong there. Who owns and understands this doesn’t want you around. All this technology has made you a stranger in your own land.”(Pirsig; 1976:16)

It was this idea of alienation from something so present in one’s society that really struck me. We never really think about how the structure and means of production are alienating – unless you read a lot of Marx. And I came to focus on the fast food industry and in particular about fast food’s being served with messages of the Lord on its packaging. And the connection between the known and the alienating force of the fast food industry. Processed food that bears no resemblance to a home cooked meal, or even the thing  which it is supposed to represent. If you have ever watched the movie Clerks 2 and seen a processed egg, which comes in the shape of a large polony roll, you will know what I’m talking about. There is something unnatural about it, yet you still eat it, but hate the fact that you are eating it. You know you shouldn’t, but it is convenient. Right there all the time, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. And you hate it, in a sense it alienates you from yourself with your love hate relationship with it. And then it started coming in religious wrappers as Comoroff puts it “mass-merchandised hamburgers now come wrapped in biblical homilies.” (Comoroff 2009; 18)

 Two thoughts occurred at this point in the text for me, firstly Comoroff’s point that religion had started using the means of capitalism to spread its word. This was nothing new, driving past Rhema Church on a regular basis you cannot help but be overwhelmed by their massive sign board slamming some message of faith into your brain whether you want it or not. But perhaps the extent that it is happening in the states is on a far more worrying scale as to make it seem like a cultural phenomenon to be examined. The second idea was this: Do those slogans of faith on one’s burger wrappers dealienate one from their processed food by putting something familiar on the face of an alienating product? Instead of thinking about the grossness of what one is about to eat, all the factory farming, deforestation, and general making into machinery that those employed by fast food establishments have to suffer, do people instead get distracted and think rather about their love or hate of religion? Or perhaps if God loves these burgers I can love them too? Seeing as I have not encountered this phenomena in South Africa, yet, I could not say from personal experience. But it seems like a canny means of shaking off the preconceived negative connotations that are attached to fast foods - by replacing them with positive messages of faith.

I guess at the end of it you really have to ask yourself “What would Jesus eat?”

References

·         Comaroff, Jean. 2009. “The politics of Convivtion: Faith on the neoliberal Frontier.” Social Analysis 53(1):17-38

·         Pirsig, Robert. M. 1976. “Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.” Corgi Books: London