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Title:'Ubuntu' bashing: the marketisation of 'African values' in South Africa
Author:McDonald, David A.ISNI
Year:2010
Periodical:Review of African Political Economy (ISSN 0305-6244)
Volume:37
Issue:124
Pages:139-152
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:philosophy
values
capitalism
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2010.483902
Abstract:Broadly defined as an 'African world view' that places communal interests above those of the individual, and where human existence is dependent upon interaction with others, ubuntu has a long tradition on the continent. This paper explores the ways in which the philosophy and language of ubuntu have been taken up and appropriated by market ideologies in postapartheid South Africa. The literature on 'ubuntu capitalism' offers the most obvious illustration of this, but there are more subtle ways in which ubuntu theory and language have been (re)introduced to postapartheid South Africa to support and reinforce neoliberal policymaking. But rather than reject ubuntu thinking outright as too compromised by this discursive shift, as much of the Left in South Africa has done, the paper asks if there is something potentially transformative about ubuntu beliefs and practices that can be meaningfully revived for more progressive change. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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