6: Conclusion

The discussion in the chapters above made two contributions to knowledge. First, it explores how Black South Africans living in South Africa conceptualise middle classness. Second, it demonstrates how this conceptualisation informs our own social identity, as researchers and our own standings within the Black middle class.

Social scientists remain concerned with how the history of legalised racial segregation and discrimination, such as the system of apartheid in South Africa, currently affects Blacks as individuals. This book focused on enriching theoretical perspectives on race and class from the perspective of the interviewee/interviewer interaction as well as the outsider/insider dynamic. It contextualised both subjective and objective definitions of middle class while highlighting the constantly and vastly shifting conceptualisation and operationalisation of this term.