ABSTRACT
The attempt to extend the theory of the plural society to the study of South African sociology raises immediate difficulties. It is a theory which has been evolved to deal with certain types of colonial situations in which the theories of class conflict and of social stratification manifestly do not work and in which the main emphasis is upon culturally distinguished segments rather than ‘classes’. Probably this follows from the fact that none of the other societies to which the theory has been applied, e.g. Indonesia, the Caribbean, or East Africa, have been industrializing societies, and that they therefore, lack the tight political and economic framework which a society which is industrializing or has industrialized must have. South Africa, on the other hand, is an industrial society, there is such a framework, and concepts like those of class conflict derived from European and North American industrial experience do seem to have some relevance.
