ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the identity of professionalism creates both aspirational opportunities but also constraints. It suggests that a focus on professionalism offers an important perspective on the middle classes and their claims to citizenship, in South Africa and beyond. The ambiguous and heterogeneous position of South Africa’s middle classes has been taken up in scholarship, which shows that salaries are often spread thinly across wide networks of responsibilities and dependencies between kin. In scholarly debates about social stratification in Africa, the terms ‘middle class’ and ‘elite’ have both been used analytically to describe civil servants and other state and formal sector employees. Weberian approaches have been useful in the scholarship on African bureaucracies, particularly in characterizing the relationship between elites and the mechanisms of state power. Many anthropologists have noted the importance placed on formal education among Africa’s aspiring middle classes. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
