Contingent Citizens: Professional Aspiration in a South African Hospital

Hull, Elizabeth

Abstract

Over the last decade, South Africa has experienced widening inequality, with the ostentatious lifestyles of a political and business elite juxtaposed against the growing unrest of a large “wageless” population. But what about the educated middle tier that are joining the lower ranks of government services, those who service the country’s hospitals, schools, police stations and offices? How have they experienced the promises of democracy since the transition to majority rule? Contingent Citizens explores the ambiguous status of the ‘professional’ classes, and asks what it means to be aspirational in South Africa today. The emerging tropes of liberal democracy—those of ‘accountability’ and ‘rights’—generate fear and criticism among nurses working in a rural government hospital in KwaZulu-Natal. But rather than simply responding to, or even resisting, these hegemonic discourses, nurses are engaged in a range of practices from international migration to new religious movements that signal a desire to formulate new material and ethical visions of citizenship.

Citation

Hull, E. (2017). Contingent Citizens: Professional Aspiration in a South African Hospital. Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350027787

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Publication Date: May 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Dec 29, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Series Title: LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology
• ISBN: 9781350027770
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350027787
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350027787
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Co-Winner of the LSE First Monograph Competition 2016