ABSTRACT

COVID-19 lockdowns are happening in almost all societies across the globe, but in South Africa the lockdown is occurring in one of the most unequal societies in the world and in the socio-historic racial context of post-apartheid. Using this extreme context, we ask what the effects of the lockdown are on how people do class work, that is, make sense of and enact their privilege and inequality. Through interviews with diverse participants and using thematic analysis, we explored two main research questions: (1) Is the lockdown a social class shock event prompting class work? and (2) Does the class work prompted by the lockdown intersect with race such that class work takes different forms based on the race of the actor? We highlight the ways in which findings from our South African context may generalize to Africa and beyond, and end with practical suggestions for organizations, to continue the perspective-taking begun by pandemic lockdowns.

摘要

COVID-19封锁在全球几乎所有社会中都在发生，但在南非，封锁发生在世界上最不平等的社会之一和种族隔离后的社会历史种族背景下。在这种极端的背景下，我们问到封锁对人们如何开展班级工作有何影响，即理解并制定了特权和不平等。通过与不同参与者的访谈并使用主题分析，我们探索了两个主要的研究问题：（1）封锁是社会阶层的震惊事件，促使阶级工作吗？（2）锁定引发的班级工作是否与种族相交，使得班级工作根据演员的种族而采取不同的形式？我们重点介绍了南非的调查结果可以推广到非洲及其他地区的方式，