The Dynamics of Inequality in the Congolese Copperbelt:

Few Congolese people would acknowledge the existence of social classes in their own country. The categories that they use in everyday life (the ‘unemployed’, ‘intellectuals’, ‘villagers’ or ‘whites’, to give but a few examples) are based on different criteria of classification, ambiguous and illdefined; for that reason, they cannot easily be matched with social classes. All would however acknowledge the existence of strong inequalities in Congolese society. So how can we account for these inequalities and their evolution since Congo’s independence in 1960? In order to do so, a vast literature suggests starting from an a priori definition of classinitself (the political class, the working class, or more recently, the middle class), and then to study its formation, its interests, its conflicts and the forms of consciousness associated with it. This line of enquiry, however, is confronted by two longstanding issues in class analysis: to determine the boundaries of social classes (who belong to the class under study?), and to think the relationship between classinitself and classforitself (what is the relevance of class from people’s point of view?). This chapter argues that to account for the evolution of inequalities in Congo since independence, the theoretical framework developed by Bourdieu in Distinction (1979) offers a better starting point. It allows one not only to overcome the two abovementioned difficulties faced by traditional class analysis, but also to study the dynamics of class in a broader perspective – beyond the usual emphasis on the formation of a particular class. In a nutshell, Bourdieu sees ‘social classes’ as emic categories that Benjamin Rubbers A Discussion of Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Space