What are the processes of exploitation? In this book chapter, Tilly examines the South African system of apartheid and categorical inequality to identify the key elements of exploitation. Drawing from this and other historical cases, Tilly applies his model to modern society to illustrate that exploitation, while not as overt as in South Africa, still thrives, such as in gender pay inequality and minority rights imbalances. Exploitation involves the coordinated efforts of power-holders, command over deployable resources and their returns, categorical exclusion and skewed division of returns as compared with effort.
The discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa brought an influx of European settlers to a region that had hitherto been used principally as a transit point between India and the West. Following a series of military battles, ultimate victory by the British left them in control of tremendous resources, but also with a perplexing problem of controlling the native African population. The difficulty lay in two questions: first, how to integrate black Africans into the new state while keeping them compliant and subordinate; and second, how to commit African labour to farms, to urban services, and, above all, to the gold and diamond mines.
Solving these issues centred on establishing an effective means of exploitation, drawing black workers into work on white-dominated resources while excluding them from the full return of their effort. The Europeans in South Africa set about this exploitation by establishing resource and power differentials within the new state in three ways:
- Creating manageable social categories by drawing sharp lines between populations rather than forming coherent entities within them—South Africa relied heavily on categorisation, formulating an ‘Ethnos Theory’ that preached that coherent social life depended on the maintenance of distinct cultural groups
- Incorporating established and created social categories directly into the state structure—once apartheid became government policy, massive resettlement of black African populations further reinforced the power of separation
- Organising state-fostered inequality around those categories—using taxation, deprivation of land, and outright compulsion, the state codified economic and legal inequalities into the categories
Of note, however, is the fact that throughout South Africa’s state-sponsored exploitation, no consistent and durable set of beliefs drove the racial system. Rather, distinctions shifted over time, with organisational convenience overriding prevailing beliefs. Moreover, the system thrived due to emulation and adaption at the local level. Mining’s propensity to move from site to site meant that repressive organisational structures were recreated all across the country, spreading segregation and exploitation on a more informal basis.
The historical experience of South Africa, by far the starkest example of the direct, public creation of categorical inequality, demonstrates seven key elements that denote and characterise exploitation. In the modern world, exploiters are rarely as overt as the South African government, but they can be just as effective. For historically underrepresented groups such as women and minorities, these elements should be noted to aid in the search for and eradication of exploitation in today’s society:
- Powerholders
- Their coordinated efforts
- Deployable resources
- Command over those resources
- Returns from those resources
- Categorical exclusion
- Skewed division of returns as compared with effort
NB: Part of this chapter is available online via Google Books.
