Wealth-in-people and practical rationality: Aspirations and decisions about money in South Africa

Abstract

This article explores crucial decisions made by Sylvia, a Xhosa woman living in the townships of Cape Town, during a period of approximately thirty years. These decisions involved large sums of money and had important consequences for her own life, for those of her son and grandchild, and for the relationships she had with her first and second husbands and in-laws. Sylvia's decisions continued to be influenced by gendered ways of belonging to ancestors and descendants but also show important changes in connecting wealth and people. The wealth-in-people approach offers important insights into how Sylvia's decisions are guided by power and control over people as well as by prestige. However, it also becomes evident that the wealth-in-people approach does not sufficiently explain or theorize the agency of people. By drawing on the philosophical notion of practical rationality as a complementary analytical perspective, I explore agency in relation to aspirations and the acquisition of new open-ended values. The perspective offered by practical rationality increases our understanding of how individual decisions, especially complex decisions around money, are made because of their transformative potential and the aspiration to cultivate oneself.