Mehita Iqani is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the author of Consumer Culture and the Media: Magazines in the Public Eye (2012), and Consumption and Media in the Global South: Empowerment Contested (2015). She serves on the editorial board of Consumption, Markets & Culture. Bridget Kenny is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and has written extensively on retail work, precarious labour, gender, race and political publics. She is the President of the Labour Movements section of the International Sociological Association, has served as editor of the journals African Studies and South African Review of Sociology, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Global Labour Journal and African Studies.

• Introduction – Critical consumption studies in South Africa: roots and routes 1. Chewing on Japan: consumption, diplomacy and Kenny Kunene’s nyotaimori scandal 2. Agency and affordability: being black and ‘middle class’ in South Africa in 1989 3. Sartorial excess in Mary Sibande’s ‘Sophie’ 4. Queer skin, straight masks: same-sex weddings and the discursive construction of identities and affects on a South African website 5. The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa 6. Retail, the service worker and the polity: attaching labour and consumption 7. Contradictions in consumer credit: innovations in South African super-exploitation 8. Trading in freedom: rethinking conspicuous consumption in post-apartheid political economy

Mehita Iqani is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the author of Consumer Culture and the Media: Magazines in the Public Eye (2012), and Consumption and Media in the Global South: Empowerment Contested (2015). She serves on the editorial board of Consumption, Markets & Culture. Bridget Kenny is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and has written extensively on retail work, precarious labour, gender, race and political publics. She is the President of the Labour Movements section of the International Sociological Association, has served as editor of the journals African Studies and South African Review of Sociology, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Global Labour Journal and African Studies.

• Introduction – Critical consumption studies in South Africa: roots and routes 1. Chewing on Japan: consumption, diplomacy and Kenny Kunene’s nyotaimori scandal 2. Agency and affordability: being black and ‘middle class’ in South Africa in 1989 3. Sartorial excess in Mary Sibande’s ‘Sophie’ 4. Queer skin, straight masks: same-sex weddings and the discursive construction of identities and affects on a South African website 5. The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa 6. Retail, the service worker and the polity: attaching labour and consumption 7. Contradictions in consumer credit: innovations in South African super-exploitation 8. Trading in freedom: rethinking conspicuous consumption in post-apartheid political economy

Mehita Iqani is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the author of Consumer Culture and the Media: Magazines in the Public Eye (2012), and Consumption and Media in the Global South: Empowerment Contested (2015). She serves on the editorial board of Consumption, Markets & Culture. Bridget Kenny is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and has written extensively on retail work, precarious labour, gender, race and political publics. She is the President of the Labour Movements section of the International Sociological Association, has served as editor of the journals African Studies and South African Review of Sociology, and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Global Labour Journal and African Studies.

• Introduction – Critical consumption studies in South Africa: roots and routes 1. Chewing on Japan: consumption, diplomacy and Kenny Kunene’s nyotaimori scandal 2. Agency and affordability: being black and ‘middle class’ in South Africa in 1989 3. Sartorial excess in Mary Sibande’s ‘Sophie’ 4. Queer skin, straight masks: same-sex weddings and the discursive construction of identities and affects on a South African website 5. The promise of happiness: desire, attachment and freedom in post/apartheid South Africa 6. Retail, the service worker and the polity: attaching labour and consumption 7. Contradictions in consumer credit: innovations in South African super-exploitation 8. Trading in freedom: rethinking conspicuous consumption in post-apartheid political economy