The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil

Making Sense of Social Policy as Reparations

Series: 

Author:
Madalitso Phiri
The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil offers a radical departure by pivoting quotidian encounters of the historically oppressed ‘black racialised underclass’ within South Africa’s and Brazil’s social policy architectures that have been shaped by transhistorical trajectories of hierarchical citizenships. Phiri provides two interventions to scholarship, one on ‘the epistemic question’ and the second on ‘the social question’, by offering a critique of a racialised neoliberal global political economy that permeates the two countries’ social policies. In this volume, Phiri answers the following questions. First, can social policy resolve the residuals and contradictions of transhistorical inequalities that have become systemic features of these aspirant democracies that aim to forge a new social contract under the epoch of a hierarchical racialised neoliberal capitalism? Second, cognisant that both South Africa’s and Brazil’s socio-political formations are enmeshed in histories of imperial violence, and a hierarchical racialised global political economy carved through the Trans-Atlantic slavery, what paradigmatic and theoretical tools can be deployed to think about social policy as reparations? Third, cognisant of South Africa’s and Brazil’s oppressed black majorities, which institutions will create conducive conditions for the flourishing and political aesthetics for those racialised as black? The author's contribution to this oeuvre is first to define ‘social policy as reparations’ through a process of ‘worldmaking’.
Copyright Year:
2026
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978-90-04-74440-0
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04 Nov 2025
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ISBN:
978-90-04-74439-4
Publication:
13 Nov 2025
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Madalitso Zililo Phiri is a Post Doctoral Fellow in the South Africa United Kingdom Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is co-author of Monuments and Memory in Africa: Reflections on Coloniality and Decoloniality (Routledge, 2024). Phiri’s publications include book chapters and refereed journal articles in outlets such as History of Intellectual Culture, Critical Sociology, Monthly Review, Global Health Promotion, Journal of Southern African Studies, and South African Journal of International Affairs.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Figures

6 Introduction: the Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil
 1 Racial Capitalism as an Analytic in Global Debates on Anti-Black Racism
 2 Historical Sociology of South Africa’s and Brazil’s Hierarchical Social Citizenships
 3 On Racial Strivings and Divergent Experiences of Wealth and Inequality in South Africa and Brazil
 4 Social Assistance, Poverty, Inequality in South Africa and Brazil
 5 Organisation of the Book
 6 Note on Methodology and Race in the Comparative Study of South Africa and Brazil

7 Racial Capitalism in the Making of South African and Brazilian Social Policies: Distribution of Cumulative Advantages and Disadvantages
 1 Introduction
 2 Slave Labour, Philanthropy and the Institutionalisation of Unequal Social Welfare in South Africa
 3 Social Policy and the Struggle for South Africa’s Liberation
 4 Slavery and Rudimentary Welfare in Colonial Brazil
 5 Brazilian Republicanism, Vargas and Social Policy
 6 South Africa and Brazil’s Historical Foundations of Social Policy in Comparative Perspective

8 The Political Economy of Contemporary Racialised Welfare in South Africa and Brazil: Reparative Social Policy
 1 Race and the Political Economy of Social Assistance in South Africa—from Apartheid to Democracy
 2 Racialised Designs and Ideas of South Africa’s Social Policy Architecture in the Democratic Dispensation
 3 The Political Economy of Racialised Social Welfare in Brazil: Reversal of Fortunes?
 4 Poverty, Inequality, Racial Stratification and Social Exclusion under Progressive Reforms
 5 Conclusion

9 Bread, Land and Humanity in South Africa’s and Brazil’s Social Policies: towards Repair
 1 Introduction
 2 The Cartography of Racialised Hunger and Social Exclusion in South Africa
 3 Work and Humanity in South Africa’s Social Policy Aspirations
 4 Is There a Cartography of Racialised Hunger in Brazil?
 5 Social Assistance and the Quest for Decent Work in Brazil
 6 Conclusion: Race and Poverty in South Africa and Brazil’s Hierarchical Social Policy Imaginaries

10 Inequalities of Income and Wealth in South Africa’s and Brazil’s Social Policy Architectures
 1 Introduction
 2 Macroeconomic Uncertainties and Income Distribution in South Africa
 3 Wealth Redistribution and Social Assistance in South Africa’s Social Policy Regime
 4 Macroeconomic Shocks, Income Inequality and Social Assistance in Brazil
 5 Wealth Distribution and Social Assistance in Brazil
 6 Comparative Perspectives of Inequality of Opportunity and Outcomes in South Africa and Brazil
Epilogue: the Idea of Social Policy as Reparations
References
Index
This volume will be of interest to university libraries, academics specialising in sociology, politics, political theory, history, black studies, development studies; post-graduate students; and international development practitioners.
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