Revising the Value Shift Hypothesis: A Descriptive Analysis of South Africa’s Value Priorities between 1990 and 2001

Since 1990 South Africa has been characterized by intense restructuring in the political, social, cultural and economic sphere, and this monumental transformation has had a multifarious impact on South African society. Much of this impact and the resultant changes have been assessed in recent academic and political debate, yet there has been little extensive and systematic research to assess the direction, magnitude and nature of these changing dynamics of South Africa’s values. Although the World Values Survey (WVS) has proven invaluable for research in this Ž eld of mass public values, most of the research has been fashioned in a manner to tap values in industrialized and western states, arguably rendering some aspects of the theoretical models of explanation less relevant for developing nations. This article therefore aims to advance an understanding of value change within the South African context, particularly in light of the expansive political, social and economic changes to have transpired since 1990, whilst simultaneously proposing one possibility of an expansion to the model currently used to measure value change. The aim of this study is to determine whether South African value priorities are changing, and, if so, what is the direction and magnitude of this change. The change will be measured in terms of the materialist/post-materialist dimension between 1991 and 2001, and a separate pre-materialist/materialist continuum,