South African social attitudes

A country{u2019}s attitudinal profile is as much a part of its social reality as are its demographic make-up, its culture and its distinctive social patterns. It helps to provide a nuanced picture of a country{u2019}s circumstances, its continuities and changes, its democratic health, and how it feels to live there. It also helps to measure the country's progress towards the achievement of its economic, social and political goals, based on the measurement of both 'objective' and 'subjective' realities. South African Social Attitudes: Changing Times, Diverse Voices is a new series aimed at providing an analysis of attitudes and values towards a wide range of social and political issues relevant to life in contemporary South African society. As the series develops, we hope that readers will be able to draw meaningful comparisons with the findings of previous years and thus develop a richer picture and deeper appreciation of changing South African social values. This, the first volume in the series, presents the public's responses during extensive nation-wide interviews conducted by the HSRC in late 2003. The findings are analysed in three thematic sections: the first provides an in-d