During the South African lockdown, food relief was largely delivered by civil society, after the government failed to honor its pledge to provide for the population. By taking a local food parcel initiative in a small rural township as an ethnographic case study, this article examines why the attempt to mimic government food distribution generated dissatisfaction and tension in the targeted community. At the heart of this argument is the way the local parcel project created ambiguous anticipation regarding the consequences for residents' experience of dignity, as it undermined an established binary understanding of economic dependency. This understanding clearly distinguishes between relationships within the community and those with the government. Proximity and intimacy increased the risk of public humiliation arising from indebtedness, while dependence on the government did not inevitably generate the same anxiety. Agency is identified as a key signifier to understand strategies for upholding dignity in the different relationships. This article examines different stakeholders' spontaneous and creative attempts to control the relational outcome of the distribution. It discusses how narratives about the distribution as a rightful share to the community's wealth emerged among potential recipients in an attempt to negate any notion of personalized reciprocity following the distribution.

The article is concerned with the latest developments in Indonesia's Islamic field. Its focus is on the role of social media in exchange relationships between Islamic preachers and their constituency. The article first discusses economic exchanges between preachers and their followers, and then it concentrates on social exchanges and how they are mediated today. Empirically, the article delivers insight into the concerns of mostly female Indonesian middle-class Muslims and shows how preachers have to adjust to the needs of their followers who are regularly online. Theoretically, the article offers a rereading of Pierre Bourdieu's classic work on forms of capital and their conversion. It emphasizes the temporal dimension of capital accumulation and conversion and explores the temporalities of online exchanges that have become constitutive of preacher-follower relationships. In doing so, it shows how Indonesia's Islamic preacher economy is currently transformed by these online exchanges, resulting in preacher-follower relationships that are characterized by dialogic constructions of Islamic authority. Being part of Indonesia's Islamic field, these changes in the Islamic preacher economy point to a broader trend in Indonesia's Islamic field toward greater sensitivity to the needs and worries of Indonesian middle-class Muslims.