Peter Alexander, Philip Bonner, Jonathan Hyslop and Lucien van der Walt (eds.), 2009, Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa, special issue of African Studies (volume 68, number 1)
Description
This special presents papers from the international conference ‘Labour Crossings: World, Work, Society’, organised by the History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand, and the Centre for Sociological Research, University of Johannesburg, in September 2008. The intellectual agenda of the conference was to explore a wide range of ‘labour crossings’: between time periods, between regions and continents, between types of work, and types of worker, both free and unfree, between different imagined worlds, religion and labour, and gender and class – as well as between intellectual disciplines and traditions. The transnational turn in labour history was a key influence on the framing of the issues. Looking globally, and thinking beyond the traditional analytical framework of the nation-state, the very character of the ‘working class’ and its ‘making’ (Thompson ) needs to be rethought.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Labour Crossings in Eastern and Southern Africa (Peter Alexander, Philip Bonner, Jonathan Hyslop and Lucien van der Walt)
2. Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth Century East Africa: The case of Waungwana caravan porters (Stephen J. Rockel)
3. The Passenger Indian as Worker: Indian immigrants in Cape Town in the early twentieth century (Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie)
4. The Limits of Law in the Mandated Territories: Becoming manamba and the struggles of sisal plantation workers in Tanganyika (Hanan Sabea)
5. Competitive Labour: Divisions between Zambian and Zimbabwean workers (Andrea L. Arrington)
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Lucien van der Walt 