Farm Labor Struggles in Zimbabwe: The Ground of Politics

Author:   Blair Rutherford
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
ISBN:  

9780253024039


Pages:   294
Publication Date:   19 December 2016
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Farm Labor Struggles in Zimbabwe: The Ground of Politics


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Overview

In the early twenty-first century, white-owned farms in Zimbabwe were subject to large-scale occupations by black urban dwellers in an increasingly violent struggle between national electoral politics, land reform, and contestations over democracy. Were the black occupiers being freed from racist bondage as cheap laborers by the state-supported massive land redistribution, or were they victims of state violence who had been denied access to their homes, social services, and jobs? Blair Rutherford examines the unequal social and power relations shaping the lives, livelihoods, and struggles of some of the farm workers during this momentous period in Zimbabwean history. His analysis is anchored in the time he spent on a horticultural farm just east of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, that was embroiled in the tumult of political violence associated with jambanja, the democratization movement. Rutherford complicates this analysis by showing that there was far more in play than political oppression by a corrupt and authoritarian regime and a movement to rectify racial and colonial land imbalances, as dominant narratives would have it. Instead, he reveals, farm worker livelihoods, access to land, gendered violence, and conflicting promises of rights and sovereignty played a more important role in the political economy of citizenship and labor than had been imagined.

Full Product Details

Author:   Blair Rutherford
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.435kg
ISBN:  

9780253024039


ISBN 10:   025302403
Pages:   294
Publication Date:   19 December 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"List of Abbreviations Preface Introduction 1. ""Oppression,"" Maraiti and Farm Worker Livelihoods: Shifting Grounds in the 1990s 2. The Traction of Rights, the Art of Politics: The Labor ""War"" at Upfumi 3. The Drama of Politics: Dissension, Suffering, and Violence 4. Politics and Precarious Livelihoods during the Time of Jambanja Conclusion: Representing Labor Struggles Appendix: Correspondence with the President's Office Bibliography Index"

Reviews

Makes a distinctive contribution to an emerging literature on labor in Africa, specificially in relation to farm workers... The reader is drawn into both their courageous struggles and their suffering, without the writing ever descending into pathos or melodrama. Blair Rutherford's in-depth knowledge of the wider literature on Zimbabwe further illuminates these events. Pnina Werbner, author of The Making of an African Working Class


Author Information

Blair Rutherford is professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (cross-appointed to the Institute of African Studies, the Institute of Political Economy, and Department of Geography and Environmental Studies) at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

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