Humanities & Social Sciences

Class, work and whiteness

Race and settler colonialism in Southern Rhodesia, 1919–79

by Nicola Ginsburgh

Description

This book offers the first comprehensive history of white workers from the end of the First World War to Zimbabwean independence in 1980. It reveals how white worker identity was constituted, examines the white labouring class as an ethnically and nationally heterogeneous formation comprised of both men and women, and emphasises the active participation of white workers in the ongoing and contested production of race. White wage labourers' experiences, both as exploited workers and as part of the privileged white minority, offer insight into how race and class co-produced one another and how boundaries fundamental to settler colonialism were regulated and policed. Based on original research conducted in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK, this book offers a unique theoretical synthesis of work on gender, whiteness studies, labour histories, settler colonialism, Marxism, emotions and the New African Economic History.

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Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo [DRC], Congo, Republic of the, Costa Rica, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Hongkong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, China, Macedonia [FYROM], Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Cyprus, Palestine, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Liechtenstein, Azerbaijan

Reviews

'Ginsburgh's study, thematically rich and informed by great sensitivity to comparative issues and transdisciplinary studies, brings out every nuance of those struggles by showing how, just beneath the tectonic plates of manifest contestation swirls the hidden magma of class, gender, race and, contingently constructed, identity.' Professor Charles van Onselen, author of The Fox and the Flies and The Seed is Mine By exploring the everyday lives of white workers during minority rule, this book underscores the continuing significance of class in Rhodesian settler society. Interest in white identity, power and privilege has grown following struggles over white land ownership in the early 2000s, yet research has predominately focused on middle class and rural whites. By critically building upon whiteness literature and synthesising theories of class, gender and emotions within a critical Marxist framework, this book considers the ways in which racial supremacy and white identity were forged and contested by lower class whites in urban areas and the industrial workplace. Based on original research conducted in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe, Class, work and whiteness demonstrates how the worlds of work were embedded in the production of social identities and how class intersected with other identities and oppressions. Settler anxieties over hegemonic notions of white femininity and masculinity, white poverty, Coloureds, Africans and 'undesirable' whites, were rooted in class experience and contributed to dominant white worker political ideologies. This book will be of interest to undergraduates and academics of gender, labour, race and class in African and imperial and colonial history, economic history and settler colonial studies.

Author Biography

Nicola Ginsburgh is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, South Africa

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date December 2022
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526167095 / 1526167093
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPrint PDF
  • Pages288
  • ReadershipGeneral/trade
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions234 X 156 mm
  • Biblio NotesDerived from Proprietary 5046
  • SeriesStudies in Imperialism
  • Reference Code15080

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