The Making of an African Working Class
Politics, Law, and Cultural Protest in the Manual Workers' Union of Botswana
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pluto Press
Published:20th Jul '14
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£85.00(9780745334967)
It is now 50 years since E.P. Thompson published his classic, The Making of the English Working Class. The Making of an African Working Class follows Thompson in exploring the formation of working class identity among low-paid African workers. In arguing for a radical public anthropology of worker identity, the book seeks to analyse the cultural, legal, ideological and experiential dimensions of labour activism often neglected in other labour studies.
Pnina Werbner shows that by fusing cosmopolitan and local popular cultural forms of protest, unionists have created a distinctive, vernacular way of being a worker in Botswana: one that does not deny workers' roots at home or in the countryside, while being cognisant of a wider world of cosmopolitan labour rights. The assertion of working class dignity, honour and respect, Pnina argues, is a powerful motivating force for manual workers.
Against legal-sceptical approaches, The Making of an African Working Class argues that in challenging the government - their employer - in court, manual workers' protests and mobilisation are deeply embedded in ethics, social justice and the law.
'Shows how dignity, justice and morality underlay the resurgence of the Manual Workers' Union. A formidable achievement'
-- Professor Robin Cohen, Department of International Development, University of Oxford'[A] masterful ethnography ... Werbner has produced a theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly researched account of the uneven rise ofworking-class consciousness and activism in Botswana'
-- American EthnoloISBN: 9780745334950
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 455g
320 pages