Racial Division Of Labour Research Articles

Palestine along the colour line: race, colonialism, and construction labour, 1918–1948

ABSTRACT This article examines how racialized concepts of the labouring body shaped the division of labour in British-ruled Palestine’s construction industry between 1918–1948. In contending with Palestine’s “labour question”, Zionist Jews, British authorities and Palestinian Arabs engaged in competing and overlapping racial and anti-racist projects embedded in global and imperial racial thought and politics. Israel/Palestine’s racial division of labour and the land’s twentieth-century social structures were an expression of the continuous evolution of the encounter between such racial projects and between changing material, political and social conditions. Narrating this encounter allows us to move beyond treatments of race and racial politics as abstractions, demonstrating how they marked and classified bodies, and shaped experiences, lives and landscapes.

Um alerta feminista para a educação das crianças pequenas: contra os “rachismos” na infância

O livro organizado por Adriana Alves Silva, Ana Lúcia Goulart de Faria e Daniela Finco, reúne pesquisas que dão visibilidade à luta feminista e ao processo de descolonização na primeira etapa da educação básica, fazendo a interlocução dos Estudos de Gênero e dos Feminismos interseccionados com as questões da Educação Infantil. A obra, dividida em duas partes, apresenta pesquisas com crianças realizadas em creches, pré-escolas e brinquedotecas, bem como traz abordagens sobre desigualdades sociais, racismo, divisão sexual e racial do trabalho, formação de professoras/es, entre outros assuntos que levam à reflexão sobre os feminismos, as masculinidades e a construção da docência na Educação Infantil.

Situating Race in Cultural Competency Training: A Site of Self-Revelation

Indigenous cross-cultural training has been around since the 1980s. It is often seen as a way to increase the skills and competency of staff engaged in providing service to Indigenous clients and customers, teaching Indigenous students within universities and schools, or working with Indigenous communities (Fredericks and Bargallie, “Indigenous”; “Which Way”). In this article we demonstrate how such training often exposes power, whiteness, and concepts of an Indigenous “other”. We highlight how cross-cultural training programs can potentially provide a setting in which non-Indigenous participants can develop a deeper realisation of how their understandings of the “other” are formed and enacted within a “white” social setting. Revealing whiteness as a racial construct enables people to see race, and “know what racism is, what it is not and what it does” (Bargallie, 262). Training participants can use such revelations to develop their racial literacy and anti-racist praxis (Bargallie), which when implemented have the capacity to transform inequitable power differentials in their work with Indigenous peoples and organisations.

Oral Histories of Field Science in the Late Portuguese Colonial Empire

ABSTRACT This paper addresses theoretical and practical questions posed by an oral history project with researchers who did fieldwork in the Portuguese colonies as part of scientific expeditions for the Overseas Research Board (1951–1974) in the post-war period. I discuss what historians of science and late imperialism can draw from oral history as a methodology, as it is not a form of research used with any regularity in the history of science generally. I argue that oral history can be used as an alternative to ethnographic work, allowing researchers to pay close attention to scientific practices, processes of local knowledge production, and the racial division of labor that occurred – in my case specifically – in the colonial setting. Apart from that, the interviews illuminate the Portuguese field scientists’ shared identity in the colonies and their multi-layered interactions and political, social, and cultural negotiations; these broaden our knowledge and understanding of Portuguese field science in the colonial context, presenting a more complex view that does not reinforce either celebratory views of Portuguese colonial science or simplistic views of science in the service of Empire.

Representaciones del cuerpo como destinatario de la violencia (neo)colonial en la poesía mapuche contemporánea

La poesía mapuche contemporánea escenifica una multiplicidad de procesos sufridos por este pueblo: desde las acometidas colonizadoras, hasta el desplazamiento forzoso y la reterritorialización en las periferias urbanas. En este artículo me interesa abordar las representaciones del cuerpo que proponen dichas poéticas, específicamente, en las obras de cuatro autores: Jaime Huenún, Adriana Paredes Pinda, David Aniñir y Liliana Ancalao. Allí analizo los procedimientos poéticos a través de los que tanto Huenún como Paredes Pinda representan el cuerpo indígena como destinatario de la violencia colonizadora, sostenida hasta la actualidad. Además, abordo las poéticas de Aniñir, Ancalao y Huenún, observando las representaciones de cuerpos reducidos, condenados a la precarización de la vida a partir de la división racial del trabajo. El punto de vista que guía esta lectura es el cuerpo, representado como territorio de ultraje y dominio en una operación metonímica entre la tierra y el cuerpo.

Outsourcing and the sociosexual and racial division of labor

Abstract This work seeks to analyze outsourcing with an emphasis on the socio-sexual and racial division of labor. We understand that there is differentiation about the outsourcing biases in the case of black women since Brazilian social formation is based on racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. Therefore, the article is presented in three parts: first, we bring elements that define what outsourcing is; then we approach this phenomenon in the public sector, and finally, we deal with the topic of outsourcing and its effects from the sociosexual and racial division of labor.

“We Are Not a Docile People”: Chinese Resistance and Exclusion in the Re-Imagining of Whiteness in South Africa, 1903–1910

Abstract This article offers a corrective to the way in which the history of reconstruction and the construction of whiteness in the early decade of the 1900s in South Africa has been understood. In the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War in 1902, South Africa on the whole and, in particular, the Transvaal Colony not only experienced economic instability, but also a crisis in the black-white racial hierarchy. This article shows that even though the presence of indentured laborers from North China was a threat to the livelihood of English workingmen and Afrikaner farmers, their presence helped to strengthen a racial division of labor and regime that privileged white men. The restrictions attached to the recruitment of indentured Chinese labor to work in the gold mining industry in the Transvaal clearly defined who would be regarded as the cheap and unskilled laborers. Additionally, the means of control resorted to by the industry and colonial government in response to their disturbances and riots, desertions, breaking into white peoples’ homes, and murdering of Afrikaner farmers treated non-white peoples as pariah, subject to control and exclusion. The sense of control and authority resorted to by the Dutch- and English-speaking peoples against this backdrop engendered a kind of racial coalescence among Afrikaners and English as whites.

Transition from Below: Forging Trade Unionism and Workplace Change in South Africa (review)

Reviewed by: Transition from Below: forging trade unionism and workplace change in South Africa Ari Sitas (bio) Karl von Holdt (2003) Transition from Below: forging trade unionism and workplace change in South Africa. Scottsville: University of Natal Press. I thumbed through Von Holdt's Transition from Below with feelings of envy and sadness —envy because in 1979 I had toyed with the idea of doing my PhD work on Witbank, Highveld Steel, KwaGuqa and the hostels; sadness because the area brought back memories of a number of people, crucial to my intellectual and creative development, who have passed away.1 A further cause for envy was that Von Holdt's study could span the period from the initial steps of trade union organisation in the area, the early 1980s, the resistance and insurrection that followed and the transition to democracy. That he does so with commitment, care and analytical rigour makes this book a great contribution to the field of industrial sociology in the country. By focusing on what he terms the 'micro-institutional level' of analysis, he attempts to demonstrate that South Africa's transition is not only a combination of a 'political transition to democracy and an economic transition towards a liberalised economy' but it also entails a 'third dimension': 'a process of internal decolonisation and reconstruction of society' or a 'contested transformation of post-colonial reconstruction' (2003:3). A core concept that explicates his approach and which constitutes the object of this 'contested transformation' is the 'apartheid workplace regime' (2003:5-8). Such a regime of domination at work constitutes, in turn, 'a national pattern of workplace practices' (2003:11). Alongside the above conceptualisation of the workplace, there lies an understanding of the trade union as a central institution but also as a social movement: 'union structure includes the formal institutional girders ... but [End Page 124] also values and meanings, discourses and repertoires of action' (2003:9). The dramatic transformations occur in the KwaGuqa township and the hostels servicing Highveld Steel, the largest private steel producer in the country. They are driven by the dynamics of trade union organisation, initiated by the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), and are taken to an unprecedented crescendo of politicisation through the campaigns of the United Democratic Front (UDF). The second chapter is particularly crucial as the concept of the 'apartheid workplace regime' is given flesh and blood in the context of the steelworks: its racial division of labour, its racial segregation of facilities, the racial structure of power in the workplace, the role of the black 'baas-boys', but, also, the 'differentiation of black migrant and urban workers', and traces how each one is beginning to be challenged by the emerging unionisation in the factory and the area. The third chapter explores the arrival of the trade union and the consolidation of its struggles, the winning of trade union recognition and the role of migrant and urban labourers in an emerging challenge that 'ushered in a period of unstable and fiercely contested transition' (2003: 71). The first consequence of these processes was not only a challenge to 'baasskap' and conditions of work, but also a process of untold hardship between the union shop stewards and a militant strike committee which used violence to establish control and discipline in the workers' struggles. This led to deep divisions and a loss of NUMSA's legitimacy among a sizeable section of the workforce by the late 1980s (2003:83). The fourth chapter illuminates the relationship between social movement unionism, popular alliances and 'ungovernability' in the community. The rolling out of stayaways and resistance brought tensions between unions and community organisations, and between hostel-based migrant workers and residents. The complexity of the tensions was enormous because many of the shop stewards were also 'increasingly active in the community' (2003:107). The fifth chapter explores how the interlacing of manifold struggles spilled over into the factory, and between 1986 and 1987 a 'chaotic' challenge and counter-challenge was under way with the 'lockout strike' of 1987, which ended with the 'union (securing) a relatively orderly surrender', but in the workplace 'it was smashed completely, there were no longer meetings, there was nothing… the militant...

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Dandy as Diasporic Race Man

Contemporary critics have read The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as a masculinist text that, in Hazel Carby's words, reveals the “highly gendered structures of intellectual and political thought and feeling” in Du Bois' work. However, “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Dandy as Diasporic R ace Man” argues that Du Bois's concern with black male leadership style began before the writing of Souls and continues well after it, in his less well-known writing. While still a young scholar, Du Bois wrote about an African American “feminine man” who, in joining with the more “masculine” Teutonic would produce a common human/American civilization by a racial division of labor. In his 1928 novel, Dark Princess, this “feminine man” finds his story as a dandified Du Bois-like member of the Talented-Tenth charged with fomenting a revolution against a world-wide color line. With this activist-dandy, whose nattily-clad body signifies on, rather than blindly accepts, masculinist tropes, Du Bois realizes a long-standing wish for racial leadership by what he calls “men who were--different.”

Redefining Equity: Challenges and Opportunities Facing South Africa's Historically Black Universities Relative to Global and National Changes

This article examines equity relative to South Africa's historically Black universities (HBUs) in changing global and local circumstances. It argues that equity should not be interpreted as strict equality, but rather in terms of improved fitness to purpose and relevance in terms of global and basic development, with the goal of enhancing HB Us ' status. Small but significant innovations HBUs have made in community-oriented teaching, research, and outreach provide the basis for conceptualizing an alternative to the market university model. The multiple disadvantages suffered by HBUs under apartheid are described, and cross-national comparisons with U.S. universities are made. INTRODUCTION National development in the contemporary South African context involves a set of dual but competing challenges. On the one hand, it entails enhancing the country's participation in the high-technology, information-led global competitive arena. It also involves facilitating socioeconomic reconstruction and development to meet the basic needs of the majority of the nation's population. Higher education institutions in South Africa currently face formidable challenges as well as some promising opportunities amidst the context of transformation and reconstruction. As part of the broad changes preceding and following the first democratic elections in 1994, a legislative and policy framework for the restructuring of higher education was developed and outlined in the new government's White Paper policy document the transformation of higher education (Republic of South Africa Department of Education [RSADE], 1997) and the Higher Education Act of 1997. This new framework provides for a single, coordinated, programs-based system geared toward reversing the disparities, disadvantages, and dysfunctionality that characterize the present system. To this end, two main policy goals have been identified: first, the reduction within the system of apartheid-generated inequalities based on race, gender, and location; and second, the maximization of the contribution of higher education toward national and regional development. South Africa's 11 historically Black universities (HBUs)l have a crucial role to play in relation to these recent developments and policy goals. Established under apartheid as separate institutions for Black students, the intended purpose of the HBUs was to perpetuate the racially defined divided social order. Their primary function was to provide personnel for the separate homelands civil service structures and for the small, emerging Black middle class. Accordingly, they assumed particular institutional characteristics and academic cultures in which the overwhelming emphasis was (and has largely remained) on undergraduate teaching, concentrated in a narrow range of fields associated with the racial division of labor under apartheid-namely, health, education, social work, law, and public administration. The vast majority of HBU student enrollments comprised underprepared Black students. Faculty were generally junior and underqualified, and student success rates were comparatively low. Under the discriminatory and repressive conditions of apartheid, the HBUs were subject to severe financial and other disadvantages, with the result being that their institutional infrastructures are generally poor. Relative to the proposed national and institutional planning framework, a number of interrelated challenges face South Africa's HBUs. Among these are: redefining their institutional missions and functions; strategically identifying specialized and niche teaching and research programs; academically supporting underprepared students; developing appropriate curricula; promoting quality, effectiveness, and efficiency in all aspects of institutional life; and building academic, planning, and managerial capacity. Additionally, they face difficult financial planning choices under conditions of severe fiscal constraint. …

Changes in the racial division of labour during the apartheid era

Scholarly attempts to address the dual impact of economic growth and apartheid labour policies on the racial division of labour in the 1970s and 1980s produced markedly divergent estimates of the extent to which the colour bar was being eroded by employment growth. This study revisits the debate by applying new concepts about the division of labour to South African employment statistics. The reason why scholars came up with such different estimates of the size of the African middle class is that they relied on inappropriate neo‐Marxist theories of class and on official occupational categories. On the other hand, I argue for a more eclectic conceptualisation of occupational groups that incorporates neo‐Weberian class schemes and labour process theory. The result is an occupational classification that tries to be sensitive to the ways in which the racial division of labour was shaped by the legal and institutional mechanisms of racial discrimination, by the level of certification of the population, and by w...

South Africa's Labor Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines.

This book explores the complex interplay of factors fueling the transformation of the gold mining industry in South Africa. Basing their work on archival sources, contemporary evidence and interviews with mining personnel, the authors chart the expansion and break-up of the mine regional labour empire from 1920 through the mid-1970s and explore conflicts between the industry and the state over labour sourcing, the mobilization of South African labour for the mines, the effects of workforce stabilization for black miners and their home communities, and the emergence of a new racial division of labour in the mining industry. The book concludes with an analysis of the National Union of Mineworkers, speculating on whether its gains over the last decade are so firmly entrenched that they are unlikely to be overturned by either the state or private industry.