A Long Way Home : Migrant Worker Worlds 1800-2014 – William Beinart

R850.00

In no other society in the world have urbanisation and industrialisation been as comprehensively based on migrant labour as in South Africa. Rather than focusing on the well-documented narrative of displacement and oppression, A Long Way Home captures the humanity, agency and creative modes of self-expression of the millions of workers who helped to build and shape modern South Africa.

The book spans a three-hundred-year history beginning with the exportation of slave labour from Mozambique in the eighteenth century and ending with the strikes and tensions on the platinum belt in recent years. It shows not only the age-old mobility of African migrants across the continent but also, with the growing demand for labour in the mining industry, the importation of Chinese slaves.

The essays and visual materials traverse homesteads, chiefdoms and mining hostels in their portrayal of migrant workers’ and their families’ attempts to maintain contact across large distances and uphold their rural customs, traditions and rituals in new spaces and locations. Together, they provide multiple perspectives on the lived experience of migrant labourers and celebrate their extraordinary journeys.

A Long Way Home was conceived during the planning of an art exhibition entitled `Ngezinyawo: Migrant Journeys’ at the Wits Art Museum. The interdisciplinary nature of the contributions and the extraordinary collection of images selected to complement and expand on the text make this a unique collection.

Paperback (large) see measurements below. 280 pages, which are clean fresh and crisp, free from any ink inscriptions, the cover is bright, free from creases to the covers or spine. Almost like new. Beautiful drawings ad “photgraphs” See OUR OWN copy of this book

In stock

SKU: 9781868147670 Category: Title: A Long Way Home : Migrant Worker Worlds 1800-2014
Author: William Beinart
Publisher: Wits University Press
Year: 2014
ISBN10: 1868147673
ISBN13: 9781868147670
Condition: Mint
Format: Softcover
Inventory No: 1334

Description

In no other society in the world have urbanisation and industrialisation been as comprehensively based on migrant labour as in South Africa. Rather than focusing on the well-documented narrative of displacement and oppression, A Long Way Home captures the humanity, agency and creative modes of self-expression of the millions of workers who helped to build and shape modern South Africa.

The book spans a three-hundred-year history beginning with the exportation of slave labour from Mozambique in the eighteenth century and ending with the strikes and tensions on the platinum belt in recent years. It shows not only the age-old mobility of African migrants across the continent but also, with the growing demand for labour in the mining industry, the importation of Chinese slaves.

The essays and visual materials traverse homesteads, chiefdoms and mining hostels in their portrayal of migrant workers’ and their families’ attempts to maintain contact across large distances and uphold their rural customs, traditions and rituals in new spaces and locations. Together, they provide multiple perspectives on the lived experience of migrant labourers and celebrate their extraordinary journeys.

A Long Way Home was conceived during the planning of an art exhibition entitled `Ngezinyawo: Migrant Journeys’ at the Wits Art Museum. The interdisciplinary nature of the contributions and the extraordinary collection of images selected to complement and expand on the text make this a unique collection.

Paperback (large) see measurements below. 280 pages, which are clean fresh and crisp, free from any ink inscriptions, the cover is bright, free from creases to the covers or spine. Almost like new. Beautiful drawings ad “photgraphs” See OUR OWN copy of this book

Additional information

Weight 0.91 kg
Dimensions 25 × 21 × 1.8 cm

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