Mining Gold and Manufacturing Ignorance: Occupational Lung Disease and the Buying and Selling of Labour in Southern Africa

ISBN-13: 9789811983290 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 470 str.

Jock William McCulloch; Pavla Miller

Opis

This open access book charts how South Africa’s gold mines have systematically suppressed evidence of hazardous work practices and the risks associated with mining.For most of the twentieth century, South Africa was the world’s largest producer of gold. Although the country enjoyed a reputation for leading the world in occupational health legislation, the mining companies developed a system of medical surveillance and workers’ compensation which compromised the health of black gold miners, facilitated the spread of tuberculosis, and ravaged the communities and economies of labour-sending states. The culmination of two decades of meticulous archival research, this book exposes the making, contesting, and unravelling of the companies’ capacity to shape – and corrupt – medical knowledge.

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: A most modern industry: the migrant labour system and crisis management: 1880 -2022

Chapter 3: Mapping and resolving a health crisis: 1902 -1929

Chapter 4: Identifying risk and compensating tuberculosis: 1916 - 1957

Chapter 5: Lifting the ban on the recruitment of Tropical labour: 1933-1945

Chapter 6: The research community, risk and evidence: 1912 - 1932

Chapter 7: Tuberculosis, malnutrition and mining in South Africa: 1903 - 1960

Chapter 8: Tuberculosis and migrant labour in the High Commission Territories:       Bechuanaland: 1985-1998

Chapter 9: Tuberculosis and migrant labour in the High Commission Territories: Basutoland and Swaziland: 1912-2005

Chapter 10: Contests over labour in British central African colonies: 1935 - 1953

Chapter 11: Dissenting voices: 1902 -1956

Chapter 12: The career of A. J. Orenstein: 1914 - -1960

Chapter 13: Technologies, care and repatriations: 1926-1966

Chapter 14: Things fall apart: independent research, asbestos litigation, and the gold miners’ class action: 1983 - 2019

Chapter 15: Conclusion: records, bodies and contested justice 

O autorze

Jock McCulloch (1945 - 2018) was one of the foremost historians of occupational health of his generation. He also wrote on colonization, race relations, and psychiatry. Jock was Emeritus Professor of History at RMIT University (Australia), and fellow of both the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences and the Academy of the Humanities. 

Pavla Miller is Emeritus Professor of Historical Sociology at RMIT University (Australia). She wrote Long Division: State Schooling in South Australian Society; Transformations of Patriarchy in the West; and Patriarchy. An interdisciplinary scholar, she also published on explanations of low fertility, masters and servants’ legislation, children’s work, and the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme.