Title Chiefs of the plantation : authority and contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe border / Lincoln Addison

Published Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2019]

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 196 pages) Contents Front Matter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The Border Plantation Labour Regime -- Spatial Struggles: Tomatoes, Cigarettes, and Piece Rates -- "Their Heart Is Not in the Farm": Middle Managers as Sources of Instability -- "The Babies Are Dying!": The Sexual Economy, Gender Relations, and Narratives of Infant Death -- War with the Devil: The Rise and Fall of the Interdenominational Worship Group -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index Summary "South African agriculture is characterized by growing labour unrest, evinced in recent years by high-profile strikes, but little is known about the sources and forms of day-to-day struggle. In Chiefs of the Plantation Lincoln Addison examines how labour conflict is fuelled by changing management practices and how workers respond and resist across spatial, sexual, and spiritual domains. Depicting, in rich ethnographic detail, daily life on a plantation, Addison describes how agriculture has been restructured in the post-apartheid era through a delegation of authority from white landowners to black intermediaries. He explains that while this labour regime enables the profitability of plantations, it gives rise to a fragile moral economy in which perceptions of what is tolerable and what is exploitation frequently clash. In this environment, transactional sex and Christian worship emerge as important terrains of gendered and spiritual contestation where women and low-ranking workers remain resilient in the face of unequal power relations. Meanwhile, plantations project an appearance of benevolent paternalism, particularly in the narratives and self-identity of white landowners. This book reveals how, in the everyday life of the community, both the plantation and the compound where the workers live serve as central grounds for the negotiation of labour relations. A groundbreaking study that uncovers how migrant plantation workers challenge their exploitation, Chiefs of the Plantation is a rare glimpse into the often hidden world of labour struggle on contemporary plantations."-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 23, 2019) Subject Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- Limpopo -- Social conditions Agricultural laborers -- South Africa -- Limpopo -- Economic conditions Plantations -- South Africa -- Limpopo Industrial relations -- South Africa -- Limpopo Agriculture -- South Africa -- Limpopo SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural. Agricultural laborers -- Economic conditions Agricultural laborers -- Social conditions Agriculture Industrial relations Plantations South Africa -- Limpopo Form Electronic book LC no. 2019452425 ISBN 9780773559530 0773559531 9780773559547 077355954X 9780773558564 077355856X 9780773558571 0773558578

Other Titles Authority and contestation on the South Africa-Zimbabwe border

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